Andrei Tarkovsky: First Impressions
Poetic filmmaking of one of the most important directors of the 20th century
By Ezra T. James
The rise in popularity of foreign language films in the US is at an all-time high. Films from all over the world are becoming more and more viewed by a public who has appear to have grown tired of the same old tropes and cliches found in modern Hollywood. The success of the film Parasite is a testament to this cultural shift. The film has been a box office success, gathering wide critical praise from both American critics and audience members alike. The film won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film this past Sunday, and when director Bong Joon-ho accepted the award, he used the moment as an opportunity to encourage people to embrace the magic and wonder foreign language films can capture.
My journey with foreign language films began with a video essay by a YouTube channel named CinemaTyler on the film Stalker. The film was directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, a Russian filmmaker who made seven films during a span of three decades. The essay discussed the film’s production and technical coloring modifications, but it interestingly mentioned how there’s a strong chance the film’s production contributed to Tarkovsky’s untimely death in 1986. This is far from a conspiracy theory. The movie was purposefully filmed in an abandoned toxic chemical plant with the intention of capturing the gritty and dystopian look of the story’s setting; many actors and crew members, including Tarkovsky’s wife and two of its main actors, wound up suffering from the same disease (lung cancer) that killed Tarkovsky.
Learning more about him, I discovered most of his films can be viewed for free on YouTube, including Stalker. However, my first view of his work was Solaris, a 1972 science fiction film about a man who travels to a space station orbiting a mysterious planet capable of creating life out of thoughts. It explores deep philosophical themes on the nature of being, existence, and spirituality. Tarkovsky presents these ideas in sophisticated forms, focusing on long takes and lengthy dialogue, with every space and action carefully calculated. It was an enthralling experience where I felt completely engraved with the pain and hardship of its main protagonist and his struggle to find love and forgiveness.
These are the themes more prevalent in Tarkovsky’s work. He has expressed on numerous occasions how he sees filmmaking as the creation of something beyond the screen, powerful and spiritual in of itself. He has written extensively on these subjects, publishing a book on filmmaking before his death. His films are unique in that they do not follow the conventional patterns of plot and exposition, serving more as themes for a condition on the human existence. I found this trait to be very similar to Stanley Kubrick’s work, but unlike Kubrick, Tarkovsky is very unorthodox and emotional in his approach.
Tarkovsky is what I imagine an artist in Ancient Greece would be like. He is more interested in the abstract than the technical. His films feel more like a stage play than a sequence of events put together. A testament to his ability to fully engrave the viewer in his creation is the film Stalker. As previously mentioned, this is the film that most likely resulted in Tarkovsky’s illness, and the film carries this dread further by presenting a world filled with a sense of hopelessness.
The film explores the journey of three characters on their way to The Zone, an area of land where a supernatural event of unknown origins forced the population to abandon the surroundings. After these events, the conditions of life on Earth began to deteriorate, and people began to lose their faith and happiness. The names of our protagonists are never given; they’re only known as the Stalker, the Writer, and the Professor. The Stalker is in charge of taking the other two men through the Zone to find the Room, a place that grants its visitors their biggest desire. During their journey, they exchange their thoughts on life, pain, purpose, and faith, all while crossing through tracks of lands full of war tanks, decomposing homes, and the ruins of a once functioning society. There are deteriorating corpses scattered around, and the buildings and houses have been invaded by the grass and roots of the vegetation. A certain force is felt throughout the entire movie, but nothing is ever revealed. This feeling is beautifully captured with fantastic and patient camera work. The movie is more about the men’s emotional condition in the face of finding meaning in a world that lacks it rather than what’s inside The Room.
It’s hard to describe how Tarkovsky’s films work on a technical level. His book on filmmaking, Sculpting in Time, focuses more on the philosophical aspects of the art form than its structure. He could very well be described as a poet who happens to make films much like Bob Dylan is a poet who happens to sing. He has more affinity to the working man and the plagues of the human condition, having endured the hardships of Soviet Russia. His films in a way are a path to hope in the face of suffering, a message we all could find power in.
Tarkovsky’s films are slow on purpose and crafted as a poem more than a movie. The Hollywood structure of filmmaking is not present in his films, but it is hard to describe him as a European filmmaker in contrast. He is his own unique artistic expression, independent of his contemporaries in the same vein as David Lynch. Thanks in large part to technological breakthroughs in computing, his films are now being seen by people from all over the world on a scale much larger than when he was alive. Stalker has been seen more than 1.6 million times on YouTube, and the number grows every year. Despite his unorthodox approach, the message is clearly transmitted to the viewer.
Watching his films is a transcending experience. They entice the viewer in many forms. It challenges them spiritually and emotionally through an immaterial perspective rarely found in any type of movie. A Tarkovsky film stays with you forever. They force you to reflect on the conditions of existence through the veil and pain of humanity. We are gazing into a mirror of our soul when confronting his films. The result is a powerful experience filled with months of reflection.
I can’t help but confess that Tarkovsky’s films have been eye-opening. Not only do I see cinema differently, I see life differently. He presented me an artistic vision far unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, a cinematic world that didn’t follow conventional rules, a synthesis between art, life, and spirituality far more powerful than what any other director has ever captured. His vision will remain a source of comfort and inspiration through the struggles of life.
Ezra James is an essayist and storyteller. His main interests are films and literature.