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A day of ANDREI arsenevich
1 . ARRIVAL OF Andryusha
Larissa watched the arrival of the flight from Moscow
Seeing her at the window,
we thought the first shots of the Mother in The Mirror
Russian chignon seen from behind, it is the sign of waiting.
There were five years Larissa had not seen his son or his mother.
When Tarkovsky and his wife decided to stay in the West,
Soviet authorities
faithful to their political hostages
banned visas the rest of the family.
Time to leave the airport
check the amazing ability journalists to ask the right questions ...
Andryusha ... and was projected on another planet.
This image also called more images other films.
As if all children living his work
were given an appointment at the bedside Andrei Tarkovsky who was dying.
After five years of lobbying
and bureaucratic deafness
it took them to learn medical source
how health Tarkovsky deteriorated seriously
for the Soviets agree Andryusha to let go .
When the two embassy employees had come to tell him ,
Andrey took to KGB killers .
" They came to kill me . "
Absurd idea at that time ,
but image that spoke volumes about a time
and who came from afar ...
For its first staging
when he was still a student at VGIK
the legendary film school in Moscow
he led two of his comrades in roles killers
and not just any .
Here, a dialogue that sounds familiar ...
Probably not he knew the film Robert Siodmak
but it is the same new Hemingway he adapted : The Killers ...
And school work another surprise in store :
the entry of the author, which was granted a small role .
For his first appearance on the screen,
Lullaby of Birdland Andrei whistles ...
"Commentary on these images Andrei in his diary in 1986 :
"I'll have a monstrously air borrowed unnatural ,
I hold my emotion and I repeat nonsense , like:
But where are the bags?
Larissa also is not bad ,
her monologue , utters words like toast
laugh and cry at the same time ...
But it is at home : Airport
All the suffering and despair accumulated during these six years
were reflected in his eyes ... "
2.THE FOUR ELEMENTS
It rains a lot in Tarkovsky as in Kurosawa
One of the signs probably this Japanese sensibility
to which it is often referred
And as in Japanese
a physical relationship with nature .
There are no more earth , more carnal
that the work of this renowned filmmaker mystique.
Perhaps because the Russian mystic is not that of a Catholicism
terrified by the nature and the body.
Among the Orthodox ,
we respect nature ,
we revere the creator through his creation .
And counterpoint characters,
each film enters into a plot between the four elements,
sometimes treated separately,
sometimes paired.
In The Mirror ,
a simple camera movement brings fire and water ...
Reverse path in Solaris.
It is not unusual cinema that people take showers
or burn
but the element is part of the action,
if it occurs as a last resort ,
as the answer to a prayer ,
we can not reduce it to its photogenic .
The water which loses the woman continued in Andrei Rublev ,
or that Ivan continues to run, beyond death
is a liberating water
merciful water as nature
and as God.
At the beginning of Andrei Rublev
is the air and the fire that mixture.
Water will soon appear.
And then the earth,
present until the film closer , up to root.
How many times the characters do they face to the earth,
mud ,
the original silt which they are derived ,
and as not yet fully released,
and they choose to bury ?
Boris is not a film.
Staged theater in London.
And the author of this portrait, During a very Russian confession ...
Because he stole the beautiful twin we rent in Covent Garden,
and for some reason more the unspeakable crime :
in the hope that one day , magically ,
they would restore images they had seen .
Strangely because there no trace of the London show .
Only an honest reconstruction
the Kirov Theatre in Leningrad
which at least showed us the great ideas of staging.
As in the film ,
Boris burrows in the ground ruse ,
but it is the tsar,
that is to say a symbol ,
and so he hid in the earth symbol :
a carpet with the image of the Empire.
It burrows in Russia ...
The map is the territory ,
and history in turn is an element ...
3 . PLAN SIX MINUTES
Seven months earlier, Tarkovsky turned in Sweden
one of the last shots of Sacrifice,
probably one of the most planes complicated history of cinema.
Six minutes continuously
where the eye follows the character that comes set fire to his house,
his family joined him and panics ,
the ambulance arrives,
all in the same report framework ,
and worn only by back and forth from the camera.
Cheerfulness shown by Andrei during the establishment
is simply superhuman :
the nature of the plan,
with burning house while the characters run,
obviously requires a single dose.
But this decision has already occurred once ,
and everything went wrong :
special effects failures,
camera down ...
Production has managed to rebuild outside the home,
but there will be no third chance .
The requirement of this unique plane
is not a whim of director virtuoso scene.
Here the four elements play together.
Land and water intertwined ,
liberating the sea on the horizon ,
fire made by man,
and the air which surrounds the whole, served in this space,
this distance edges that language Photographer is just called " air ."
Treat it the conventional way,
closeups, reverse shots ,
inserts of the fire,
have all distorted .
The entire action must take place in a single frame ,
where traveling is no longer a matter moral ,
but metaphysics.
Director of photography ,
Sven Nykvist
the incumbent operator Bergman.
Initially, Sven was troubled by This way Andrei dial
plans for the camera:
he flew his place .
Then complicity is established,
and the game comes down to who will be the perfectionist.
We talk constantly four languages on the set ,
sometimes six .
In Italian he learned in exile,
Andrei which communicates with Sven worked at Cinecittà .
Russian, Swedish and English are added ,
all orchestrated by the great Leila Alexander
reflecting the same gestures.
Patiently, Andrey takes all one by one.
One error up or gesture,
and it would be a disaster again
this time irreparable .
The establishment continued all the afternoon.
Among percent funny gestures
there was one which would we could worry
but we do not know yet ...
The day ended in good humor.
But when he said "Engine" the next morning,
he must have felt how it feels the young founder bell Rublev
when he says " Davaï !"
4 . RANK IN OTHER ARTS
The bell was melted well .
The plan had been turned.
But what struck the visitor
Andrei is put as much intensity and concentration to solve a traveling
to shoot a picture -
the kind of thing that a director general Directed leaves specialists bench as ...
Leonardo da Vinci is often mentioned in the movies.
This evocation has a specific meaning .
The man seen here
taut as a bow at taking a minor to
said a hundred times :
"My goal is to put movies on the same level as the other arts. "
Not a movie where the paint appears,
generally in the form of a book whose pages we turn .
And Ivan's Childhood ,
even in the heart of the war ...
These images are as benchmarks , and challenges.
Andrei Rublev itself is a long mediation on the meaning of art
where the confusion of names betrays the anguish of a creator never satisfied .
wrote Father Florensky .
"Beauty is in the heart of the Faith "
Any late Andrei Rublev detaches from the narration,
and becomes a poem on the icons.
It exalts , he dig,
he explores the forms they contain
as he was filming the ground level with the plants,
and as this film Russia in the Middle Ages
is ultimately the only true movie on our time,
it also shows where did these forms have before us at the edge of the twentieth century ,
and Malevich was already in Rublev .
Often the character itself confronts painting.
False Mirror , unattainable beauty ,
with which it must nevertheless trying to measure .
The reflection in the paint a second approach the mirror.
Then this is the mirror itself which becomes a metaphor for painting.
By appointing his mirror most personal film ,
Tarkovsky advance without a net
for his fight with the Angel .
Armed with everything taught painting,
with as ally
this supreme art , music,
it is now in theaters to prove he can ,
by its own means,
achieve pure beauty.
5 . VISION
The classic cinema
as Hollywood set codes ,
the camera is slightly above characters
has a favorite angle against light - diving
which detaches the characters and allows the effects of sky.
In Tarkovsky
this is generally the reverse :
that are rooted in the landscape.
Naive American contemplates the sky,
Russian, in any case, this Russian one,
moved heaven and behold the earth.
Sometimes the angle widens and the camera dominates the action.
Simply admire the formal perfection of such a plan
would again be wrong floor .
That vision makes sense.
We are in Andrei Rublev ,
when the young boy who claims hold the secret of the manufacture of bells
was able to mobilize a crowd workers for the project.
We learn at the end in fact he knew nothing,
he lied ,
but that this lie could be him a clandestine presence of faith .
And as the work progresses,
the camera is no longer content to dominate,
she flies
and ends on an absolute sheer ,
a look perpendicular
we other Orthodox familiar :
it is the gaze of Christ Pantocrator,
whoever the top of the dome of churches contemplates us
and we judge.
This abrupt vision
is found at times keys of some films
Apocalypse on the scene of Sacrifice ...
At the end of Solaris .
After the space station ,
a mysterious ocean sends hallucinatory waves
modeled on the memory of the inhabitants ,
the main character is returned to earth ,
in his birthplace .
And off the camera reveals
this return is still an illusion,
the ocean secretes its area of individual memory ...
Much has been said that this Ocean was a figure of God.
Only if it is God, who looks ?
6 . AREA
The occult was for Andrey, sometimes a shortcut with the beyond.
It was during a seance
he had entered into communication Boris Pasternak,
which he announced that he would turn seven films .
" Only ? " Andrei said .
"But good " Boris Leonidovich answered .
And if his school work with the exception ,
Tarkovsky made a good seven films .
The Ivan childhood
Andrei Rublev
Solaris
the Mirror
Stalker
Nostalghia
and the Sacrifice ...
From the first , Ivan 's Childhood ,
a theme is present,
that of the " other side "
a region to achieve at the price of transgression ...
Here codes are known :
in war film
area to explore for information
is a respectable reference
In Stalker, codes are reversed.
A classic concentration camp imagery,
but a great reversal ,
freedom is inside the wire :
one escapes to enter.
The question remains unanswered.
Three characters
the writer, scientist and Stalker,
the Treader , which takes in this chamber of the "Zone"
where , say, the desires fulfilled .
Stalker himself the appearance of a remote ,
but it is a false trail .
The Ocean Solaris communicated also with consciences.
He sent their visitors, visitors,
clone a loved and lost woman ...
But that was in terms of science fiction,
with a repertoire of causes and effects :
a space station ,
a strange planet that needed study the events ...
A scene of levitation was explained and announced by a passage in zero gravity .
In The Mirror In The Sacrifice
levitation occur alone, without alibi.
More work ahead ,
more it lightens excuses and reasons.
To the director who is freed excuses he gave himself.
The swirl of herbs at the beginning of the Mirror
used to avoid a cliché,
that of the man who turns the woman he just met .
It was something unusual happens.
In Stalker,
this is fiction Zone which stir herbs,
it was not accountable to , it is autonomous .
But in an interview,
Andrei said that perhaps Zone did not exist,
it was the stalker who had invented
"That men are less unhappy ."
Imagine the effect of such remarks the Soviet authorities ...
Stalker was cited as an example
the "poor level " of films produced by Mosfilm .
7 . INNOCENT
"I am very distressed
by the disappearance of Andrei Tarkovsky .
We are all very distressed .
He was the favorite
our collective film .
I know the pain that is yours.
I must tell you
that our group does not approve
conviction that was made for his actions.
with the same pain that you
and that many people in Paris .
We felt the loss
this great man,
Interestingly,
today
all this could happen again ... "
Yes, but it happened ...
And moving tribute to an old Bolshevik
does not erase twenty years harassment of any kind.
Ivan's Childhood
demolished for " individualism and onirism petty bourgeois . "
Solaris
honored with a list of 35 "remarks"
who advocate cuts a nice variety ,
since " remove the concept of God"
to " remove plans where you sees Chris walking without pants "
- Without knowing clearly which of these two was the more serious transgressions .
Andrei Rublev and Mirror sabotaged their output .
Continual harassment which led him to choose exile,
he who was so naturally and profoundly Russian.
Andrei was not a dissident.
Invited to participate in a film on dissent , he replied
"And why not on the kolkhoz ? "
His heroes were not rebels they were strangers to this world,
Idiot as Dostoevsky he dreamed of adapting .
His films are traversed by these idiots, these fools , these aliens
the archetype of the Yurodivi ,
that lack of a better translated as
Innocent in Boris Godunov
To understand what is a Yurodivi ,
it was included in the program
the legendary story of the pianist Maria Yudina and Stalin :
one night
Stalin heard on the radio the 23rd Mozart concerto played by Yudina ,
and orders that brings him hard the next morning to hear it again .
Consternation was direct , the disc does not exist.
Called a primary Orchestral hiding ,
a second which vanishes
a third that accepts trembling,
basically everyone except panic Yudina ,
fearless person who loved cats
and made the sign of the cross beginning of his concerts.
At dawn the disc is pressed,
and Stalin sends a happy bonus 20,000 rubles pianist
who replied :
" I will offer this money to my church,
and I pray that the Lord will forgive your sins against our people. "
obviously the order of arrest is ready ,
Stalin but said nothing,
Yudina and is safe.
It was a Yurodivaïa .
Amazing?
But the scene is in Boris
where thousands of Russian victims successive tyrannies
decipher the past century
- And this is why Andrei wanted to quote in the program of Covent Garden.
The innocent proclaims the Crime Czar guards rush ,
but Boris stops and asks Yurodivi to pray for him ...
Unlike Yudina ,
Innocent refused to pray for the tyrant.
The extraordinary history
Is not that one day he wanted Stalin listen to the 23rd Concerto Mozart?
8 . A HOUSE ONLY
"I look like a pirate ," said Andrei .
The disease progressed,
and video shooting, started Gotland in the sun and gaiety,
had changed color .
But tarkovskienne energy swept while when it was about the film.
From his bed he ran assembly, which was held at Stockholm.
Sven had come to Paris , with the necessary Leila
to refine the calibration.
January 23, 1986
the editor Michal Leszczylowski landed with a near-final version of the film.
The screening began.
It was the first time Andrei really saw his film.
Sven took notes ...
In The Sacrifice
the house was a character.
But to think of others ,
had the idea that in each film , the same time he was building a real home ,
sometimes with his own hands ,
Andrei was building an imaginary house
one house where all parts communicate
and resulted in the same passage :
opening a door unexpectedly,
players could mirror come across those Nostalghia .
Now the house built in Russia was permanently lost.
Her new home in Italy was far away.
Tarkovsky and looked at the house of his movie from another house of passage,
as he was known as .
And this is perhaps why the extreme object the sacrifice was to be a house.
The projection is closed.
Someone applauded.
Andrei shouted " light" !
Is what he thought about Pasternak prophecy ?
Andrei Tarkovsky died clinical Hartmann, Neuilly ,
December 29, 1986 .
It was New Year
As in the old expressionist cinema
where a funeral procession through necessarily a carnival,
it is a forest of fir party he had to cross to reach the cathedral
showed a child standing next a young tree.
which bears the name of the film:
Saint Alexander Nevsky .
The foreground of his first film
The last shot of his latest film ,
a child lying at the foot of a dead tree.
We could see a curly loop
and a farewell.
But when he turned the plan, Andrei did not know he was sick.
A riddle again, each according to decipher its codes.
Others make us moral ,
Very Large suggest we do with our freedom.
Each must decide for himself
if the ocean of Solaris exists,
if the area is Stalker ,
if Alexander the character of Sacrifice
completed or not a miracle.
It will find its own key enter the house of Tarkovsky
the only filmmaker whose work whole stands between
two children,
and between two trees.
Subtitles by Arthuro di Bandini