Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev

In 1960, the Soviet Union launched a campaign lionizing Russian icon painter Andrei Rublev to encourage Russian pride during the post-Stalinist thaw. That narrowly opened the window for a cinematic bio-pic. Andrei Tarkovsky would have been the Party’s absolute last choice to make such a film, but somehow Mosfilm put it into production anyway. They were not happy with the results, demanding cuts and withholding Tarkosky’s epic from domestic distribution. However, the rest of world immediately hailed the film as a masterwork. It is a powerful but demanding film that anyone with a serious interest in cinema as a legit form of art must wrestle with eventually. There is no time like the present, because the digitally restored Andrei Rublev opens today in New York.

Do not expect a conventional biographical treatment. There are no scenes of the precocious Rublev in short pants. We never even see him paint a single bush-stroke. Instead, Tarkovsky and co-screenwriter Andrei Konchalovsky (the great Russian director, who also helmed Tango & Cash) skip over years and even decades, focusing on seven incidents in his life, whose full significance and inter-connectedness will be revealed in the final scenes.

When we first meet Rublev, he is one of a trio of itinerant icon-painting monks. Despite his relative youth, Rublev’s reputation proceeds him, much to the consternation of his Iago-like colleague Kiril. When the master Theophanes the Greek requests Rublev to be his chief assistant and de facto anointed successor, Kiril’s rage prompts him to break with the Orthodox Church. Although fame and accolades are Rublev’s for the taking, he becomes increasingly disillusioned by the corruption of the Church and nobility, as well as the harsh and unjust conditions endured by the peasantry.

Rublev will also be traumatized by acts of barbarism that Tarkovsky stages in graphically violent long takes, on an epic scale worthy of Cecil B. DeMille. Over fifty years later, these sequences still have the power to shock, but it is worth noting a notorious scene in which a cow is set on fire was cut from all but the earliest edits (the cow was fine, by the way).

If you want to get sucked into somebody else’s life and throw your empathetic arms around them, Andrei Rublev will leave you cold like the Siberian tundra. However, the boldness of Tarkovsky’s grotesquely baroque vision is arresting, in an immersive kind of way. Even though they are ostensibly science fiction films, it is not hard to see echoes of Tarkovsky’s Daumier-and-Bruegel-like set pieces in Aleksey German’s Hard to Bea God and Andrzej Zuławski’s On the Silver Globe.

Frankly, it is Tarkovsky’s bold strokes that drive the film rather than his cast’s elocution and emoting. Still, Anatoly Solonitsyn performance as Rublev is genuinely haunting—you could even call it iconic. Yet, it might just be Nikolai Burlyayev’s manic, frantic portrayal of Boriska, a young aspiring bell-caster very likely in over his head that could very well define the film’s sense of hope and desperation.

Andrei Rublev is an unpolitical film, by just about every conceivable criterion, but it is easy to see why the Soviets thought it was bad for Party business. There is no question Tarkovsky and Konchalovsky vividly illustrate the dark side of orthodoxy—with a small “o.” Yet, the Vatican was hip enough to include on their “Great Films” list, compiled to mark the 100^th anniversary of cinema (a pretty solid honor roll that includes obvious masterpieces and some genuinely worthy outliers). Frankly, it is the sort of film you are supposed to sink into and get a little lost in, but when it bites back, it clamps down hard. Highly recommended as one of the most important films ever, Andrei Rublev opens today (8/24) in New York, at the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Tarkovsky’s Solaris

Thirty-seven years before the publication of the Ted Chiang novella that would be adapted as The Arrival, polish author Stanisław Lem had already grappled with the challenges of human communication with radically dissimilar life forms. However, some of those themes of his novel were overshadowed by a more fundamental examination of what it means to be human in Andrei Tarkovsky’s classic cinematic adaptation. Easily one of the most important science fiction films of all time, Tarkovsky’s Solaris (trailer here) returns to New York theaters this Friday, freshly restored by Mosfilm from the original negative.

Kris Kelvin sounds cold. In fact, he has been emotional unavailable to those closest to him, resulting in the tremendous guilt he bears. As Solaris opens, he is spending what could well be his final day on Earth, essentially saying farewell to his elderly parents. He will soon leave for the space station orbiting planet Solaris. Communications with the crew have been garbled, so Kelvin is to assess their condition and determine whether the mission can continue.

It is pretty clear the Earthbound authorities would prefer to pull the plug. Ever since space pilot Henri Berton gave an outlandish report of an attempted rescue mission in the planet’s atmosphere, the reputation of so-called Solaristics has suffered in scientific circles. Kelvin’s initial meetings with the two surviving crew members do little to reassure him. Much to his disappointment, his friend Dr. Gibarian committed suicide shortly before his arrival, but he left Kelvin a cryptic video warning.

The space psychologist will soon understand what his old friend meant when he comes face-to-face with his dead wife Hari. She is not a hallucination. She is a physical manifestation generated by “The Ocean,” the sentient atmospheric storm on Solaris the space station scientists roused with their X-Ray probes. Clearly, the Ocean is responding with what the crew somewhat euphemistically call “guests,” but it is unclear whether the intent is hostile or benign.

Those who saw the original American release of Solaris were probably baffled, because a good half-hour was chopped out. Granted, there are some long, meditative Tarkovskian stretches, but viewers really need to go through them to get into the film’s headspace. It is still the most commercial of Tarkovsky’s films (an almost laughable distinction), but viewers who buckle in and commit to it, should have no trouble following along.

Somewhat intended as a response to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Solaris is one of the few films that can match its cosmic scope. Yet, Tarkovsky deliberately de-emphasized special visual effects, instead presenting a cluttered, human-scale vision of the future. Few films have managed to develop the Tarkovsky’s themes (and Lem’s) any further, but its shadow looms over every subsequent first contact movies.

Viewers should also appreciate the ensemble’s fine performances, once they acclimate to Tarkovsky’s reserved aesthetic. As Kelvin, Lithuanian Donatas Banionis looks like an existential crisis personified. You can practically see the waves of guilt radiating out from him. Natalya Bondarchuk gives one of the great science fiction performances in movie history as the new Hari, who has apparently inherited the old Hari’s neuroses and develops peculiar new ones as she becomes cognizant of her true origins. However, it is Estonian Jüri Järvet who steals scene after scene as the station’s roguish but compassionate cyberneticist.

During his career, Tarkovky was bedeviled by Soviet state censorship and interference, but he was never considered an overtly or even semi-covertly political filmmaker. However, we can possibly read the rather dramatic use of J.S. Bach’s sacred “Ich Ruf Zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 639” over the opening titles and the strategic positioning of an image of a Rublev icon as small acts of defiance. Arguably, their very inclusion stretches Tarkovsky’s canvas even further. Regardless, Tarkovsky always keeps the nature of humanity front and center throughout Solaris. Anyone who professes any interest in science fiction cinema absolutely must be conversant in this film. Very highly recommended, the restored Solaris opens this Friday (5/12) in New York, at the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Allegro

Allegro
Directed by Christoffer Boe
Koch Entertainment

The films of legendary Soviet film director and eventual defector Andrei Tarkovsky were renowned for the degree to which past intrudes on present, to the point of problematizing conceptions of reality. They were not known especially for their use of music. Ironically his films have recently inspired the compositions of Francois Couturier, and Christoffer Boe’s film Allegro, in which classical music plays an important role.

As in Takovsky’s Stalker, there is a mysterious region known as “the Zone,” but instead of the Russian wilderness, Allegro’s forbidden Zone is an otherworldly addition to the Copenhagen city center. Bordered by invisible force-fields prohibiting entry, the sudden appearance of the Zone seems to correspond to the loss of the memories of the emotionally frozen concert pianist Zetterstrom.

Hurt by the loss of his lover Andrea, Zetterstrom has withdrawn from all meaningful human contact, pursuing technical perfection at the piano. Zetterstrom is a Glenn Gould raised to multiple powers, insisting on screens to mask him from the audience, lest the visual aspect of his performance interfere with music itself.

Eventually, Zetterstrom returns to Copenhagen to seek his lost memories in the Zone, with the help of a strange host, who also serves as the film’s narrator. Allegro is a film which defies easy summarization. Ultimately, it is difficult to say what is really “real,” and what is illusion, but everything which unfolds on screen is undoubtedly real to Zetterstrom. Fortunately, unlike recent films by David Lynch, Boe has no problems giving some narrative structure for viewers to follow, even providing an animated timeline of Zetterstrom’s life.

Ulrich Thomsen, perhaps best known to American audiences as the truth-telling sibling Christian in the Dogma 95 picture The Celebration, is excellent in the challenging role of Zetterstrom, suggesting the confusion buried somewhere deep beneath the glacial protective shell. Supermodel Helena Christensen nicely conveys the sensitivity of the beautiful Andrea. Almost as important as the actors is the rich cinematography of Manuel Alberto Claro, who makes the buildings of Copenhagen at night glow with a sense of mystery.

If you require uncomplicated, linear narratives, sorry, Allegro just won’t work for you. However, if you enjoy storylines which feature some psychological gamesmanship, you will be fascinated by Allegro. Think of it as a blend of Tarkovsky’s hyper-real science fiction films like Stalker and Solaris, mixed with Un Coeur en Hiver’s drama of arrested emotional development. Like the Claude Sautet film, Allegro uses classical music motifs effectively, providing real keys to understanding the lead character.

Borrowing a page from Woody Allen, Boe has a fictional music critic address the camera mock-documentary style at one point, to give this assessment of Zetterstrom: “He is a great pianist. Outstanding. No doubt about that. Technically speaking . . . But where is his passion?”

He may have achieved technical perfection, but his emotional interpretation is lacking. The Zetterstrom we meet could only be a classical musician, and never an improvising jazz double threat like André Previn or Friedrich Gulda. Elegantly crafted and rich in detail, Allegro is a challenging, but rewarding film that uses music in interesting ways to tell its surreal tale.