THE SACRED CINEMA OF ANDREI TARKOVSKY
A major new study of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986),
director of seven feature films, including Mirror, Andrei Roublyov,
Solaris and The Sacrifice. ?This book explores every aspect of Andrei
Tarkovsky's output in the most detailed fashion - including scripts,
budget, production, shooting, editing, camera, sound, music, acting,
themes, symbols, motifs, and spirituality. Tarkovsky's films are
analyzed in depth, with scene-by-scene discussions.
This is an important addition to film studies, the most painstaking
study of Andrei Tarkovsky's work available.
Contains 150 illustrations, of Tarkovsky's films, Tarkovsky at work, his
contemporaries, and his favourite painters.
Andrei Tarkovsky is one of the most fascinating of filmmakers. He is
supremely romantic, an old-fashioned, traditional artist - at home in
the company Leonardo da Vinci, Pieter Brueghel, Aleksandr Pushkin,
Fyodor Dostoievsky and Byzantine icon painters. Tarkovsky is a magician,
no question, but argues for demystification (even while films celebrate
mystery). His films are full of magical events, dreams, memory
sequences, multiple viewpoints, multiple time zones and bizarre
occurrences.
As genre films, Andrei Tarkovsky's movies are some of the most
accomplished in cinema. As science fiction films, Stalker and Solaris
have no superiors, and very few peers. Only the greatest sci-fi films
can match them: Metropolis, King Kong, Close Encounters of the Third
Kind and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Tarkovsky happily and methodically
rewrote the rules of the sci-fi genre: Stalker and Solaris are
definitely not routine genre outings. They don't have the monsters, the
aliens, the visual effects, the battles, the laser guns, the stunts and
action set-pieces of regular science fiction movies.
No one could deny that Andrei Roublyov is one of the greatest historical
films to explore the Middle Ages, up there with The Seventh Seal, El
Cid, The Navigator and Pier Paolo Pasolini's 'Life' trilogy. If you
judge Andrei Roublyov in terms of historical accuracy, epic spectacle,
serious themes, or cinematic poetry, it comes out at the top. Finally,
in the religious film genre, The Sacrifice and Nostalghia are among the
finest in cinema, the equals of the best of Ingmar Bergman, Luis Bunuel,
Robert Bresson and Carl-Theodor Dreyer.
