Andrei Tarkovsky

I have a few friends who are competitive athletes, specifically foot races. Not just marathons or 10k’s, but the kinds of races that involve obstacle courses through the woods at 4 a.m. or running across the south Utah desert in August or doing two races in one day. In other words, the longer and more difficult for them, the better. The enjoyment comes from the difficulty.

Personally, I think the only good race is the one to the front of the line at the buffet, but I do know movie fans who are the cinematic equivalent of long distance racers. The longer a film is, the more complex and dense it is, the better. These are the people who love all ten hours of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s modern take on the Ten Commandments, The Decalogue or seek out the deeply weird and experimental films of Guy Maddin. These are the people who watch David Lynch movies for fun. 

One filmmaker whose work appeals to that kind of viewer is Andrei Tarkovsky, the great Russian director who managed to make a series of seven challenging, sometimes subversive, always startlingly beautiful films primarily under the regime of Communism. Tarkovsky’s films are slow and meditative, with impressively long tracking shots of simple things like water running over a floor or wind blowing tall wild grass. The films are primarily in Russian, although his second to last film, Nostalgia, is also in Italian, so if you’re a lover of subtitles, he’s your guy. But more than the length or the language, Tarkovsky’s films are challenging because they are philosophically, intellectually, and artistically dense. They address abstract ideas like free will, the complex consequences of choice, and the nature of personal sacrifice and loss. Every shot of every film is carefully, expertly sculpted and composed while every line and every action is simultaneously purposeful and mysterious.

If you feel like taking on the long distance race that is a Tarkovsky film, here are three to start your training:

1986’s The Sacrifice was Tarkovsky’s final film. It tells the story of Alexander, a former actor who has retreated to the country to live as a writer with his family. Just as the family is sitting down for dinner, fighter jets fly over the house and the news tells them that war has begun and nuclear holocaust is imminent. Alexander bargains with God to stop the impending tragedy and offers to sacrifice everything he has, including his beloved family and grandson, if war can be averted. His friend tells him about a witch who lives in town and that if Alexander sleeps with her, she can make his wish come true. 

1979’s Stalker is a dystopian science fiction film that’s still influencing other films today, including the recent Natalie Portman picture, Annihilation. In the world of the film, there is a place called The Zone where the laws of nature don’t apply and where, reportedly, there is a room that, if you can get to it, will grant you what your heart secretly most desires. The Stalker of the title is the man a small group hires to get them safely through the Zone to the room. Questions about desire, the nature of the human heart, and free will abound.

 If you really want a filmic endurance race, I recommend 1966’s Andrei Rublev, the kaleidoscopic, dream-like bio-pic of a 15^th century Russian icon painter. Mostly in black and white but sometimes in eye-blistering color, it is episodic, quiet, and strange. Even though it is based in actual history, it feels like spending a few hours in an alien world. The final section of the film, the bell-casting sequence and then a montage of Rublev’s actual icons, is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. 

So if you are in the mood to stretch yourself cinematically and want to watch films that are beautiful, weird, maddening, and compelling, the films of Andrei Tarkovsky are the race for you.