Title: Andrei
Author: Nicky
Email:obsessive24[at]gmail[dot]com
Author’s note: a tribute to the late and great Russian director, Andrei Tarkovsky.
Andrei constructs his immortality from the same materials as everybody else: the same budgets, the same censors, the same meagre lengths of film. Rough monochrome grains shifting into colour, devoid of the usual Hollywood polish. His dialogues are few and obscure. The stories are veiled, and make little sense, leaving out crucial information. Nevertheless he says the People will understand, and he says it with such conviction. But you are always left behind, wondering with no small amount of shame whether he has placed too much trust in you, trust that you do not deserve.
His life is the life of an ordinary man. No more misery than others, which is saying very little because misery Exists, it’s the boundless stretch of empty space between finite things. Misery is money, or the lack of it, a man at forty-two with a debt of eleven thousand roubles and no way of paying it back; a man at forty-two, who never had a house of his own. Misery is Larisa clutching the baby to her breast, darting a glance at him when she thinks he’s not looking, her eyes scintillating like those of an emaciated fox. Now and again he lets his despondency crash over him, in waves, the way it does to everyone else. He understands that it is his own misfortune, having chosen cinema as his mistress, the fickle harlot, the layers of self-satisfied claptrap and the endless grapple for another pretty penny. He sees this prostitute in gold and rouge, trussed-up and performed; but he also sees an otherside to her, pristine with promise, like blank canvas. He knows he can tear away her ruined outer skin, the glitter of ersatz jewels, and reveal something more brilliant behind. In his mind she is a young girl with thin shoulders, pale hair rippling in the wind.
He grows bitter, sometimes. His anger is justified, yet it doesn’t set him apart from the rest of them. Oppression is the Soviet artist’s middle name, and he is not the only one - nor the last - to be taken to the edge of Russia’s boundaries and told to step over the line. His need for this battered piece of land runs through his blood, and it feels the same as a lack of oxygen. Sometimes he cries out for it in his sleep, like the other castaways. His nostalgia is carcinogenic, and it consumes from the inside, but in that respect he is no different from the others. His terrors are in his mind, like theirs.
He sings, though, and his songs are moving images. The pictures themselves bear auguries, and they are released into the dark, into the deep blackness, as you sit in quiet reverence. The projected colours shimmer over your skin, like liquid poetry. They cast stars into your eyes. Here, then, are his truths: vast snowy grounds, trees stretching their stark limbs to the sky, a puddle of spilt milk, women with eyes like burning coal. The meanings are many: you choose your own, or perhaps they choose you, on the strength and voracity of your desires.
He has his visions, of angels and lesser things, of suffering, and eventually of triumph. He sinks into his despair but time after time he breaks its whirlpool surface, gasping in great gulps of air. He has his loneliness, which he examines and drapes over himself like a mantle. He knows the taste of silence and the power it brings. He has his dreams, in them this flesh shell dissolves and he flies free. His words carry weight across the barren lands of your own solitude, and there upon the screen are his inaudible melodies, measured strokes, a gentle harmony, fluid portraits of landscapes and immobile human shapes. As you watch the reel turn you can feel him rising from the earth beneath your feet, his vapour body blurred around the edges. You can feel him standing beside you, his hands clasped as though in prayer.
Andrei, you will say to him, your world is grand and cryptic, and the beauty passes through me, like water. But I can’t understand what it means.
Tell me.
He will look toward you, his dark eyes shining, with a smile bearing echoes from the dead. He will say nothing, and you will turn back to the screen, to the sight of a man setting himself ablaze before a frozen crowd. Then, like a silver bullet to your heart, like lightning, you will understand that this is his love, his sorrow, his Russia, his Eternity. He has given all of it to you, and has asked for nothing in return.
The End
[ f e e d b a c k ]
Sources
Tarkovsky, A., Time Within Time: The Diaries, 1970-1986 (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1989)
An Interview with Andrei Tarkovsky, Andrei Rublev (DVD: Criterion Collection Studios, 1966)
An Interview with Natalya Bondarchuk, Solaris (DVD: Criterion Collection Studios, 1972)