Andrei Tarkovsky: POO

whoops, sorry, brain fart: I obviously meant Stalker

what do you think of it, circa? like his movies, at times i find myself drifting off and kind of forget what he's even talking about, and then suddenly he'll switch into something tangentially related that is somehow much more gripping and personal, and i'm sucked right back in again.

Feel similarly. It’s not something I’m finding myself desperately itching to pick up, but whenever I do, there are always insights amongst the drifting (and occasional repetition) that hit. It’s good. And I’ll probably want to go through his films again after this.

How do people who rate The Mirror rate Malick’s Tree of Life?

I rate both tbh

They are quite different? I like both, but The Mirror is obviously better.

They’re different, absolutely, but undeniably shared ground there. A lot of things in Tarkovsky’s book align with Malick’s MO. Would be surprised if The Mirror wasn’t an inspiration.

I love them both.

hbd

Interviewer: What animal would you wanna be? 😜

Andrei Tarkovsky: I have a dog named Dark, bearing a human soul, that no longer respects me pic.twitter.com/L3AUS8ipvS

— Eric Allen Hatch (@ericallenhatch) April 9, 2017

https://i.imgur.com/ttV63eR.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/Q5fIQeu.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/kQRaO6g.png

many dozens more of these at: http://www.graphicine.com/andrei-tarkovskys-polaroids-instant-light

those are amazing! there is a painting-like quality about polaroids that is unlike any other kind of film

I wonder what kind of camera made those. they don't have the nearly-square image size (or basic resolution) of standard SX-70/SX-680 integral film and they don't appear to have the 8x10 ratio of the larger polaroids.

they look like 20x24 images to me

WHENNNNNN is mirror getting re-released

About 3 years ago?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mirror-Blu-ray-Anatoli-Solonitsyn/dp/B01BFH7QT4/

Re the Polaroids - Polaroid sold a lot of the 635 CL in Russia and the image dimensions and aesthetic seem very similar:
https://www.lomography.com/magazine/192280-getting-instant-with-the-polaroid-635-cl

also - hard to see details and may have a sticker on it:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5a/ce/45/5ace4568c7e28a8e02750ae28ba5633a.jpg

not looking for PAL pal

Makes no difference unless you have a 20 year old TV - the blu ray is 1080p / 24p which any blu ray player can output as PAL or NTSC or (more likely) send to the TV as 24p for display at 24fps, if it's a recent or higher end TV.
I'm not sure if it's zone B tho - in the US that would require a multi region bluray player.

I love those polaroids, they come up now and then on twitter its good to see a stack of them.

me too.

isn't there a book? it comes up on amazon when searching for the films

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Instant-Tarkovsky-Polaroids-Giovanni-Chiaramonte/dp/0500286140 (£120)

(that's from 2006. there are two others, with essays, from 2012 and 2019)

That’s a great book. It wasn’t anywhere near £120 when I bought it, must be out of print

The book of interviews is quite good as well. I especially enjoyed the one with Irina Brezna from 1984: she directly calls him out on his archaic treatment of female figures.

It's the one aspect of his work I've never been able to tune out.

I have that book too. Haven't seen the ones with essays.

Makes no difference unless you have a 20 year old TV - the blu ray is 1080p / 24p which any blu ray player can output as PAL or NTSC or (more likely) send to the TV as 24p for display at 24fps, if it's a recent or higher end TV.
I'm not sure if it's zone B tho - in the US that would require a multi region bluray player.

http://www.openculture.com/2010/07/tarkovksy.html?fbclid=IwAR0Q6zqfyO9fW1IHqTtNnOXHV-eoaasZ_CCZ0FfNiee3Mjm0UNh1Pb28E2E

Stalker, Solaris, The Mirror & Andrei Rublev being streamed for free by Mosfilm on youtube.

https://i.redd.it/qu6hhxwnqxa31.jpg

shit, I'm getting video not available.

vpn?

that's something i don't have, if it's not a massive derail which is a good one pls?

That openculture link was first posted on this thread nine years ago when it first went up, btw.

i am no more authoritative than google. if you use opera as a browser it has one built in you can turn on.

love to see andrei dance

opera sounds a good option

xp

lol .. well I'm there for those that missed it! just started reading Last Witnesses so might give Ivan's Childhood another whirl.

yep, works a treat with Opera.

probably the wrong thread for this, but I can't even get the first few pages of Last Witnesses out of my head. It's someone who was a young girl during the invasion talking about her mother's corpse being hastily chucked under some sand before she get's onto a cart loaded with other war orphans.

Looks like the version of Andrei Rublev on youtube is the cut version, which omits the unpleasant killing of a horse (which was carried out for real in the shoot). The UK DVD also omits this due to UK censorship laws. I believe the US DVD is uncut.

Oh, it is

I think the film stands up fine without that horrible scene, so can't argue with that bit of censorship.

I'm sure that's in the BFI version, maybe I have an earlier release or something. Anyway it's a distracting scene (you start wondering if it's as real as it looks and then you're out of the world of the film), so good riddance to it.

another thing is the bit in Ivan's Childhood showing real footage of Goebbels' dead kids is something I can understand in the context of the time, but there is no question that it is absolutely gratuitous and vile as well to say the least.

Good piece:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/02/15/the-drenching-richness-of-andrei-tarkovsky

As far as the issue of misogyny is concerned – the biggest sticking point in my appreciation of his work – I remember flipping through an English-language volume of Interviews that features a combative encounter with Irena Brežná, who takes him to task in very direct terms. At one point, he shifts the blame from men to 'the Lord', which is such a characteristically patriarchal gesture that I couldn't help but laugh at Ross trying to wrest Tarkovsky away from the clutches of the reactionary, imperialist Russian Orthodox forces that view him as their champion. Yes, Tarkovsky was akin to Dostoevsky in that his unflagging commitment to art attenuated the most backward-looking of his political stances, but his films so clearly aspire towards theological transcendence that his self-described agnosticism is hardly the automatic saving grace Ross makes it out to be.

Anyway, Tarkovsky has left an indelible mark on me, and there is no cinematic oeuvre I value more, but I don't know if I could still subject myself to, say, the bits of Nostalghia where the Italian translator's 'hysterical' unhappiness is revealed to stem from her refusal to be a God-fearing housewife and mother. The Mirror is perhaps the only film of his that treats its female characters with genuine respect yet the mother as (false) exception to one's shameless sexism is a classic trope in and of itself. I also think Ross sells Solaris a bit short: the 'return of the repressed' embodied by the living ghost of Natalya Bondarchuk points towards a kind of self-subversive guilt on the male protagonist's part.

I really liked that Alex Ross piece, wouldn't mind more film writing from him.

Mirror gets Criterioned.

https://www.criterion.com/films/28894-mirror

Saw something about fiftieth anniversary of the premiere of Solaris.

I'll have to drive aimlessly on the freeway for 50 minutes in commemoration.

I’m going to stare at some algae drifting in my pond for this afternoon

gonna go see solaris tomorrow at the IFC

Ah fuuuuuuuuck really? Is it on widescreen (SovScope!)

https://www.ifccenter.com/films/solaris/