Summary
The life of the great Icon Writer, Andrei Rublev, is the backdrop for this exploration of Russia, its people, history, faith, atrocities, and glory, as only a true seeker of enlightenment can.
My Viewings
I’ve neglected writing this review for a long time. Years.
This has mostly been because I find that what I do write is too small for the greatness of “Andrei Rublev” and Tarkovsky’s phenomenal work and vision.
I have seen this film at least 5 times in the last few years and I’m certain that before I die it will find a place amongst “Star Wars,“ “The Hunt for Red October,” and “The Last Unicorn” as one of my most watched films. It has already dethroned “Ben Hur” as my favorite film of all time.
If you haven’t seen it, light ***SPOILERS*** follow in the article so stop now, watch it, and read later. If you do not, choosing instead to read on like some sort of internet rebel and independent thinker, then I hope my thoughts on “Andrei Rublev” serve as the argument you needed in order to watch the film and not as a Cliffnotes version that makes you think that 3+ hours is just too much to invest in a foreign, black and white, art film. It truly is a film that must be felt and seen. Not merely read about or summarized.
The Film
Books have been written on why “Andrei Rublev” is a superb masterpiece of a film. I can only offer some humble thoughts on the matter from someone, for whom if dreams came true, would be seeking to emulate Tarkovsky’s work in some of his own small film ideas.
First off, the cinematography is gorgeous. Tarkovsky had a great sense of the depth of his frames, the movement of his actors in relation to camera and its moves, and what to dwell on or ignore in his depictions. Like Kurosawa, he uses this depth to show many things happening at the same time, create visual interest and contrast, and reveal complicated realities for what they are. Tarkovsky takes it a step further, as I am sure Kurosawa does as well (I’m just not as familiar with his films).
He uses the depth of the frame to allow thinking time. Rather than cutting between two characters traveling parallel roads and giving them close ups he will give us the lead up to them separating, complete with arguments, emotions, contradictions, and heartache, then show the separation from a single wide as the characters travel together yet separate. This gives us time to think about what they must be thinking as they’ve just left a heated conversation, betrayal, or confession.
This meditative aspect of film is something that few directors and only the trul;y great ones, in my opinion, understand or take advantage of. It is why Tarkovsky is my favorite director. He’s contemplative.
Another reason this film is so moving to me is the character of Rublev, a monk who wishes to use the gifts of painting with which God blessed him to bless God but struggles with the necessary evils of working with patrons, needing money, becoming famous and revered, allying oneself with a violent society, and the hypocrisy of religion. As an artist myself, though far less discipline, productive, or talented as Andrei Rublev, and as a Christian who struggles with why he is creating anything at all sometimes, I find that Rublev is asking many of the questions I myself ask almost every day.
In Tarkovsky’s own meditation on these ideas, I find a kindred heart. I would not venture to say that Tarkovsky’s films have answers to those questions anymore than he did but I would say that he put his heart out there, I saw it, and I loved him and understood the struggles he was having, having encountered some of them myself in my own thought.
The final thing that I will highlight here, though I could go on much longer, is the way that Tarkovsky builds tension in the most natural way I can imagine. Standard Hollywood techniques include ramping up the music, showing a clock as it is ticking down, intercut with people's actions and reactions, back to the clock which somehow has barely moved, and at the last second the right wire gets cut with a wipe of sweat from our hero’s brow.
In “Andrei Rublev,” tension gets built not through cinematic tricks but through story realities. As a situation gets bigger and bigger, one of our characters feels the weight that his actions have had and begins to worry that if things don’t go his way, people will be killed. Surely, at least he will. As the bell swings back and forth and his fate is sealed by either a clear ring or dull thud we wait with the same anticipation as every character in the town who listens for that first peal of joy. Long steady shots of them as they watch the bells clapper swing forward and back. Will this be another massacre at the hands of the prince who paid for this or will the bellmaker emerge triumphant and deserving of the trust that was placed in him?
If you had told me that I would call my favorite film a movie that has a 45 min bellmaking sequence as its climax, I would have thought you were insane. I’m sure had he pitched it in Hollywood, he’d have been laughed at too. Not enough action or suspense. Instead, we have gotten one of the most suspenseful scenes in film history and there isn’t a bomb to be defused, a chariot race to be won, or a glowing ray of plasma shooting in the sky to open a portal to an alien dimension and human apocalypse in sight. Just a bell, a bellmaker, a town of laborers, a prince for patron, and a monk named Andrei Rublev observing, looking for purpose, looking for inspiration, and finding it in his people and faith.
My Thoughts
Obviously, this is a film I love. It touches me at the core of who I am as an artist, Christian, member of society, and as a human being. The only way to truly understand how this film affects me is to sit and watch it with me exchanging looks of, “oh can you believe that,” and “dang, that is just how it is, huh?”
It’s a film that doesn’t shy away from harsh realities in order to provide catharsis. It dwells in the midst of the horrific tragedies of life, religion, government, and personal relationships and seek some hope within it all. Pretending that life isn’t like that is too false and a fairy tale but a merely dour and nihilistic view also seems to leave some beauties off the table as well and are thus ultimately depressing and unsatisfying.
“Andrei Rublev” is one of the most true fictionalized biopics I have ever seen not because it depicts the life of the iconographer so accurately but because I see my heart’s aching and soaring in every frame.
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