by Allan Fish
(USSR 1966/1988 205m) DVD1 (DVD2 only 180m version)
The bells!
p T.Ogorodnikova d Andrei Tarkovsky w Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky, Andrei Tarkovsky ph Vadim Yusov ed Ludmila Fegenova m Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov art Evgeni Chernaiev
Anatoly Solonitsin (Andrei Rublev), Ivan Lapikov (Kirill), Nikolai Sergeyev (Teophan, the Greek), Irma Rauch (Durochka, the girl), Nikolai Burlyaev (Little Boris Bouska), Yuri Nazarov (The Grand Prince/his brother), Rolan Bykov (jester), Yuri Nikulin (Patrikey),
Never in the history of cinema has there been such an odyssey. The story is essentially simple; Russian iconographer Andrei Rublev (1360-1420) travels around medieval Russia with his on-off companions observing the local lives and rituals of his countrymen, climaxing with the casting of a great bell for a local church by a young boy who does it on blind faith.
The film works on so many levels that it’s difficult to describe it. Firstly as a portrait of the icon painter and his continual search for inspiration and spiritual redemption. Secondly as a study of how an artist must be seen to observe the world as a bystander rather than become embroiled in its daily struggles. Thirdly as a simple acknowledgement that the artist is seen by his friends and contemporaries to be not doing God’s work if he does not use his God given talent to the best of his ability. Fourthly as a stunning series of unrelated set pieces; the opening balloon flight, the bell casting, the pagan ritual, the battle, the crucifixion in the snow and the final burst into colour to show the surviving icons. Finally, as a study of the barren bleak nature and savagery of medieval life, it is perhaps only equalled by Vlacil’s Czech epic Marketa Lazarova, but that film had little to do with faith.
The film does not have a strictly linear narrative form; indeed it’s rather like a series of tableaux from the life of the icon painter. There are effectively seven chapters – a holy number and one half of the Stations of the Cross, the fourteen pictures that represent Christ’s passion from his condemnation to his crucifixion and death (paralleled here in the stunning crucifixion in the snow sequence). Here Rublev goes on his own journey, observing and inwardly commenting on that which he sees. He sees some subjects as impure for his brush, such as his repulsion at painting the Last Judgement because of its depiction of sinners being burnt. Rublev sees all personal gain as vanity and, at one point, it is opined “”vanity of vanities” saith the preacher, “all is vanity!”” Quite ironically, those are the same scriptural words spoken by Charles Laughton’s Rembrandt in the final tableaux from his life in the 1936 Korda biopic. Both films understand that to the artist their art is everything and nothing. Just as Rembrandt returns home to his father’s mill to see how he must return to his work, so Andrei is driven back to it by the boy’s courageous casting of the bell, failure of which would have resulted in his death. He draws on another’s faith.
Cinematically it draws some of its influence from the works of Dovzhenko, particularly Earth, and in some of its shots is quite reminiscent of the rhapsodic beauty of Miklós Jancsó’s almost contemporary The Round Up and The Red and the White. Like the Dovzhenko masterpiece, Tarkovsky’s film ran foul of the Mosfilm censors for its nudity. Fortunately the film does survive and now, in this longer version first shown in Russia in 1988 and released to DVD in the US in 2001, we can appreciate it in all its glory (the previous version on video and DVD in the UK ran 180m). The added scenes are not necessarily an improvement, but they show the artist’s true vision, both of Rublev and his namesake Tarkovsky, in what must surely be his most accessible film. Perhaps the best compliment I can pay it is that, when I came to review the film for this book, I was laid low by flu and, despite this incapacity, was mesmerised for its full 3½ hours. One cannot say fairer than that.
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Absolutely one of the greatest films in the history of the cinema by one of it’s most iconic art hourse directors.
I know it’s a typo, Sam, but you’ve given me the title for my first book (or a book, at least):
“Art-horse Cinema (and its adherents)”
😉
Andrei Rublyov (1969) by Andrei Tarkovsky is my number 1 film of all time. It is a pinnacle of film-making for me – one of few most visually beautiful films as well as one of the deepest films ever. The beauty of every frame is exquisite – I have to pause film very often just to admire it.There are only couple of more films that have touched me as profoundly as Andrei Rublyov did. I am always surprised to hear that it is very slow film – for Tarkovsky, it is very well paced, and I am never tired of its 3+ hours running time.
Film based on life of the 15-th century monk and icon painter Andrei Rublyov who wanders through the country torn by barbarism, and later by Tatar invaders. Tarkovsky explores several very important topics in his film: what is talent and how an Artist is responsible for it? The Man and God, the Artist and the Power.
The final 20 minutes of the film are the best and most inspiring I’ve seen in the cinema. For me, the last chapter of the film, “The Bell” is perhaps the greatest in its emotional impact piece of cinema ever made. I can’t stay calm and collected when I see it. Boriska sobbing like a child after his Bell rings – and he is a child, a boy, lonely and lost; Andrei breaking his vows of silence, his words to Boriska of hope, of many roads they would walk together. Andrei’s icons that we are finally allowed to behold and admire, their breathtaking divine beauty and serenity, their melodic lines and pure joyful colors, the faces of the saints and angels with their eternal mystery, quiet knowledge and sadness, looking inside themselves and inside our very souls; the music that literally takes you somewhere above this Earth, to the heights of such purity and beauty that you could hardly breath and where even the “swiftest birds” of pain and death can’t reach you…
My motion is we scrap my review and just put Jeff’s comment at the head of the piece.
Jon, how about art-hearse, even more appropriate considering how most Luddites view it.
I chose this as my #1 film of the 60’s, and it’s one of the most complex and challenging of all films. Great review and follow-up comment there!
An astute review of a hypnotic movie. Allan, I dare say that your illness (though it would be even more true if was fever, rather than flu) may have even enhanced the experience – since Tarkovsky’s films seem to raise the viewer to a heightened, or anyway, altered consciousness. In your sick mind, Mr. Fish, you may have been communing with one of te most mystical of film directors.
I can’t recall if it was Ebert or someone else, but one critic observed the penultimate sequence – the casting of the balls – as a metatphor for directing a film, or indeed creating any work of art. From the outside, creation is often viewed as intuitive, even easy for the creators. In fact, as anyone who has labored on even the smallest – but still somewhat weighty – work can tell you, it is agonizing, harrowing, often miserable – and yet deeply and richly rewarding. We may not all be facing death if we fail, but it sometimes feels that way.