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The Pieta of Filmmaking, 29 April 1999
Author:
Scoopy from Budapest
Andrei Rublev (alternately transliterated as Andrei Rublyov) is an epic film
created by the Soviet-era director, Andrei Tarkovsky. It was financed and
created during a brief cultural thaw in East-West relations, marked by the
end of Kruschchev's reign. Within reason, the 205 minute director's cut
represents exactly what Tarkovsky wanted in the movie. Unfortunately for
Tarkovsky and for us, Kruschev was deposed shortly after filming began, and
the 205 minute version was not seen until twenty five years after its
creation. The Breszhnev-era censors first trimmed 15 minutes from it, then
censors and marketers trimmed more. The shortest known version has been
truncated to 145 minutes. Even more sadly, Tarkovsky was never again to get
approval for the projects he really wanted to film, or an adequate budget to
film the ones that did get approved.
Fortunately for us, this movie, recently rereleased in a DVD transferred
from a pristine 35mm print, may now be viewed intact, and it is one of the
great triumphs of mankind's stay on the planet. It is a masterpiece almost
without flaw. The beautiful painterly images follow one another in
breathtaking succession. At least three of the eight chapters, if taken
individually, could stand alone as separate masterpieces.
The ostensible subject is the life of Andrei Rublev, a 15th century monk who
is renowned as Russia's greatest creator of religious icons and frescoes.
Rublev himself, however, is merely a useful device. Little is known about
him, and most of the episodes in the movie come straight from Tarkovsky's
imagination of what might have been. Sometimes one must ignore the facts to
get to the truth.
The movie is not about one talented monk, but about Russia, and Rublev
stands in as a useful symbol since he lived in a time when he could
personally witness two of the key elements in the development of Russia's
unique culture: the growing force of Byzantine Christianity, and the
Mongol-Tatar invasions. In addition he was an artist and a thinker, and
experienced first-hand the difficulty of following those paths in Russia.
Rublev's own inner conflicts allow the filmmaker to illuminate thoughts on
the pagan and the sacred, the nature of art, the relationship of the artist
to the state, what it means to be Russian, and what it means to be
human.
It is beautiful, mystical, and profound, but the truly inspiring aesthetics
are matched with complete technical wizardry. I simply don't know how some
of the shots were created. One I do understand, and stand in awe of, is a
continuous single camera shot, just before the church door is breached by
Tatar invaders, which involves action in several different locations at
multiple elevations as well as the correct timing of hundreds of extras and
horses. It makes the first scene of Touch of Evil look like a high school
film project.
It is a difficult movie to follow. One might liken it to James Joyce's
Finnegan's Wake as a work of genius so monumental and complex, and so
disdainful of traditional narrative form, that it requires extensive thought
and study to understand it. And even after studying it, watching it
repeatedly, and reading Tarkovsky's own comments about it, one still finds
it opaque in many ways.
Tarkovsky was free to create the work of art he wanted, without concern for
profit. The original 205 minute cut was also free from outside censorship.
He used this freedom to realize his personal artistic vision. There is no
other movie like it, and there may never be. Score it 11 out of
10.
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