Let me first get this out of the way, Tarkovsky shoots beautiful films.
Yet, within his pensive tracking shots and lingering frames, his thematic uncertainty drives me insane. Stalker, more or less, investigates all that is life. it's a collage of humanity's quest for knowledge, yet the film itself knows that it is unaware of the meaning of its own existence.
on one hand, the characters' journey is a spiritual pilgrimage that ends up exposing the Zone for what it truly is, a force created by humanity to give hope to those who have none. it's religion, in a sense. just as in our own spiritual journeys, there are traps of sin and pitfalls of weakness along the way and there are those who lead us through it. this is a huge critical blow the the stalker's beliefs and existence. he serves as a guide by perpetuating fear and the unknown.
on the other hand, once the characters have returned from the zone, tarkovsky gives us a diatribe against the scientists and writers who crusade against belief.
in the film's case, these writers are crusading against a false belief, which would be a noble cause in the search for truth. however, we sympathize with the stalker, his pain and passion for hope. we connect with his emotions, yet our intellect sides with that of the writers and scientists.
perhaps it is just personal preference that causes my disconnect, but tarkovsky's willingness to favor that which he obviously deems obviously untrue. Even his switch to color for the Zone implies that it is a much better existence, yet it's interesting that one can't reside there, only visit.
This seems to be a running theme throughout his films as Solaris suggests that following our emotions is happiness even when we know that it is an untruth.
(i was surprised there wasn't already a thread for this. and if there is, i couldn't find it through any searches)
Andrei Tarkovsky
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Lino
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 10:18 am
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Lino
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 10:18 am
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No, I've watched it countless times (how can anyone get tired of that film?), but I've always wondered about it being true or not.
My personal opinion about that particular scene is that it represents the very act of watching a film, especially in a theatre. The lights go down and it's just you and the image it's being projected. For roughly an hour and a half, you're being presented with a series of pictures in motion with a sonic background and to me that's very close to being hypnotized. You don't choose what you're going to watch once you're sitting watching it. Someone else does. It's a little like that scene in Clockwork Orange where he's being brainwashed. What you get is that you start feeling things that are alien to you and yet you feel them and laugh and cry and get scared. It's really like going to the shrink sometimes. For instance, I used to watch Autumn Sonata when I went through a phase with my mother and it really worked. Seeing Liv Ullmann shout with Ingrid Bergman would be kind of like a little psycho-drama in which I projected my hangovers on them and came out clean and relieved at the end (listening to Tori Amos' Little Earthquakes also does the trick).
For me, Tarkovsky understands this to a very deep level and that's his way of showing it. It's the magic of cinema in action.
My personal opinion about that particular scene is that it represents the very act of watching a film, especially in a theatre. The lights go down and it's just you and the image it's being projected. For roughly an hour and a half, you're being presented with a series of pictures in motion with a sonic background and to me that's very close to being hypnotized. You don't choose what you're going to watch once you're sitting watching it. Someone else does. It's a little like that scene in Clockwork Orange where he's being brainwashed. What you get is that you start feeling things that are alien to you and yet you feel them and laugh and cry and get scared. It's really like going to the shrink sometimes. For instance, I used to watch Autumn Sonata when I went through a phase with my mother and it really worked. Seeing Liv Ullmann shout with Ingrid Bergman would be kind of like a little psycho-drama in which I projected my hangovers on them and came out clean and relieved at the end (listening to Tori Amos' Little Earthquakes also does the trick).
For me, Tarkovsky understands this to a very deep level and that's his way of showing it. It's the magic of cinema in action.
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bunuelian
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 3:49 pm
- Location: San Diego
By asking whether it's "for real" are you asking whether the guy is actually cured of his speech impediment, or are you asking if it's a real tv show?
I'm willing to bet that Tarkvosky intended the scene to be viewed by the audience through the eyes of the film's central character, through whose memory we wander for the rest of the film.
As for the opening's meaning, it strikes me as multi-layered, but like the rest of the movie it's intensely personal. There's the Christian element of the Word at the Beginning, a narrow and short-sighted understanding of the scene that people sometimes point to when they call Tarkovsky "pretentious." There's also a comment about Tarkovsky's liberation upon being able to make this film, finding his voice through a technique (replacing hynosis with cinema).
But I think the more accurate understanding of the scene is its important role as a summary of the rest of the film. The final scene of the film has always struck me as a revelation that emerges from a tense, burdened memory, but of course, there is no hypnotist to guide our hero to this revelation - - - is it god? I think Tarkvosky would answer with an unqualified yes. His artistic power was such that he could leave the question open for interpretation, but when interpreted in light of Tarkovsky's world view, the religious element seems blindingly obvious.
I'm willing to bet that Tarkvosky intended the scene to be viewed by the audience through the eyes of the film's central character, through whose memory we wander for the rest of the film.
As for the opening's meaning, it strikes me as multi-layered, but like the rest of the movie it's intensely personal. There's the Christian element of the Word at the Beginning, a narrow and short-sighted understanding of the scene that people sometimes point to when they call Tarkovsky "pretentious." There's also a comment about Tarkovsky's liberation upon being able to make this film, finding his voice through a technique (replacing hynosis with cinema).
But I think the more accurate understanding of the scene is its important role as a summary of the rest of the film. The final scene of the film has always struck me as a revelation that emerges from a tense, burdened memory, but of course, there is no hypnotist to guide our hero to this revelation - - - is it god? I think Tarkvosky would answer with an unqualified yes. His artistic power was such that he could leave the question open for interpretation, but when interpreted in light of Tarkovsky's world view, the religious element seems blindingly obvious.
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zedz
- Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 11:24 pm
The prologue to Mirror, which I read as the artist's invocation to himself to "speak truly, unafraid of his own voice" in the semi-autobiographical material that follows, was apparently a fragment from an earlier, very different conception of the project (A White, White Day) that Tarkovsky liked enough to retain. Tarkovsky was meticulous in including little signature touches in his films, even when there's no compelling need for them (thus the hot air balloons in Solaris and this film, the levitation scenes scattered throughout the oeuvre), so it's probably significant that both Andrey R and The Sacrifice conclude with characters recovering the power of speech.
The fact that this prologue is completely unrelated to the rest of the film tends to mean that on initial viewings one expends a good deal of energy trying to puzzle out the (non-existent) narrative relationship between it and the film proper (e.g. is the stuttering boy Alexey or Ignat?), and this distraction may lead viewers to miss the underlying coherence of the rest of the film (which in one important sense is strictly linear).
The fact that this prologue is completely unrelated to the rest of the film tends to mean that on initial viewings one expends a good deal of energy trying to puzzle out the (non-existent) narrative relationship between it and the film proper (e.g. is the stuttering boy Alexey or Ignat?), and this distraction may lead viewers to miss the underlying coherence of the rest of the film (which in one important sense is strictly linear).
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bunuelian
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 3:49 pm
- Location: San Diego
I'm revisiting Mirror tonight. Zedz, I respectfully disagree that Mirror's prologue is "completely unrelated" to the rest of the film. Tarkovsky is not Godard, putting irrelevant elements into his films to rebel against cinematic precedent. Tarkovsky's films are very precise, and a starkly unrelated prologue wouldn't mesh at all with Mirror's personal and moral gravity.
It's important to note that the film doesn't begin just with the show - it begins with the protagonist's son turning on the tv and backing away from it to watch the show. Because the rest of the film is memory impression interrupted by occasional moments of contemporary meaning, the show could also simply be a moment when the protagonist shares something significant with his estranged son (another Tarkovsky topic), while also discovering that he's emotionally stilted, just as the young man's voice stutters. But the protagonist has no hypnotist to save him. Instead he has his memory, and the memory he's inherited from his childhood imagination. His contemporary son is distant from him, nervous and sad, and he conceives of himself as a child as his son as a way to connect with him. The film's beginning with the son, and the film's ending with the son as child, who is also the father, is yet another take on the prologue that I sincerely doubt was beyond Tarkovsky's conception.
It's important to note that the film doesn't begin just with the show - it begins with the protagonist's son turning on the tv and backing away from it to watch the show. Because the rest of the film is memory impression interrupted by occasional moments of contemporary meaning, the show could also simply be a moment when the protagonist shares something significant with his estranged son (another Tarkovsky topic), while also discovering that he's emotionally stilted, just as the young man's voice stutters. But the protagonist has no hypnotist to save him. Instead he has his memory, and the memory he's inherited from his childhood imagination. His contemporary son is distant from him, nervous and sad, and he conceives of himself as a child as his son as a way to connect with him. The film's beginning with the son, and the film's ending with the son as child, who is also the father, is yet another take on the prologue that I sincerely doubt was beyond Tarkovsky's conception.
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HerrSchreck
- Joined: Sun Sep 04, 2005 3:46 pm
I think you're misinterpreting what zedz was saying-- I think he's saying that folks in general have a tendency to perceive the films opening (hypnosis) to be disconnected from the rest of the film, not that he saw it that way. And by explaining the reasons that folks may be a bit mystified by it (like the two above who triggered this little dialog)-- i e the fact that the section has none of the characters who recur repeatedly throughout the film.. wife, son, mother, spanish episode/visitors, etc... and appears, styistically to be shot by an entirely different director and crew, with a hugely amateurish look to it (you can even see the shadow of the mike/boom above the heads of the therapist & stutterer)-- the fact that zedz was iterating these elements doesn't mean that he felt it was genuinely dislocated from the balance of the film. And at the same time, expressing the belief, which I share, that this beginning segment is not a part of the film per se... it sets up the film, it's style, the reasons for it's style, but the characters are not connected specifically, realistically to AT's life... they aren't friends or relatives, actual therapist/patients he knew at one time... whereas the rest of what follows immediately thereafter are genuine historical events/family events which concretely rubbed up against AT's passage thru the world.
The link between this scene and the rest of the film is poetic, subjective, conceptual, whatever. It's certainly not-- I don't think, and I don't think most who've been tuned into this film for years-- meant to be seen as some real life event within Tarkovsky's life, an actuality, whereby the actual identity (what are their names, ages, what year did the hypnosis occur, what city did it happen in, where was AT when the even occurred?) of the event itself is to be seen as a piece of concrete real-world melodrama sliced up into pieces and folded into the memory montage that the film consists of.
I always saw it as a symbol of the artist throwing away of some form of one or many of the following, casting off: inhibition, form of memory-pollution, programming-by-civilization & bourgoise life, artistic convention, personal nervousness or grief, to finally strip it all away and reveal the grammar of human thought and memory in such a pure-- and to the average viewer, artistically radical-- form. The hypnosis scene is, in a very general & simplified way, the reason that the film's style is so radical. Almost as though previous forms of linear narrative, in their plasticity & inability to express the fabric of the interior world of the human mind, represent a form of stuttering in their 'dishonesty', that is, their inability to 'give to the viewer' AT's interior world. By coming to this confessional state, and his decision to cast off melodramatic framings, explanations, scenic obligations of filling-in-the-blanks & conventions, he arrives at the means to commune with his interior life, and truly reveal that world to us.
The link between this scene and the rest of the film is poetic, subjective, conceptual, whatever. It's certainly not-- I don't think, and I don't think most who've been tuned into this film for years-- meant to be seen as some real life event within Tarkovsky's life, an actuality, whereby the actual identity (what are their names, ages, what year did the hypnosis occur, what city did it happen in, where was AT when the even occurred?) of the event itself is to be seen as a piece of concrete real-world melodrama sliced up into pieces and folded into the memory montage that the film consists of.
I always saw it as a symbol of the artist throwing away of some form of one or many of the following, casting off: inhibition, form of memory-pollution, programming-by-civilization & bourgoise life, artistic convention, personal nervousness or grief, to finally strip it all away and reveal the grammar of human thought and memory in such a pure-- and to the average viewer, artistically radical-- form. The hypnosis scene is, in a very general & simplified way, the reason that the film's style is so radical. Almost as though previous forms of linear narrative, in their plasticity & inability to express the fabric of the interior world of the human mind, represent a form of stuttering in their 'dishonesty', that is, their inability to 'give to the viewer' AT's interior world. By coming to this confessional state, and his decision to cast off melodramatic framings, explanations, scenic obligations of filling-in-the-blanks & conventions, he arrives at the means to commune with his interior life, and truly reveal that world to us.
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zedz
- Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 11:24 pm
Thanks Schreck. The prologue is obviously there for a reason, it has clear resonances with the rest of the film (and Tarkovsky is about as far from Godard as a filmmaker could be), but it's outside the central structure of the film (which doggedly follows the stream of consciousness of Alexey throughout a particular, psychologically significant, day) and, historically, does derive from an abandoned project. Presumably there was more of this pseudo-amateur psych-experiment footage that Tarkovsky chose not to use.
To clarify the structural issue: Mirror follows Alexey's stream of consciousness in a carefully orchestrated relay of dreams, memories, false memories, direct experience, visualisations of other peoples' stories, historical memory and so forth. The connection between one episode and the next is carefully worked out, and following the associative links illuminates both the way Alexey's mind works and the underlying themes Tarkovsky is getting at.
To start off: Alexey has the dream of the burning barn; he's woken up by the telephone and speaks to his mother (mentioning the dream he's just had); she tells him the news about a former workmate; he pictures an old family story in which this woman played a part (the 'Stalin' / 'Sralin' anecdote). Sometimes the links from sequence to sequence are as plain as these, sometimes they're more elusive (as when the presence of the Spanish woman cues images from the Spanish Civil War, which in turn evolves into a newsreel cavalcade of 20th century history through Soviet eyes).
What we're seeing is not merely any old stream of consciousness, but the specific chain of thought representing Alexey's psychic work in sorting out his problematic relationship to his mother (a major symptom of which is his inability to remember her face - hence Terekhova's double role). The relay of thoughts eventually lead him to some key memories (the chicken scene and the medical examination) that unlock his mental blockage and make way for the glorious synthesis of the final sequence.
Along the way, there's a single episode which is not narrated by Alexey (and the film needs to do this for practical reasons, such as giving us an objective view of Alexey's mother and establishing Ignat's character as more than just a projection of Alexey's anxieties), but in this case Tarkovsky is explicit about passing the narratorial 'baton' from one character to another.
What a film! There's so much happening down at the deep, structural level, but there's so much pleasure to be had on the surface as well. Even before you have any clue what's going on, you're treated to a series of superb, unforgettable scenes, and two of the best performances in modern cinema (both by Terekhova, subtly modulating between the two women).
To clarify the structural issue: Mirror follows Alexey's stream of consciousness in a carefully orchestrated relay of dreams, memories, false memories, direct experience, visualisations of other peoples' stories, historical memory and so forth. The connection between one episode and the next is carefully worked out, and following the associative links illuminates both the way Alexey's mind works and the underlying themes Tarkovsky is getting at.
To start off: Alexey has the dream of the burning barn; he's woken up by the telephone and speaks to his mother (mentioning the dream he's just had); she tells him the news about a former workmate; he pictures an old family story in which this woman played a part (the 'Stalin' / 'Sralin' anecdote). Sometimes the links from sequence to sequence are as plain as these, sometimes they're more elusive (as when the presence of the Spanish woman cues images from the Spanish Civil War, which in turn evolves into a newsreel cavalcade of 20th century history through Soviet eyes).
What we're seeing is not merely any old stream of consciousness, but the specific chain of thought representing Alexey's psychic work in sorting out his problematic relationship to his mother (a major symptom of which is his inability to remember her face - hence Terekhova's double role). The relay of thoughts eventually lead him to some key memories (the chicken scene and the medical examination) that unlock his mental blockage and make way for the glorious synthesis of the final sequence.
Along the way, there's a single episode which is not narrated by Alexey (and the film needs to do this for practical reasons, such as giving us an objective view of Alexey's mother and establishing Ignat's character as more than just a projection of Alexey's anxieties), but in this case Tarkovsky is explicit about passing the narratorial 'baton' from one character to another.
What a film! There's so much happening down at the deep, structural level, but there's so much pleasure to be had on the surface as well. Even before you have any clue what's going on, you're treated to a series of superb, unforgettable scenes, and two of the best performances in modern cinema (both by Terekhova, subtly modulating between the two women).
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solaris72
- Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 7:03 pm
- Location: Baltimore, MD
Just that after watching Stalker for the umpteenth time I started noticing similar character dynamics (believer/scientist/cynic) in a lot of very different works. The three child astronauts in Joe Dante's Explorers also have the same basic identities. If I knew more about mythology I'm sure I could come up with much older (and perhaps "better") examples of this three part character relationship, but I nonetheless thought it was just kind of amusing to see it emerge in much pulpier works.
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Mr Sausage
- Has Risen from the Grave
- Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2004 1:02 am
- Location: Canada
I suppose you mean Greek mythology, in which case tripartite character relationships like this tend not to happen. Especially as these are three human characteristics pointed against an unknown or unknowing God, with each member being a representation of some mode of being. In myth, Gods and humans mix liberally (probably about half of Greek myth is rape narrative, too), and the focus is usually on individuals. Which is to say, in myth the relationship between Gods and humans takes the form of demonstration: a human behaves in this or that way, a god then behaves in another way as a response, and we come to an understanding of how gods and humans coexist. Stalker, Star Trek, and whatever else come out of modern skepticism and the idea of god's silence, to use a Bergman motif. The point is less how humans and the divine relate, in the mythological sense, because unlike myth the existence of the divine is not a given.solaris72 wrote:If I knew more about mythology I'm sure I could come up with much older (and perhaps "better") examples of this three part character relationship, but I nonetheless thought it was just kind of amusing to see it emerge in much pulpier works.
You should be looking for "types" within the realm of representation: ie. art. Look in Western literature, instead.
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ptmd
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 5:12 pm
[Moved over here from the Revelations of 2008 thread]
miless wrote:I finally saw Nostalghia, and despite thinking that it is my least favorite Tarkovsky film, I can't stop thinking about it (and I watched it 3 months ago!). . .
I am baffled by the ending, and I'm still trying to figure out what it means (and no review/article/theory I've yet read or heard really satisfies my own curiosity).
For me, Nostalghia is Tarkovsky's best film, but it certainly does take some time to fully grasp what he's doing. What makes the ending even weirder and, to my mind, more profound, is the fact that this reconciliation between the "West" (Italy) and the imagined "East" (Russia) is explicitly filtered through the whole history of German Romanticism through the iconographic fusion of two very important paintings by Caspar David Friedrich (Eldena Ruin and Hutten's Grave) in that final shot. The literature on the film isn't as rich as one would like, but the best article, by a long ways, is by P. Adams Sitney and it was included in an anthology put out by MoMA back in 2003 called "The Hidden God: Film and Faith." Sitney's essay on Vertigo in the same book is equally good and it also includes the complete text of Nathaniel Dorsky's "Devotional Cinema," so the book is well worth tracking down.zedz wrote:It's been a long time since I've seen it (the only Tarkovsky I've never seen in 35mm), but if you're talking about the final shot, I read it as Gorchakov's post-death vision that represents the final reconciliation of his spatial dislocation - a superimposition of Russian and Italian landscapes in the form of the dacha located within the ruins of a cathedral. That kind of psychological reconciliation of opposites is also crucial to the ending of Mirror, where Alexey manages to mentally untangle the images of his mother and wife (and locate them in the same landscape), and the melding / merging of opposites figures at the conclusion of many of his films (Earth / Solaris, doing a very similar superimposed landscape trick; Sound and Silence in Rublyov and The Sacrifice, which also deals with Annihilation / Rebirth).
That reconciliation of Italy and Russia is, of course, prefigured in the title of the film (which renders Russian pronunciation in Italian orthography), which is pointedly not the correct 'Nostalgia'.
It's a film I took a while to love (it's always hard to get over mimes in any context), but I now find it far more satisfying than the earnest Bergman pastiche of The Sacrifice, and it features the purest version of his crowning 'miracle' in the long candle shot which also might be the purest illustration of his conception of film as 'sculpted time' - the nature of the shot authenticates the miracle, and it would have a completely different meaning if it were conveyed in a different way.
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miless
- Joined: Sun Apr 02, 2006 1:45 am
I still cannot figure out how this was shot... I am in total wonderment (a child-like sense of awe, if you will)Kenji wrote:the girl moving glasses at the end of Stalker etc...
Okay, and I must say that my confusion with Nostalghia is not the last shot, but the scene preceding it (the most important of the film). I still do not fully grasp the candle/walk/death.
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ptmd
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 5:12 pm
The enigmatic quality of that shot is clearly part of its meaning, but you might find this piece interesting.I still do not fully grasp the candle/walk/death.
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zedz
- Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 11:24 pm
I don't know if this is what you're looking for, but it's yet another of those acts of faith / specific miracles that conclude Tarkovsky's films (Boriska making a bell through sheer force of will, Kris 'returning' to Earth, the girl moving the glass, the end of the world undone), and like all but Boriska's, it's ambivalent / ambiguous. Gorchakov has been persuaded to take on Domenico's frustrated mission (infected with his madness or inspired by his vision), and succeeds, but at the cost of his own life, because of his weak heart. Whether or not the completion of the ritual has the effect Domenico had hoped it would, we don't know, but it does, at least, precipitate a small, personal miracle in the form of the final shot (Andrey's bespoke afterlife?)miless wrote:I still cannot figure out how this was shot... I am in total wonderment (a child-like sense of awe, if you will)Kenji wrote:the girl moving glasses at the end of Stalker etc...
Okay, and I must say that my confusion with Nostalghia is not the last shot, but the scene preceding it (the most important of the film). I still do not fully grasp the candle/walk/death.
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Robin Davies
- Joined: Sat Sep 22, 2007 6:00 am
Has anyone got the new book "Tarkovsky" edited by Nathan Dunne? I've just started reading it and, though it's a very handsome volume, I've noticed some colour fringes in some of the illustrations, particularly on pages 194, 198 and 215. Has anyone else noticed this or have I just got a slightly duff copy?
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Galen Young
- Joined: Sat Nov 13, 2004 12:46 am
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solaris72
- Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 7:03 pm
- Location: Baltimore, MD
I finally, just a couple of days ago, found an earlier example of the tripartite "cynic/rationalist/believer" relationship. Not in narrative, but in philosophy. I was reading Pascal's Pensees, and stumbled on the following passage.Mr_sausage wrote:You should be looking for "types" within the realm of representation: ie. art. Look in Western literature, instead.
(Credit where credit is due, the translation is by A.J. Krailsheimer. The bolding is mine.)
Who'dve thought that the link between Stalker, Ghostbusters and Star Trek would be Pascal?Blaise Pascal wrote:170 Submission. One must know when it is right to doubt, to affirm, to submit. Anyone who does otherwise does not understand the force of reason. Some men run counter to these three principles, either affirming that everything can be proved, because they know nothing about proof, or doubting everything, because they do not know when to submit, or always submitting, because they do not know when judgement is called for.
Sceptic, mathematician, Christian; doubt, affirmation, submission.
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Alphonso
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Mr Sausage
- Has Risen from the Grave
- Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2004 1:02 am
- Location: Canada
Well, Solaris72 didn't say that Tarkovsky had read and was using Pascal. He just pointed out that what Tarkovsky was doing was within an intellectual tradition that extends back to Pascal.Alphonso wrote:Tarkovsky has said that in Stalker he was trying to frame the modern intellectual. I don't think he necessarily had to be reading Pascal to find that rationalist, cynic, and believer would give him the fullest and most interesting position to do this.
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Scharphedin2
- Joined: Fri May 19, 2006 11:37 am
- Location: Denmark/Sweden
Here is the beginning of a profile on Andrei Tarkovsky. Cleary it is non-exaustive at this point. Feel free to email me with relevant links both to forum threads and external web sites, as well as any other info that could be useful to include here.
Also, it may be worth considering to graft the existing Tarkovsky thread onto this one. I leave that decision to cdnchris.
Also, it may be worth considering to graft the existing Tarkovsky thread onto this one. I leave that decision to cdnchris.