March 2004
"Perhaps the meaning of all human activity lies in artistic consciousness, in the pointless and selfless creative act." Andrei Tarkovsky
Subjective logic. The movement of thoughts. The ever-present dripping of water. Water and fire. Sculpting in time. Long takes. Sepia. Socialist surrealism. Trains, dogs, bells, birch trees, owls, brass beds, apples, horses, spilt milk, levitation, basins, vases, tables, dachas; an edifice of memories that signal a desire to return to a lost paradise. An often forgotten but timeless realm of childhood, innocence, nature and unrequited love. The hero as artist. Surrounded by the eroticism and fertility of nature. The family house, childhood, country, Mother Earth; the need for the artist to connect with the roots of their existence. The duty of the filmmaker is to reveal the truth as they have experienced it, however popular or unacceptable that truth may be. Art creates community. Tarkovsky’s image worlds remind us of the water, grass, rustling leaves, wind, hopes, desires, dreams, loneliness and love that surrounds us. Tarkovsky understood that the function of the artist is to serve the times they have been produced by. That art has a moral function to lead us to self-knowledge and the ultimate meaning of our existence. Tarkovsky’s dreamscapes remind us that everything is immortal – nothing we have experienced is ever truly lost.
"Everything that torments me, everything I don’t have and that I long for, that makes me indignant or sick, or suffocates me, everything that gives me a feeling of light and warmth, and by which I live, and everything that destroys me – it’s all there in your film." A woman viewer commenting on Tarkovsky’s film, ‘Mirror’.
Andrei Tarkovsky directed seven feature length films between 1962 and 1986. They are: My Name is Ivan 1962, Andrei Roublev 1966, Solaris 1972, Mirror 1975, Stalker 1978, Nostalgia 1983, and The Sacrifice 1986. His work is distinguished by a marked tension between the internal world and the external world. A blurring of the imaginary line between the past and the present. Narrative develops by associative links, poetic realism, instead of the logical demands of plot and artifice. Tarkovsky created mental landscapes that override physical realities. What does it mean to be human? What do we long for? What are the connections to be made between real time, historical time, dream time and film time? His seven films incorporate elements of the war film, historical epic, science fiction, autobiography, and social drama to depict the human condition in its search for higher ground and lost memories. His only demand of actors was that they be truthful and understandable. His only demand of a symbol is that it be inexhaustible. Tarkovsky understood that the truth has to be lived, not taught. His films are left as reminders that our own memories are necessary to protect us from illusion and art’s greatest function is to reconnect us with ourselves and thereby the outside world.
"Where have all the great ones gone? Where are Rossellini, Cocteau, Renoir, Vigo? The great- who are poor in spirit? Where has poetry gone? Money, money, money, and fear… Fellini is afraid, Antonioni is afraid… the only one who is afraid of nothing is Bresson.’ Andrei Tarkovsky
Thoreau wrote in Walden that the works of the great poets have yet to be read because only great poets can read them. Tarkovsky was relentless in his mission to move cinema beyond its dependence on literature and its primary function as a mode of entertainment and mindless distraction. He looked to artists like Dostoevsky, Leonardo Da Vinci, Pushkin, Brueghel, and Bach, as representatives of the creative muse who believed that faith in artistic creation unlocked the images and metaphors that drive us forward. He witnessed how materialism has vanquished our mythological underpinnings and rendered us slaves to our need for instant gratification and idle amusement. Tarkovsky was in short, everything that our current ‘film industry’ isn’t. The vulnerable hero who searches for the eternal, transcendent and divine is a poor substitute for the modern action hero who has more tangible ammunition at his disposal. The idea of the cinema acting as a mirror to recognize ourselves in is somewhat of an anachronism in a world where the self is something we actively seek to escape from. Tarkovsky writes; ‘Given that art expresses the ideal and man’s aspiration towards the infinite, it cannot be harnessed to consumerist aims without being violated in its very nature…’ All of our best attributes: hope, love, faith, beauty, are the principles that inform Tarkovsky’s use of film as a medium. He invites but never panders us to recognize and remember those dreams and aspirations in ourselves.
"Has man any hope of survival in the face of all the patent signs of impending apocalyptic silence? Perhaps an answer to that question is to be found in the legend of the parched tree, deprived of the water of life, on which I based this film…the Monk, step by step and bucket by bucket, carried water up the hill to water the dry tree, believing implicitly that his act was necessary…he lived to see the Miracle: one morning the tree burst into life, its branches covered with young leaves. And that miracle is surely no more than the truth." Andrei Tarkovsky writing about ‘The Sacrifice’ in his book, ‘Sculpting In Time’ 1986.’
The final image in Tarkovsky’s final film, The Sacrifice, encapsulates the essence of his cinema and his artistic beliefs. As the young boy, Little Man, rests from carrying the heavy buckets of water to nourish the Ikebana tree on the barren coastline of Sweden, we witness the juxtaposition of nature and youth as their respective worlds connect. Tarkovsky recognized that everything and everyone has a purpose and that where there is art there is life. He left us too soon but his films will live on as a reminder of the vastness of experience and the healing powers of the natural world. Ingmar Bergman hailed him as "the most important director of our time’". We at Hobo celebrate him as being even more important in our current time. His films remind us of the power of images to convey feelings and the power of feelings to convey wisdom, which engenders peace, which provides purpose. In the spirit of the summer of 2004, Tarkovsky is an elixir.
