Hank's Blog
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
On one long bus ride this month-long tour, I've enjoyed "Andrei Rublev" - by Andrei Tarkovsky (1966):
from a scene in the film:
Theophan the Greek: I serve God, not man. In regards to praise, what is praised today is abused tomorrow. They will forget you, me, everything. All is vanity and ashes. Worse things have been forgotten. Humanity has already committed every stupidity and baseness... and now it only repeats them. Everything is an eternal circle and it repeats and repeats itself. If Jesus returned to earth, they would crucify him again.
Andrei Rublev: Of course, if only evil is remembered, then you will never be happy in the sight of God. Perhaps we must forget some things, but not all. I don't know how to say it.
Theophan the Greek: Then be quiet and listen to me.
Andrei Rublev: You think that one can only do good alone?
---------------
Tarkovsky: The pressure Rublev is subject to is not an exception. An artist never works under ideal conditions. If they existed, his work wouldn't exist, for the artist doesn't live in a vacuum. Some sort of pressure must exist: the artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn't look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world. This is the issue in "Rublev": the search for harmonic relationships among men - between art and life, between time and history. That's what my film is all about.
Another important theme is man's experience. In this film my message is that it's impossible to pass on experience to others or learn from others. We must live our own experience, we cannot inherit it.
...
Vlada Petric (Harvard film professor): The more perfect the work, the more clearly does one feel the absence of any associations generated by it. A complex film, structured in a way as is "Andrei Rublev", is able to generate an infinite number of associations, which ultimately means the same thing.
...
Vlada Petric: with such an uncompromising creative attitude, and highly aesthetic concerns, Tarkovsky's concept of cinema is antithetical to the commercial production code, or especially the Hollywood entertainment practice that doesn't care for art. Unwilling to make any concessions in that respect, he uses cinema as a means of expressing, and exploring, essential questions such as "what is art", "What is the meaning of human existence", "how to communicate feelings and ideas"
...
Interviewer: "Andrey, what is art?"
Tarkovsky: Before defining art - or any concept - we must answer a far broader question: what's the meaning of man's life on Earth? Maybe we are here to enhance ourselves spiritually. If our life tends to this spiritual enrichment... then art is a means to get there. This, of course, in accordance with my definition of life. Art should help man in this process. Some say that art helps man to know the world, like any other intellectual activity. I don't believe in this possibility of knowing. I am almost an agnostic. Knowledge distracts us from our main purpose in life. The more we know, the less we know; getting deeper, our horizon becomes narrower.
Art enriches man's own spiritual capabilities, and he can then rise above himself to use what we call 'free will'.
...
Vlada Petric: Tarkovsky believes that what matters in life and art is the very process of the creative involvement. The ultimate aesthetic value of a film, and its concrete, direct, social function. Rublev also states it clearly at the end of the film, when he consoles the weeping Proiska, assuring him the most important thing is Proiska succeeded in making people happy. Of course, it is Tarkovsky's own philosophical attitude towards life, his message to young people.
...
Interviewer: "What would you like to tell young people?"
Tarkovsky: Learn to love solitude, to be more alone with yourselves. The problem with young people is their carrying out noisy and aggressive actions not to feel lonely. And this is a sad thing. The individual must learn to be on his own as a child. For this doesn't mean to be alone: it means not to get bored with oneself, which is a very dangerous symptom, almost a disease.
...
Vlada Petric: Tarkovsky died as a relatively young man (b. 1932, d. 1986), without abandoning the hope that cinema as an artform will eventually reach a brighter day.
...
o·nei·ric ( P ) Pronunciation Key (-nrk)
adj. Of, relating to, or suggestive of dreams.
from a scene in the film:
Theophan the Greek: I serve God, not man. In regards to praise, what is praised today is abused tomorrow. They will forget you, me, everything. All is vanity and ashes. Worse things have been forgotten. Humanity has already committed every stupidity and baseness... and now it only repeats them. Everything is an eternal circle and it repeats and repeats itself. If Jesus returned to earth, they would crucify him again.
Andrei Rublev: Of course, if only evil is remembered, then you will never be happy in the sight of God. Perhaps we must forget some things, but not all. I don't know how to say it.
Theophan the Greek: Then be quiet and listen to me.
Andrei Rublev: You think that one can only do good alone?
---------------
Tarkovsky: The pressure Rublev is subject to is not an exception. An artist never works under ideal conditions. If they existed, his work wouldn't exist, for the artist doesn't live in a vacuum. Some sort of pressure must exist: the artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn't look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world. This is the issue in "Rublev": the search for harmonic relationships among men - between art and life, between time and history. That's what my film is all about.
Another important theme is man's experience. In this film my message is that it's impossible to pass on experience to others or learn from others. We must live our own experience, we cannot inherit it.
...
Vlada Petric (Harvard film professor): The more perfect the work, the more clearly does one feel the absence of any associations generated by it. A complex film, structured in a way as is "Andrei Rublev", is able to generate an infinite number of associations, which ultimately means the same thing.
...
Vlada Petric: with such an uncompromising creative attitude, and highly aesthetic concerns, Tarkovsky's concept of cinema is antithetical to the commercial production code, or especially the Hollywood entertainment practice that doesn't care for art. Unwilling to make any concessions in that respect, he uses cinema as a means of expressing, and exploring, essential questions such as "what is art", "What is the meaning of human existence", "how to communicate feelings and ideas"
...
Interviewer: "Andrey, what is art?"
Tarkovsky: Before defining art - or any concept - we must answer a far broader question: what's the meaning of man's life on Earth? Maybe we are here to enhance ourselves spiritually. If our life tends to this spiritual enrichment... then art is a means to get there. This, of course, in accordance with my definition of life. Art should help man in this process. Some say that art helps man to know the world, like any other intellectual activity. I don't believe in this possibility of knowing. I am almost an agnostic. Knowledge distracts us from our main purpose in life. The more we know, the less we know; getting deeper, our horizon becomes narrower.
Art enriches man's own spiritual capabilities, and he can then rise above himself to use what we call 'free will'.
...
Vlada Petric: Tarkovsky believes that what matters in life and art is the very process of the creative involvement. The ultimate aesthetic value of a film, and its concrete, direct, social function. Rublev also states it clearly at the end of the film, when he consoles the weeping Proiska, assuring him the most important thing is Proiska succeeded in making people happy. Of course, it is Tarkovsky's own philosophical attitude towards life, his message to young people.
...
Interviewer: "What would you like to tell young people?"
Tarkovsky: Learn to love solitude, to be more alone with yourselves. The problem with young people is their carrying out noisy and aggressive actions not to feel lonely. And this is a sad thing. The individual must learn to be on his own as a child. For this doesn't mean to be alone: it means not to get bored with oneself, which is a very dangerous symptom, almost a disease.
...
Vlada Petric: Tarkovsky died as a relatively young man (b. 1932, d. 1986), without abandoning the hope that cinema as an artform will eventually reach a brighter day.
...
o·nei·ric ( P ) Pronunciation Key (-nrk)
adj. Of, relating to, or suggestive of dreams.
