P2 - Honours - Andrei Tarkovsky

Halfway through the video the voice-over asks the question that has to be mentioned when discussing Tarkovsky's work: What do his movies mean? Tarkovsky believed that art couldn’t be explained from a purely intellectual perspective, so it’s not right to analyze it from a purely intellectual perspective. The thing about the perception of Tarkovsky’s films is that people think they’re difficult to understand and try to decide what everything means, but Tarkovsky’s films are mostly assembled through intuition. The notion of order in life is an abstract one and this is reflected in his cinematic streams of consciousness. His films don’t come with pre-packaged deductions, in there lies a truth, but one that must remain unknown to audience and artists alike.
‘Do you really think that mankind can develop a universal concept, a model, so to speak of Absolute Law, of Absolute Truth??’ – The Sacrifice
Contrary to popular believe Tarkovsky avoided symbolism in his work. Using a symbol in a film means that you’ve created a definite meaning. But art should be left to interpretation. Tarkovsky’s aim was to have the audience discover meaning for themselves and when the methods of a director remain a mystery to the audience, they’re inclined to find significance in that reality. We think further on that which we don’t understand. Regardless of the explanation of The Zone in Stalker or the Ocean in Solaris, it’s the ambiguity in moments like this that allow the audience to develop their own meanings based on their own perceptions. So the elements of Tarkovsky films that appear to carry some grandiose suggestions aren’t symbolic, they’re purely atmospheric.
There is a way Tarkovsky brings the real world into the film to garner an immediate emotional response from the viewer. We’ve been taught to search for answers but sometimes a scene is what it is. The question is not why does something happen, but what does it mean to the character? Tarkovsky is not asking us the find a definite answer in his work, he asks that we embrace the emotions that the subject feels. Rain does not mean anything, but it might to the character.
Tarkovsky tells his story by having the emotions of cinema manifest itself to us directly. He did this by building character through action. Without a word spoken, what makes us understand helplessness better than a woman sitting on a well, watching her livelihood burn in front of her eyes.
Once it’s understood that Tarkovsky in cinema is instinctive rather than logical, who’s events simply show us what resonates with the characters, his techniques become much clearer. In the words of David Lynch: ‘I don’t know why people expect art to make sense, when they accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense’.

“Before passing into general use, however, discoveries of methods and means have to come about as the natural and only way for an artist, using his own language, to communicate as fully as possible his own perception of the world. The artist never looks for methods as such, for the sake of aesthetics; he is forced, painfully, to devise them as a means of imparting faithfully his—author’s—view of reality. The engineer invents machines, guided by people’s daily needs—he wants to make labour, and thus life, easier for them. However, not by bread alone... The artist could be said to extend his range in order to further communication, to enable people to understand one another on the highest intellectual, emotional, psychological and philosophical level. Thus the artist’s efforts, too, are directed towards making life better, more perfect, making it easier for people to understand one another. Not that an artist is necessarily simple and clear in his account of himself or in his reflections on life—these can indeed be hard to understand. But communication always demands exertion. Without it, indeed without passionate commitment, it is actually not possible for one person to understand another.” (From Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema, pages 102 and 103)

“What matters to me is that the feeling excited by my flIms should be universal. An artistic image is capable of arousing identical feelings in viewers, while the thoughts that come later may be very different. If you start to search for a meaning during the film you will miss everything that happens. The ideal viewer is someone who watches a film like a traveler watching the country he is passing through: because the effect of an
artistic image is an extra-mental type of communication. There are some artists who attach symbolic meaning to their images, but that is not possible for me. Zen poets have a good way of dealing with this: they work to eliminate any possibility of interpretation, and in the process a parallel arises between the real world and what the artist creates in his work. What then is the purpose of this activity? It seems to me that the purpose of art is to prepare the human soul for the perception of good. The soul opens up under the influence of an artistic image, and it is for this reason that we say it helps us to communicate—but it is communication in the highest sense of the word. I could not imagine a work of art that would prompt a person to do something bad.” (Andrei Tarkovsky’s response to a question about the primacy of emotional response to his films. This is an excerpt from an interview conducted by Ian Christie, 1981)

“Time is a condition for the existence of our ‘I.’ It is like a kind of culture medium that is destroyed when it is no longer needed, once the links are severed between the individual personality and the conditions of existence. And the moment of death is also the death of individual time: the life of a human being becomes inaccessible to the feelings of those remaining alive, dead for those around him. Time is necessary to man, so that, made flesh, he may be able to realize himself as a personality. But I am not thinking of linear time, meaning the possibility of getting something done, performing some action. The action is a result, and what I am considering is the cause which makes man incarnate in a moral sense. History is still not Time; nor is evolution. They are both consequences. Time is a state: the flame in which there lives the salamander of the human soul. Time and memory merge into each other; they are like the two sides of a medal. It is obvious enough that without Time, memory cannot exist either. But memory is something so complex that no list of all its attributes could define the totality of the impressions through which it affects us. Memory is a spiritual concept! For instance, if somebody tells us of his impressions of childhood, we can say with certainty that we shall have enough material in our hands to form a complete picture of that person. Bereft of memory, a person becomes the prisoner of an illusory existence; falling out of time he is unable to seize his own link with the outside world—in other words he is doomed to madness. As a moral being, man is endowed with memory which sows in him a sense of dissatisfaction. It makes us vulnerable, subject to pain.” (From Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema, pages 57 and 58)

“Never try to convey your idea to the audience–it is a thankless and senseless task. Show them life, and they’ll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it.” (From Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema, page 152)

“Art embodied an ideal; it was an example of perfect balance between moral and material principles, a demonstration of the fact that such a balance is not a myth existing only in the realm of ideology, but something that can be realized within the dimensions of the phenomenal world. Art expressed man’s need of harmony and his readiness to do battle with himself, within his own personality, for the sake of achieving the equilibrium for which he longed. Given that art expresses the ideal and man’s aspiration towards the infinite, it cannot be harnessed to consumerist aims without being violated in its very nature... The ideal is concerned with things that do not exist in our own world as we know it, but it reminds us of what ought to exist on the spiritual plane. The work of art is a form given to this ideal which in the future must belong to mankind, but for the moment has to be for the few, and in the first instance for the genius who made it possible for human awareness, with all its limitations, to be in contact with the ideal incarnate in his art. In that sense art is by nature aristocratic; it differentiates between two levels of potential, thus ensuring progress from the lower to the higher as the personality moves towards spiritual perfection.” (From Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema, page 238)

Notes on Andrei Tarkovsky - Poetic Harmony

Quotes of interviews and writings

“What matters to me is that the feeling excited by my flIms should be universal. An artistic image is capable of arousing identical feelings in viewers, while the thoughts that come later may be very different. If you start to search for a meaning during the film you will miss everything that happens. The ideal viewer is someone who watches a film like a traveler watching the country he is passing through: because the effect of an
artistic image is an extra-mental type of communication. There are some artists who attach symbolic meaning to their images, but that is not possible for me. Zen poets have a good way of dealing with this: they work to eliminate any possibility of interpretation, and in the process a parallel arises between the real world and what the artist creates in his work. What then is the purpose of this activity? It seems to me that the purpose of art is to prepare the human soul for the perception of good. The soul opens up under the influence of an artistic image, and it is for this reason that we say it helps us to communicate—but it is communication in the highest sense of the word. I could not imagine a work of art that would prompt a person to do something bad.” (Andrei Tarkovsky’s response to a question about the primacy of emotional response to his films. This is an excerpt from an interview conducted by Ian Christie, 1981)

"What do his movies mean? Tarkovsky believed that art couldn’t be explained from a purely intellectual perspective, so it’s not right to analyze it from a purely intellectual perspective. The thing about the perception of Tarkovsky’s films is that people think they’re difficult to understand and try to decide what everything means, but Tarkovsky’s films are mostly assembled through intuition. The notion of order in life is an abstract one and this is reflected in his cinematic streams of consciousness. His films don’t come with pre-packaged deductions, in there lies a truth, but one that must remain unknown to audience and artists alike.
‘Do you really think that mankind can develop a universal concept, a model, so to speak of Absolute Law, of Absolute Truth??’ – The Sacrifice
Contrary to popular believe Tarkovsky avoided symbolism in his work. Using a symbol in a film means that you’ve created a definite meaning. But art should be left to interpretation. Tarkovsky’s aim was to have the audience discover meaning for themselves and when the methods of a director remain a mystery to the audience, they’re inclined to find significance in that reality. We think further on that which we don’t understand. Regardless of the explanation of The Zone in Stalker or the Ocean in Solaris, it’s the ambiguity in moments like this that allow the audience to develop their own meanings based on their own perceptions. So the elements of Tarkovsky films that appear to carry some grandiose suggestions aren’t symbolic, they’re purely atmospheric.
There is a way Tarkovsky brings the real world into the film to garner an immediate emotional response from the viewer. We’ve been taught to search for answers but sometimes a scene is what it is. The question is not why does something happen, but what does it mean to the character? Tarkovsky is not asking us the find a definite answer in his work, he asks that we embrace the emotions that the subject feels. Rain does not mean anything, but it might to the character."

Most important findings

Cinema Cartography discusses all 7 of Tarkovsky's film. From my take on it, he understands that it's impossible to analyse and look for a defenite meaning in the films. He simply walks us through Tarkovsky's desisions and motives as a filmmaker but tries to leave his audience, like Tarkovsky himself, to find meaning behind the motives.

Sculpting in Time collects the theoretical writings of Russian filmmaker Andrey Tarkovsky. Tarkovsky expresses his views on the nature of art and cinema, and provides some insight as to his films.

In his introduction, Tarkovsky states that he has written the material in the volume over a period of years, and was initially inspired to write because of letters from fans. Some fans expressed puzzlement or curiosity as to what Tarkovsky had tried to attempt to communicate in his films. Underwhelmed by existing critical literature, Tarkovsky embarked on his own attempt to define such things as art and cinema, and to comment on his films.

Cinema, as its core, is the capture of reality over time. At its heart is careful observation of reality. The artist brings his own unique reality and worldview to a film, creating a prism through which objective reality is filtered. The artist must depend on his own experience, feelings, and thoughts in crafting a cinematic work.

A cinematic masterpiece (and Tarkovsky doubts that cinema, in its relative infancy, has even had a master yet that future generations will look to) is characterized by its organic wholeness, with every element of the picture (sound, acting, lighting, shot selection, etc.) working in perfect harmony.

The basic element of cinema is rhythm. The director brings his own rhythm to a picture, as do the subjects photographed as well as the editing imposed upon the footage.

Reality should always be the first virtue of the filmmaker. Artifice, in the form of theatrical acting, overly symbolic or literary intention, or gimmicky effects, should be avoided at all times. The "mise-en-scene," the design of a scene to be shot, should be free to be realistic rather than manufactured. Similarly, film acting should strive for in-the-moment psychological truth, and should never borrow from theatrical acting.

The artist battles against several factors which would seek to dilute his artistic vision. These include the hardships of production, the interference of creative crew members, and the pressures of being commercial. Commercial cinema and artistic cinema can never be the same, and the true artist eschews the easy money of commercial success in order to stay faithful to his uncompromised vision. The artist should not cater to the perceived expectations of his audience; however, he does have a moral responsibility to those audience members who respond to his work. This moral responsibility takes the form of the sharing of personal experience, and a faithfulness to self no matter what.

Art, in a broad sense, is spirituality. It seeks to awaken the spirituality of the spectator, to uplift them, to make them feel more alive. The modern world, with its material comforts and technology, is in desperate need of the spiritual awakening promised by great art.

source: http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-sculpting-in-time/#gsc.tab=0

Time and the Film Aesthetics of Andrei Tarkovsky

https://www.openculture.com/2013/08/a-poet-in-cinema-andrei-tarkovsky.html

https://steemit.com/philosophy/@marinauzelac/film-essay-stalker-andrei-tarkovsky

de meeste mensen zochten naar een betekenis in de films van tarkovsky maar kwamen tot een conclusie dat die altijd persoonlijk is en dat een absolute betekenis niet bestaat. heeft te maken met controle, hij geeft eigenlijk een groot deel van controle aan zijn publiek

https://steemit.com/films/@marinauzelac/film-class-3-andrei-tarkovsky-zerkalo-1975-sculpting-in-time

voyage in time 26:48

Cinema

The control directors have over their work but how they also hand some of it over to its viewers. I want do something with Tarkovsky’s view upon cinema.

“What is a take? Between the words “Action” and “Stop,” what is it? It’s the fixing of reality, the fixing of time. It’s a way of preserving time so that we can later roll and unroll it as we please. No other art form can fix time as cinema does. And so, what is a film? It’s a mosaic made of time.” - Tarkovsky

Tarkovsky, how he makes art. He avoids symbolism in is work. Using a symbol in a film means that you’ve created a defined meaning, but art should be left to interpretation. Tarkovsky’s aim was to have the audience discover meaning for themselves and when the methods of a director remain a mystery to the audience, they are inclined to find significance in that reality. We think further on that which we don’t understand.

There is a way Tarkovsky brings a real world into the film to gather an immediate emotional response from the viewer. We’ve been taught to search for answers but sometimes a scene is what it is. The question is not why does something happen but what does it mean to the character? Tarkovsky is not asking us to find a definite answer in his work, he asks that we embrace the emotions that the subject feels. Rain doesn’t mean anything but it might of a character.

muziek gebruikt in video info:
https://ask.metafilter.com/276471/What-is-this-song

Cinema

The control directors have over their work but how they also hand some of it over to its viewers. I want do something with Tarkovsky’s view upon cinema.

“What is a take? Between the words “Action” and “Stop,” what is it? It’s the fixing of reality, the fixing of time. It’s a way of preserving time so that we can later roll and unroll it as we please. No other art form can fix time as cinema does. And so, what is a film? It’s a mosaic made of time.” - Tarkovsky

Tarkovsky, how he makes art. He avoids symbolism in is work. Using a symbol in a film means that you’ve created a defined meaning, but art should be left to interpretation. Tarkovsky’s aim was to have the audience discover meaning for themselves and when the methods of a director remain a mystery to the audience, they are inclined to find significance in that reality. We think further on that which we don’t understand.

There is a way Tarkovsky brings a real world into the film to gather an immediate emotional response from the viewer. We’ve been taught to search for answers but sometimes a scene is what it is. The question is not why does something happen but what does it mean to the character? Tarkovsky is not asking us to find a definite answer in his work, he asks that we embrace the emotions that the subject feels. Rain doesn’t mean anything but it might of a character.

Voyage in Time (1983)

This documentary mostly consists out of a conversation between Andrei Tarkovsky and script writer Tonino Guerra. Guerra asks questions that have been sent by fans of Tarkovsky and they share some interesting thoughts and memories in various conversations.

The film starts with Guerra telling a poem he wrote last night to Tarkovsky:

I don’t know what a house is
Is it a coat?
Or an umbrella if it rains?
I have filled it with bottles,
rags,
wooden ducks,
curtains,
fans
It seems I never want to leave it
Then it’s a cage
That imprisons whoever passes by
Even a bird like you, dirty with snow
But what we told each other
Is so light that it cannot be kept in

26:48

If you had to talk to some young directors, what would your main recommendations be?
“Nowadays everyone makes movies, everyone thinks they can make movies, you see? It’s not hard to learn how to glue the film, how to work a camera… But the advice I can give to beginners is not to separate their work, their movie, their film from the life they live. Not the make a difference between the movie and their own life. Because a director is like any other artist: a painter, poet, musician. And since it is required from him to contribute his own self, it is strange to see directors that take their work as a special position, given to them by destiny, and simply exploit their profession. That is, they live in one way, but make movies about something else. And I’d like to tell directors, especially young ones, that they should be morally responsible for what they do while making their films. Do you understand? It is the most important of all.
Secondly, they should be prepared for the thought that cinema is a very difficult and serious art. It requires sacrificing of yourself. You should belong to it, it shouldn’t belong to you. Cinema uses your life, not vice versa. Therefore I think that this is the most important… You should sacrifice yourself to the art. This is what I’ve been thinking lately about my profession.

Voyage in Time notes

Random notes and thoughts

“What is a take? Between the words “Action” and “Stop,” what is it? It’s the fixing of reality, the fixing of time. It’s a way of preserving time so that we can later roll and unroll it as we please. No other art form can fix time as cinema does. And so, what is a film? It’s a mosaic made of time.”

Andrei Tarkovsky was a Soviet Russian filmmaker, theatre director, writer, and film theorist. He is widely considered one of the greatest and most influential directors in the history of Russian and world cinema. His films explored spiritual and metaphysical themes, and are noted for their slow pacing and long takes, dreamlike visual imagery, and preoccupation with nature and memory.

When talking about Tarkovsky one cannot avoid asking the question as to what his movies mean? Tarkovsky believed that art couldn’t be explained from a purely intellectual perspective, so it’s not right to analyze it from a purely intellectual perspective. The thing about the perception of Tarkovsky’s films is that people think they’re difficult to understand and try to decide what everything means, but Tarkovsky’s films are mostly assembled through intuition. The notion of order in life is an abstract one and this is reflected in his cinematic streams of consciousness. His films don’t come with pre-packaged deductions, in there lies a truth, but one that must remain unknown to audience and artists alike.

In regard to substance and control, I found that Tarkovsky as a director tries to control the audience in a very different way than other filmmakers of his time. Tarkovsky avoided symbolism in his work. Using a symbol in a film means that you’ve created a definite meaning. But art should be left to interpretation. Tarkovsky’s aim was to have the audience discover meaning for themselves and when the methods of a director remain a mystery to the audience, they’re inclined to find significance in that reality. We think further on that which we don’t understand.

“What matters to me is that the feeling excited by my films should be universal. An artistic image is capable of arousing identical feelings in viewers, while the thoughts that come later may be very different. If you start to search for a meaning during the film you will miss everything that happens.”