On his death anniversary, a journey through the life and philosophy of the master for whom filmmaking was all about ‘sculpting in time’
Andrei Tarkovsky, one of the iconic filmmakers in the history of cinema, saw the first Russian collection of Ernest Hemingway’s stories when he was a student at the Vserossijskij Gosudarstvennyj Institut Kinematografii or the All-Union State Institute of Film that birthed nearly all significant filmmakers of the Soviet Union. Intrigued, he persuaded the school to let him and his classmates adapt Hemingway’s short story, ‘The Killers’ (1927), in which two men arrive at a diner looking for the man they’ve been hired to kill. While he was influenced by Robert Siodmak’s successful adaptation of the story into an American noir film in 1946, Tarkovsky also applied his fresh learnings at the school in Moscow.
His 19-minute short film (1956), faithful to the dialogue-heavy story, skillfully rendered the original atmosphere into visuals. Although Tarkovsky couldn’t capture the American paranoia, he showcased a unique cinematic language and innate visual grammar — an early indicator of his distinctive filmmaking style that would later define his career.
Born in 1932 in Zavrzhe (now in Belarus), Tarkovsky was the son of the noted poet Arseny Tarkovsky and actress Maria Vishnyakova. With just seven films in 20 years (he died of lung cancer on December 29, 1986), he left a mark on global cinema. He was deeply influenced by filmmakers like Robert Bresson, Alexander Dovzhenko, Kenji Mizoguchi, Ingmar Bergman, Luis Buñuel, and Akira Kurosawa. Despite that, Tarkovsky successfully put aside his anxiety of influence when shooting his autobiographical film The Mirror (1975). He acknowledged that a particular shot in the film resembled something from a Bergman film, but he opted to retain it as though he was paying homage to his great friend.
‘Filmmaking: An almost suicidal profession’
Tarkovsky believed that art is inseparable from its surroundings, yet it demands a singular form of expression. In his cinematic philosophy, there’s an insistence on listening and keeping a keen eye on the audience’s needs. According to him, commercial cinema cannot, by nature, satisfy the deepest and most intimate needs of each viewer. During World War II, when the US dropped two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an American study there revealed that being a director was the second most dangerous profession after that of a pilot. In an interview, Tarkovsky termed filmmaking as an almost suicidal profession, putting focus on the perilous nature of the job. Not too long after that interview, he died at the age of 54, due to the extensive hours spent filming his sci-fi thriller Stalker (1979) in close proximity to a nuclear plant.
With just seven films in 20 years (he died of lung cancer on December 29, 1986), Tarkovsky left a mark on global cinema.
Tarkovsky, a profound thinker, distanced himself from commodification and expressed his disgust for America. He writes in his diary entries (Tarkovsky’s Diaries, 1983), “Vast spaces, roads on which it’s impossible to get run over by a passing car. Emptiness. Tiny towns and a wonderful prairie. Poor Americans — with no soul, no roots, living in a land of spiritual riches, a land they don’t know and don’t appreciate. New York is terrible.”
Stalinism had deeply shaped his experiences since he was a child. He grew up during a period characterised by political repression, censorship, and a pervasive atmosphere of fear and surveillance. Films, including The Mirror, Andrei Rublev (1966) and Stalker, used cinematic techniques such as long takes and dreamlike sequences to convey the internal struggles and existential dilemmas faced by people living in a repressive political environment. At the age of four, Tarkovsky was witness to the government’s rejection of religion in favour of a logic-based and powerful state. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who aimed to establish complete devotion to the Soviet Union and himself, waged a prolonged campaign against religion. Despite his efforts, Russian Orthodox churches and Tarkovsky himself remained as devoutly catholic as before his reign, demonstrating the failure of Stalin’s project.
In The Mirror, a character based on Tarkovsky’s mother Maria, played by Margarita Terekhova), is distressed when she believes she has misspelt Stalin’s name as ‘Sralin’ in the magazine she works at. This innocent clerical mistake could result in translating Stalin’s name to ‘shitter.’ A watchful gaze of the camera follows her as she starts weeping frantically, suggesting an implicit sense of scrutiny just around the corner.
Exploring the ‘general through the personal’
During the Khrushchev Thaw in the mid-1950s (when censorship was relaxed due to Nikita Khrushchev’s policies of de-Stalinization and peaceful coexistence with other nations), Tarkovsky, under the mentorship of the open-minded director Mikhail Romm, had the opportunity to explore the ‘general through the personal.’ This era, which saw a reversal of repression and censorship after Stalin’s death, paved the way for Tarkovsky’s debut feature, Ivan’s Childhood (1962). Tarkovsky’s introspective approach to World War II not only positioned him as a pioneer in the emerging art cinema of Europe but also introduced audiences to the enchanting landscapes and elements of rain, mist, fire, and wind that would be central to his body of work.
Solaris, a sci-fi film, came out as a rebuttal of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), which Tarkovsky thought was ‘phoney.’ While Solaris is an unadorned story about sorrow, questions about identity and what it means to be human, Stalker, loosely based on Strugatsky brothers’ science fiction novel Roadside Picnic, unfolds as a deliberate and contemplative exploration of both external and internal landscapes. In excruciatingly slow 160 minutes, the film introduces us to three protagonists — a writer, a scientist, and a stalker —venturing into a desolate and mysterious territory known as ‘the zone,” a post-apocalyptic wasteland in the aftermath of a nuclear disaster.
Tarkovsky employs the surreal setting of the zone as a metaphorical space bringing out the inherent human conflict between the pursuit of complete moral freedom and the yearning for existential meaning. The deliberate pacing, long takes, and gorgeous cinematography by Aleksandr Knyazhinsky create a visual poetry (through a mix of colour and sepia images) to bring out the philosophical depth of the narrative.
Tarkovsky’s final film, The Sacrifice, completed shortly before he died, is considered to be a summation of everything he believed filmmaking to be.
An artist in exile
Tarkovsky can be unconsciously seen following the tradition of exiled artists such as James Joyce, who in his seminal work, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), remarks: “Ireland is an old sow that eats her farrow.” The idea of exile aligned with Joyce’s self-perception as a solitary individual. And he decided to leave Ireland for good in 1904, knowing he would not be able to write as he wanted. Similarly, the Soviet Union’s denial of his request for an indefinite leave to shoot Nostalgia (1983), one of his last films, led to Tarkovsky experiencing exile in Italy, Sweden, and France.
The authorities even restricted his son from leaving the state to visit him, after an intimation that he would renounce his citizenship. But, in 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev took action to facilitate the reunion between the son Andrei and his ailing father. The poignant moment of a cancer-ridden Tarkovsky embracing his son was captured on camera by the French writer and filmmaker Chris Marker in his 1999 documentary, One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich.
When asked about The Mirror in an interview, Tarkovsky said that articulating this idea proved challenging as his worldview had always been distinct. He perceived this film as exceedingly uncomplicated, primarily due to its biographical nature — an accurate reflection of reality. The film was authentic, devoid of fiction. Each episode was merely a recollection of his memories.
Viewing them as genuine memories removes the desire to regard them as artistic constructs. The assertion that this film demands a special background for comprehension always struck him as peculiar. It resonated more with those lacking artistic education than with those well versed in the humanities, who assert their entitlement to aesthetic opinions. This dichotomy led to confusion, a failure to grasp the film, and often, outright rejection.
A cleaning lady in a workers’ club told Tarkovsky, “The movie is clear; there’s no need for further debate.” In her unassuming interpretation, she perceived the film as quite simple: “A man lived a life, and when he thought he was to die, he suddenly remembered all the mean and bad things he had done to his closed ones, who loved him and he got really disturbed by this and wished to seek forgiveness, but it was already too late.” Her views turned out to be more accurate than anyone else’s. Interestingly, The Mirror, which is interspersed with poetry (voiceover by his father) and his own dreams from childhood, went on to be his most influential film.
Creating art in the times of conflict
In an article in New Yorker, ‘The Drenching Richness of Andrei Tarkovsky,’ Alex Ross writes: “The Mirror, like Ulysses or The Waste Land, is the kind of work for which you welcome a guide.” Being a true auteur, Tarkovsky dismissed all the efforts of critics to see metaphors or symbols in his cinema by writing a book, Sculpting in Time (1985), in which je sets down his thoughts and his memories, revealing for the first time the original inspirations for his extraordinary films: Ivan’s Childhood, Andrei Rublev, Solaris, The Mirror, Stalker, Nostalgia, and The Sacrifice, thus evading all interpretations.
He held that cinema’s particular quality lies in its ability to manipulate our perception of time. Raw movie footage captures time as it unravels naturally. Through the deliberate use of extended scenes and minimal editing in his films, Tarkovsky aimed to let the audience have a palpable experience of time passing, moments slipping away, and the interconnectedness of different points in time.
Tarkovsky’s final film, The Sacrifice, completed shortly before he died, is considered to be a summation of everything he believed filmmaking to be. Faith and spirituality are again explored; the story follows a middle-aged elderly critic (Erland Josephson, a Bergman veteran), who attempts to bargain with God to stop an impending nuclear holocaust. Despite being a devout atheist, he prays for salvation, even offering his son’s life. After a surreal encounter with a witch, the film leaves viewers questioning whether it was all a dream.
Despite his standing as a respectable filmmaker, the man was not without his flaws. In a misogynistic decry, he wrote that women’s “real purpose is submission and humiliation in the name of love.” In today's context, it’s challenging to separate art from the artist, a practice that often serves to shield the powerful. Instead, one can scrutinize their own biases and shortcomings vis-a-vis the artist, aiming to understand and address them. Tarkovsky’s films give us a sense of what it takes to create art in the times of conflict: he focused on the inner light and not the darkness around.
