FILMMAKERS OF FAITH
'The Man Who Saw the Angel'
Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky opposed any intellectual interpretation of his films, but they were rife with spiritual imagery and signs of his faith.
by Eric David | posted 7/24/2007
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Raised in the Russian Orthodox tradition, director Andrei Tarkovsky once told an interviewer, "I consider myself a person of faith, but I do not want to delve into the nuances and problems of my situation, for it is not so straightforward, not so simple, and not so unambiguous."
The most revered Russian filmmaker since Sergei Eisenstein, Tarkovsky offers an unabashedly religious worldview, without which, he wrote, "people cease to feel any need for the beautiful or the spiritual, and consume films like bottles of Coca-Cola."
In his famous book on directing, Sculpting in Time, Tarkovsky wrote, "Concerned for the interests of the many, nobody thought of his own in the sense preached by Christ: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' That is, love yourself as much that you respect in yourself the supra-personal, divine principle, which forbids you to pursue your acquisitive, selfish interests and tells you to give yourself, without reasoning or talking about it, to love others."
Tarkovsky's diaries—published under the title Time Within Time, which he called, tongue only partially in cheek, Martyrology—are peppered with ruminations on God and film, with Scripture references and with desperate prayers for help (e.g. "Lord! I feel You drawing near, I can feel Your hand upon the back of my head. Because I want to see Your world as You made it, and Your people as You would have them be. I love You, Lord, and want nothing else from You.").
One page has a drawing of a cross and Tarkovsky has written, "What can I do? Only pray! And believe. The most important thing of all is this symbol, which it is not given to us to understand, only to feel. To have faith in spite of everything; to have faith."
He worked slowly and met with much resistance from the Soviet authorities, yet his half-dozen feature films, though difficult to interpret on any more than an intuitive, experiential level, are hypnotic: images from each burn indelibly into the viewer's memory.
Opposed interpretation
Tarkovsky opposed any intellectual interpretation of his films. When asked what rain means in his films, he replied merely that it rains a lot in Russia. When pressed for the water symbolism in his films, he rebelled that water is merely cinematic, that there was no meaning beyond its existence on film.
Nature, not seen as fallen in the Eastern church, but rather good at its core, possible even of bringing one to salvation, plays a major role in his films. Horses and dogs figure prominently, and the earthy elements of fire and water are omnipresent.
The influence of Russian religious history is also evident in his use of the Holy Fool, an archetype of Russian literature—often characters of deep faith, seen as fools by the world, yet who see God's reality as it truly is.
All his films deal with apocalyptic scenarios; indeed, one film idea he had was titled "The End of the World," yet he refused the label "pessimist." Indeed, he said of apocalyptic literature, "It would be wrong to consider that the Book of Revelation only contains within itself a concept of punishment, of retribution; it seems to me that what it contains above all, is hope."
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