The use of music for example, is relatively sparse and unobtrusive. Tarkovsky instead fills the soundscape of the film with atmospheric reflections of the setting. The sounds of the breeze, or the rain, or a rushing river are presented, sometimes in the background, sometimes so loud that it obscures dialogue. In the absence of these sounds, often nothing is added, letting the viewer linger with the peaceful silence of a place now almost absent of humanity. Without human white noise, the viewer is sonically presented with the reality that nature has reclaimed this place. When man-made sound is introduced, it is often used to a disquieting effect. There is scene where the Writer must travel along an abandoned tunnel. As this scene progresses, the sounds of the rain and running water give way to mechanical twangs and…
Soviet appropriation of Andrei Rublev thus led to a reduction of the several centuries needed to achieve political unity, but the monk-painter proved a powerful element to be included in cultural memory narratives. As Jan Assmann has noted, cultural memory constructs itself around past events as in that they mean something to a group about their present situation. Rublev’s life proved an effective parallel with contemporary Russia in the Cold War, and sustained discourses of national…
Tarkovsky’s first film outside of the Soviet Union, unsurprisingly, explores themes of loneliness and isolation. The Russian writer Andrei Gorchakov is in Italy to research the life of eighteenth-century poet Pavel Sosnovsky; Andrei is deep in the Tuscan countryside, with his translator Eugenia; the morning after their arrival we meet Domenico. Domenico is seen as a madman for keeping his wife and children locked in his home for seven years, for fear of a biblical apocalypse. Andrei feels an…
Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 film, Stalker, casts a shadow over the present, which is what most pieces of science fiction do. The reason why the film is still so resonating to this day is because it depicts how deeply troubled people are by events that are yet to occur. In the matter of Stalker, the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 was what had not yet occurred. After the accident, however, the nomenclature of Tarkovsky became suitable in describing the aftermath because the real world eerily…
Paradjanov (also spelled Paradzhanov or Parajanov), and Stalker, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, were released nearly a decade apart (the former in 1969 and the latter in 1978), but both films share a sense of poetic lyricism characteristic of Russian cinema in the 1960s though the 1970s. The foundation that allowed for that lyricism to culminate, and for both Paradjanov and Tarkovsky to refine their poetic sensibilities in film, was built in the early 1950’s and 1960’s when Khrushchev's thaw took…
Beauty emulates from every turn of expression, personal detail, and of course, the harsh reality crashing against the woes of traditional American film. Ivan’s Childhood, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, emphasizes the dark seduction of hatred and savagery of war. While moments of pure emotion may find its way into small corners of the film, the raging destruction continues, both in the mind and world. Using abstract character symbolism, historical references, and success versus failure, Ivan’s…
This is one of only two of Tarkovsky’s films to not take place in the Soviet Union. His Nostalghia (1983) takes place in Italy, and Solaris takes place mostly on an interstellar space station orbiting the titular planet. The decision for Tarkovsky to explore a film set in outer space has ties into the Cold War-era tensions between the United States and the USSR. Stanely Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey was released only five years before Solaris and is the most ground breaking cinematic work to…
A literary work can only be received through symbols, through concepts - for that is what words are…” This is said by Andrei Tarkovsky who is a famous Soviet and Russian film maker. The symbolism in John Steinbeck's book Of Mice and Men is an excellent example of the words that Andrei talked about. Of Mice and Men has symbolism so small that is you don’t look close enough you might miss it. This book is placed in the mid 1930s in California when there were migrant workers. The migrant workers,…
Dream or Reality: The aesthetic strategies in Ivan’s Childhood Soviet auteur Andrei Tarkovsky is well-known by his understanding of cinema as art and a form of poetry. He emphasizes and utilizes this cinematic poetic logic in his film in order to interpret his aesthetic ideology as presenting inner reality rather than recreating external reality. In his first film, Ivan’s Childhood, he uses the protagonist’s perspective to present what the war looks like and has the impact on a child…
transcend the ordinary., as well as whether or not we should idolize them. This unique novel drops in June 2016, and many are anxious to see what impact a fourth-wall breaking novel of this scope and raw personal truth will make on the face of comics. This is one for the history books, people. Don’t miss it. Heartless This Warren Ellis and Tula Lotay project promises to be an absolute brain-bender, taking on the topical concepts of both superheroes and meta-fiction in one unique work.…