34 Andrei Rublev

[piano player]

I doubt that Criterion's reluctance to re-issue Andrei Rublev has anything to do with diminishing commercial interest in Tarkovsky. Back in 1998, when the original Criterion disc was being produced, Tarkovsky was a lot less famous than he is today, and more importantly, less of a "household name" in film buff circles. The increasing interest in Tarkovsky's life and work should be a factor when Criterion looks at this title again.

Also, what is the true aspect ratio of this film? Artificial Eye has it at 2.03:1 Anamorphic, and Criterion at 2.37:1/4:3 Letterboxed Widescreen. This should mean that none of them are at the original SovScope, or? I know Tarkovsky "despised widescreen formats", but I wonder what he had in mind for the film.

[Tommaso]

I don't know the exact ratio either, but the 2.03 of the Ruscico and its clones (including AE) is visibly wrong, as the whole image is slightly stretched vertically, which I find pretty annoying. All the more reason that CC finally re-issues the film, in whatever version.

[HerrSchreck]

Without doubt one of the top priorities for reissue-- if not THE top priority.

[peerpee]

A very tough one to get right though. It needs to be done very carefully.

[Gregory]

What a coincidence: today this release turns ten years old. Happy birthday, old, cropped, non-anamorphic Andrei Rublev DVD!

Of everything in the collection, I think the two most urgently needed reissues for the new BR line are this and by Brakhage.

[Tommaso]

I know I've said this before, but apart from "Rublev", there's an urgent need for a new "I know where I'm going" disc. I'm sure they can't come up with any new, significant extras for that, but who cares if they finally do something about the greenish tinge, the interlacing and all the debris . Of course one could simply go for the rather expensive Institut Lumière disc (which seems to be good), but who would really want to lose the Christie commentary?

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

A few days ago I was reading about Pialat's Van Gogh and I kept thinking of Rublev. I know that Van Gogh tries to deal with the artist in a naturalistic, non-sensationalised way (Dutronc as Van Gogh comes across as a tough character, but a guy you could share a beer with nonetheless) while Rublev is about ideas on art and life related philosophically. To be honest, that's one reason why I prefer Rublev. I like both films - they're long enough to immerse myself in, they're beautiful to look at, the actors take you to a place where you see what they see - but while Van Gogh places the artist in the context of the market Rublev places the artist in the context of faith and vision. Van Gogh doesn't get into those issues at all and while I understand it's out to do something else, I sometimes hanker for a clue about what he is thinking. Rublev certainly opens up enough times! Those discussions in the film about faith, art, struggles with life and how one situates oneself in those struggles, and the power of art inspire me more because they're stated in the film so powerfully yet with the sensitivity to show these as ideas one struggles with. Rublev is certainly not a romantic film when it comes to artists and their vision. This attention to ideas always made me love the film because for me at least it always felt novel that a movie would discuss such big issues. The big questions in Bergman never felt novel because it had all that Nordic angst that it felt like Bergman movies had to address those questions in such a manner. Rublev never feels so self-important or hopeless. For a film in a Communist country by a man drawing on Christianity (whatever the brand Tarkovsky espoused) to ask these questions struck me as brave but necessary. This was all seven years ago when I first saw the film so metaphysical discussion has grown on me since I've seen more films, but today Rublev still moves me because other films (or books) still don't ask these questions in the same way. I don't have to convince anyone here how great this movie is, but thinking about it that day with Van Gogh reminded me of why I love this film.

[transcendent1]

After years of searching for the right film forum and babbling pointlessly on profoundly stupid imdb.com boards, I'm so glad I found this place!

I will try to catch up with all the posts. I'm so happy to be here! =D>

Someone on imdb.com wrote that AR is unwatchable. Here was my response which unsurprisingly got no response for almost 9 months or so:

Give it a shot.

It took me 6 and a half hours to watch a 205-minute film with many breaks in between. That's how I go through it. I think you'll be happy you made it, because it is an epic; after ploughing through rough moments the end will be rewarding.

As a poster has already mentioned about the pacing and the rhythm - many of these older "art" films have a different rhythm of slowness. Artistically inclined cinema is perceived and constructed out of the philosophy that film is visual poetry (Parajanov, Tarkovsky, Antonioni, etc), unlike "mainstream" Hollywood-style films where plot and action are main keys. Visual poetry involves the experience of the senses rather than the external actions of plot. It is important to "surrender" to the pace.

I grew up with fast-pacing Hollywood "editing" where if shots are considered "excessive" or "don't help the story/plot," they are considered redundant and are hence cut out. Here, the pacing/rhythm is essential to experiencing Andrei Rublev. I also want to say that growing up with Hollywood films has caused many of us to expect to be entertained, rather than intellectually and aesthetically challenged. Film has been seen as a function of entertainment rather than a function of thought and artistic expression. These "art" films are bringing back the limitless possibility of what film can do. I can appreciate being entertained with a popcorn movie (as long as it's not too stupid!), but I can also appreciate a film that has other goals with mindless entertainment low on the list.

I was astonished by the film. Yes, the first half was rather intolerable, but your tolerance for such pacing increases as you watch more and more "older art films." I watched Parajanov prior to Tarkovsky and Parajanov, although shorter, can be just as "intolerable," if not worse, than Tarkovsky's pacing.

I am grateful that there are artists like Tarkovsky who are bold filmmakers - they didn't care about the prevailing standards of cinema of the time and went ahead and did what they imagined. I love film for this reason - if it can be conceived and imagined, it can be done. Do watch Tarkovsky's interviews about his views on art; they are inspiring and I agree with almost everything he says. He would be a cool guy to talk to if he were still alive.

Andrei Rublev is a meditation on how an artist struggles in a world of suffering, how he grows, transforms, and finds himself again in art. Tarkovsky says that if the world were perfect there wouldn't be any artists. This film is about an turbulent epoch in Russian history which is filmed as historically accurately as possible - it is a grim, bleak world where people age fast, live in fear and servitude, and basically in constant depression.

I was quite depressed for the first half of the film due to the masterful bleak direction of Tarkovsky . Then Tarkovsky turned things around and the film became a triumphant, even joyful ode to life. It was full of hope and life. The film was dominated by human cruelty in the first half, and towards the second half, a community of teamwork, brotherhood, and hard work re-emerged as people healed and licked their wounds. Tarkovsky showed Russian history and the philosophy of life by showing the full cycle of human existence. It is a great achievement.

I think the first half of the film was intolerable and deliberately so - I don't think Tarkovsky wanted you to be happy. He wanted to the viewer to experience the same suffering and desperation of the world he created. Then he proceeds to show the human will transcend suffering and the cycle of destruction and rebuilding. And it is also a meditation on art and the artist.

Not only is this film an epic but it is a poetic meditation and a visual record of Russian history. It is philosophical as well as a visual poetic experience.

I urge anyone to finish it, because you will find a great sense of relief towards the end.

[somnambulating]

The 205 min. cut of this is playing at the New Beverly in Los Angeles next month.

I shall be there, at least one of the three dates, silent & gray.

[bunuelian]

Welcome.

I wonder whether "intolerable" is the best word for your message, other than in the sense that the first chapter is intolerable to someone trained to watch film by contemporary Hollywood. I certainly had that problem with Rublev and Stalker, when I first watched them. These films inspired my full-body baptism in the art, but it took a certain effort, nothing too dramatic, to learn to read film in a sophisticated way. Rublev is a marvelous teacher for this, because the more one studies it, the more it gives back.

The first chapter of the film is my favorite portion, and the least painful of the whole. The innocence of the monks' lifestyle in the early part of the film is gradually undermined. The simple problem of being caught in a sudden downpour with only a sapling for shelter transforms into a tragic symbol as the film proresses. They can no more hide from the rain under a sapling than they can hide within their monasteries from the tides of history. Tarkovsky views the artist as a man deeply involved in his time, but with an essential idealism that drives his art.

The pacing grants the entire film its poetic quality, and is at the center of Tarkovsky's genius. It's astoundingly full of love and compassion for humanity even when its depicting suffering. It's hardly the work of someone bent on making his audience suffer. (Counterpoint: Requiem for a Dream, a film designed to make you want to vomit.)

I think the end of the narrative is the weakest part of the film. The bell-maker boy's weepy performance is excessively theatrical and Andrei by this point has ceased to matter, so his decision to break his oath of silence and take up painting again is, in light of the sweeping suffering all about him, almost absurd. It's also a moment that hints at the Narcissism that took over Tarkovsky's post-Soviet films - that wallowing in the muse of suffering that made him intolerable to so many other filmmakers he met, and made the heroes of his last films come across as depressive proto-emos. The story of the bell-maker is dramatic and great filmmaking, but it loses that kernel of truth that sustains the rest of the film, for me.

[transcendent1]

bunuelian, I definitely don't think Tarkovsky is a sadistic director! Far from it. From his films, I feel that he is a kind and compassionate (as you say) idealist.

Requiem for a Dream can't even compare to this AR. In fact, I can't think of any film that fully addresses the universal, existential problems of life by pure story-telling and visual poetry without being pontificating and being propagandist. The full cycle of life was depicted and it really was amazing how it was done.

If I used the word "intolerable" it was really addressing the watchability of his films as least for a contemporary audience who grew up with Hollywood style pacing and content. AR is one of my favorite films but honestly I won't watch it again for some time. If I do it will be for a few scenes here and there. But the effect AR had on me is profound. It totally changed the way I perceived filmmaking - that it didn't always have to be about plot, character-driven, rhythm, etc.

"Loses the kernel" of truth with excessive suffering. I agree with you. But I admire Tarkovsky and in fact he is a kind of hero for me. Anyone who dares to depict so much suffering and depression in film, which is today such a sad big business, gains my respect.

[bunuelian]

I rarely watch AR from start to finish, but I frequently watch portions of it. It's tremendously viewable in pieces. The more you become familiar with it, the easier it becomes to get absorbed in it. I think this can be said for a lot of the best of Russian film.

[kaujot]

I've found all of Tarkovsky's work shares that quality. That is, can be watched in many segments over a period of time.

[knives]

I haven't watched any so can't comment from experience, but I don't think I could do that unless the film is split into direct episodes. Even then they'd have to be pretty defined.

[Sloper]

Although I have sometimes watched AR in two chunks, I think it’s kind of important to go in for the long haul single-sitting experience, because only then can the final episode achieve the cathartic impact it’s supposed to have. Aside from being a (modestly) triumphant, redemptive story in itself – which, yes, is a relief after what comes before – it has a conventional narrative interest and momentum which the film really needs by that point, and which other Tarkovsky films tend to lack. We ought to be breaking down in tears along with the kid at the end, and we’re less likely to do that if we haven’t been suffering for the last three hours; as Bunuelian says, taken on its own terms it can seem theatrical and emo-ish. You need to be immersed in the boy’s desperation. He’s essentially fighting for his life, and after seeing people have their eyes gouged out, or have boiling oil poured down their throats, this should really mean something to us. His somewhat histrionic performance should chime with the audience’s mood by that stage in the film. (Consider how you might react, or not react, to the shot of ‘the room’ in Stalker if you hadn’t just sat through the rest of the film.)

Then the montage of paintings, the transfer to colour, and the shot of horses in the rain, all work to complete the effect, and sort of ‘ease’ you out of the film. So I agree with transcendent1 that the rhythm is really important; perhaps watching it over a six-hour period, with little rest breaks in between the episodes, would preserve the film’s effect, but on the occasions when I’ve watched it over a two-day period, the whole piece (or rather my reaction to it) seemed diluted.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

We ought to be breaking down in tears along with the kid at the end, and we’re less likely to do that if we haven’t been suffering for the last three hours; as Bunuelian says, taken on its own terms it can seem theatrical and emo-ish. You need to be immersed in the boy’s desperation. He’s essentially fighting for his life, and after seeing people have their eyes gouged out, or have boiling oil poured down their throats, this should really mean something to us. His somewhat histrionic performance should chime with the audience’s mood by that stage in the film. (Consider how you might react, or not react, to the shot of ‘the room’ in Stalker if you hadn’t just sat through the rest of the film.) Then the montage of paintings, the transfer to colour, and the shot of horses in the rain, all work to complete the effect, and sort of ‘ease’ you out of the film. So I agree with transcendent1 that the rhythm is really important; perhaps watching it over a six-hour period, with little rest breaks in between the episodes, would preserve the film’s effect, but on the occasions when I’ve watched it over a two-day period, the whole piece (or rather my reaction to it) seemed diluted.

Very true, Sloper. Just to add, but watching it all at once is an important consideration. The cumulative effect of being with Andrei all the way to the end is quite rewarding. I know I cry every time at the end. The release there is quickly soothed by the color sequence and the music and then to cap it the sound of the rain and the horses grazing. Beautiful.

By the way, for the people who object to Tarkovksy and his use of animals, horses suffer in Rublev but by the end even they get a happy ending in the last shot.

[Stefan Andersson]

Any news on the recent Russian digital restoration?

[TomReagan]

By the way, for the people who object to Tarkovksy and his use of animals, horses suffer in Rublev but by the end even they get a happy ending in the last shot.

With all due respect, you're having a laugh, no?

In a narrative sense, perhaps, but that did not exactly help out the horse on the stairs (or the cow for that matter) in the very real, very physical world.

Actual violence directed toward actual animals in narrative cinema either offends one and/or smashes one's suspension of disbelief or does not. It rather effectively accomplishes both for me.

I have always found Tarkovsky's professed love / compassion, etc. for horses pretty much obliterated by the evidence on display in Rublev -- god bless 'em if he was ever able to reconcile that moral quandary. (If he even deemed it as such; at least someone like Haneke does not appear to have any issues with his treatment of animals, and as far as I know, has never offered any apologies or half-assed, mealy-mouthed excuses for it.)

I have no intention of resurrecting heated debates that have transpired on at least three iterations of this board (insert pithy "flogging a dead horse" comment here), but as one of those "people who object to Tarkovksy and his use of animals," that comment simply could not go without a response.

[ryan11]

My two bob's worth.

The shocking scene with the horse cannot be justified. It is shocking, but not, in any way, in a filmic sense. it is animal cruelty, pure and simple. I watched a doco where Tarkovsky commented on the beauty of a horse in nature. How he could deliberately engineer the death of a horse ( and a cow!) to make a film is breathtaking in it's cruelty.

To quote Tarkovsky's own words:

"You can play a scene with documentary precision, dress the characters correctly to the point of naturalism, have all the details exactly like real life, and the picture that emerges in consequence will still be nowhere near reality, it will seem utterly artificial, that is, not faithful to life, even though artificiality was precisely what the author was trying to avoid".

He killed two animals, and halted the films flow abruptly by doing so.

[tartarlamb]

I recall hearing that the animals were going to be put down anyway, which for me neither mitigates the crime nor excuses it. But whatever. I always feel intense guilt for watching this film and, worse, enjoying it so much.

[Blonde Venus]

I've only watched it once (that was two or three months ago). After I finished watching it I had no strong feelings.

But only recently, images from the film have been surfacing in my mind. The bell sequence. The river sequence with the pagan rituals. And of course the ending.
So I guess the film made some subconcious impression on me, and now I'm really intrigued to go and see it again.

[Awesome Welles]

I've only watched it once (that was two or three months ago). After I finished watching it I had no strong feelings.

But only recently, images from the film have been surfacing in my mind. The bell sequence. The river sequence with the pagan rituals. And of course the ending.
So I guess the film made some subconcious impression on me, and now I'm really intrigued to go and see it again.

I had exactly the same response when I first saw it though I never managed to see the film again as I ploughed through the rest of Tarkovsky's films and that was a few years ago, I've been hankering to see it again for so long!

[aox]

I think I have had the exact response as well. This film is the only film of his 7 that has done absolutely nothing for me. But since he is one of my favorite directors, I would like to revisit. Hoping for a BR release soon.