ABSTRACT This paper explores Tarkovsky’s use of film both to create powerful moods and to provoke an awareness of mood itself. It introduces an understanding of mood as interpreted by Heidegger and uses this as the basis for analyzing scenes from Tarkovsky’s films, predominantly the last four. The focus is on the moods of places and spaces and on the moods resulting from the resonance of the environment with the characters. The analysis of scenes draws out the ways in which Tarkovsky uses elements such as light, material texture, architectural archetypes and space. Reference is also made to the connection between mood and Tarkovsky’s central themes of belonging and exile, memory and cultural displacement, and the yearning for spiritual connection where mood underpins authentic ‘dwelling’.
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IMAGES fig.1 Tarktovsky, A.(director) Mirror Artificial eye 1974 fig.2 Ibid fig.3 Tarktovsky, A.(director) Solaris Artificial eye 1972 fig.4 Ibid fig.5 Tarktovsky, A.(director) Mirror Artificial eye 1974 fig.6 Ibid fig.7 Ibid fig.8 Ibid fig.9 Ibid fig.10 Ibid fig.11 Ibid fig.12 Ibid fig.13 Ibid fig.14 Ibid fig.15 Ibid fig.16 Ibid fig.17 Tarktovsky, A. (director) The Sacrifice Artificial eye 1986 fig.18 Ibid fig.19 Ibid fig.20 Ibid fig.21 Ibid fig.22 Ibid fig.23 Ibid fig.24 Ibid fig.25 Ibid fig.26 Ibid fig.27 Ibid fig.28 Tarktovsky, A. (director) Stalker Artificial eye 1979 fig.29 Ibid fig.30 Ibid fig.31 Tarktovsky, A.(director) Mirror Artificial eye 1974 fig.32 Ibid fig.33 Ibid fig.34 Ibid fig.35 Ibid
fig.36 Ibid fig.37 Ibid fig.38 Ibid fig.39 Ibid fig.40 Ibid fig.41 Ibid fig.42 Ibid fig.43 Tarktovsky, A. (director) Nostalgia Artificial eye 1983 fig.44 Ibid fig.45 Ibid fig.46 Ibid fig.47 Ibid fig.48 Ibid fig.49 Ibid fig.50 Tarktovsky, A. (director) Ivan’ Childhood Artificial eye 1962 fig.51 Tarktovsky, A. (director) Nostalgia Artificial eye 1983 fig.52 Ibid fig.53 King, P. ‘Memory and Exile: Time and Place in Tarkovsky’s Mirror’ Housing, Theory & Society Vol. 25, Issue 1, March 2008, pp 66-78 fig.54 Tarktovsky, A. (director) Nostalgia Artificial eye 1983 fig.55 Ibid fig.56 Ibid fig.57 Ibid fig.58 King, P. ‘Memory and Exile: Time and Place in Tarkovsky’s Mirror’ Housing, Theory & Society Vol. 25, Issue 1, March 2008, pp 66-78 fig.59 Tarktovsky, A. (director) Nostalgia Artificial eye 1983 fig.60 Ibid fig.61 Tarktovsky, A. (director) Stalker Artificial eye 1979 fig.62 Ibid fig.63 Ibid fig.64 Ibid fig.65 Ibid fig.66 Tarktovsky, A. (director) Nostalgia Artificial eye 1983 fig.67 Ibid fig.68 Ibid fig.69 Caspar David Friedrich’s painting, Eldena, Bird, R. Elements of Cinema. Reaktion, London, 2008 fig.70 Tarktovsky, A. (director) Nostalgia Artificial eye 1983 2
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 4 CHAPTER ONE
- Mirror and Solaris : The Dacha : Wholeness 12
CHAPTER TWO
- The Sacrifice : The Home: Disharmony 22
CHATPER THREE - Stalker
- The Home - Claustrophobia 32
CHAPTER FOUR - Mirror: The CHAPTER FIVE
Apartment: Dislocation 38
- Nostalgia : The Lobby Scene : Alienation 44
CHAPTER SIX - Nostalgia
: Church Scene : The Secular and The Religious 52
CHAPTER SEVEN - Stalker
: Final Scene : Faith 64
CHAPTER EIGHT - Nostalgia
: The Final Scene : Ambiguity 70
CONCLUSION 76
BIBLIOGRAPHY 78 FILMOGRAPHY 80 3
INTRODUCTION
This paper will be investigating Tarkovsky’s films for their creation of and focus on mood, as that takes us to the heart of his vision of an authentic way of being. It will identify key moods such as being-at-one, disharmony, dislocation, claustrophobia and faith as they are evoked by spaces and experienced by his characters. It will also explore the way that Tarkovsky presents the encounter between the mood of an individual and the mood of the physical space he provides for them. Such an encounter is central to the philosopher Martin Heidegger’s writing where he equates mood (Stimmung) with Being-attuned1, a deep form of being attuned with the world. This paper will, therefore, be setting Tarkovsky’s work in the context of Heidegger’s ideas.
The intention of this paper is also, through its investigation of Tarkovsky’s emphasis on mood, to add to an understanding of the experiential dimension of architecture. Architects and architectural writers such as Peter Zumthor and Julian Palasmaa have emphasised the need for good architecture to be atmospheric, to provide rich sensory environments. ‘Every touching experience of architecture is multi-sensory: qualities of space are measured equally by the eyes, ears nose, tongue, skin and muscles.’2 Peter Zumthor prizes ‘being 1 2
Martin Heidegger Being and Time Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 1962 p 172 Juhani Pallasmaa The Architecture of image : existential space in cinema Rakennustieto, Helsinki, 2001 p88 4
moved’ by architecture as an indicator of its quality and we understand this experience to be more than a fleeting emotion but rather something that affects his whole being. Randall Teal argues in his critique of ‘built drawings’ that ‘when the ‘truth’ of mood is effaced by the ‘correct’ of the instrumental, the complex interrelationship of real environments and real buildings are reduced to simplistic, two-dimensional, crudely detailed constructions’3.
The main focus of the paper will be on scenes from Tarkovsky’s final four films, such as the opening bedroom scene in Stalker. The scenes chosen involve architectural spaces, which relate particularly to home and church - spaces that present an intense possibility of authentic dwelling for the characters. The scenes also involve some specific powerful moods which relate to place. Tarkovsky’s use of architectural settings will be analysed and the way in which these settings may almost become characters in themselves. This will lead to a reflection on the impact architecture itself has on mood. The chosen scenes will be analysed to get an insight into the ways in which Tarkovsky draws on visual, tactile and kinaesthetic experience and also into the ways in which he uses the camera to create mood, and present the encounter of one mood with another.
3 Randal Teal ‘Dismantling the Built Drawing: Working with Mood in Architectural Design’ International Journal of Art & Design Education Volume 29, Issue 1, February 2010 p8 5
Andrei Tarkovsky attended the prestigious VGIK4 to study film from 1954 to 1960, which allowed him to experiment with film-making and to open his eyes to films from outside Russia. In addition, he was graduating during the most liberal period in Russia since the 1920s. Following the death of Stalin in 1952 and the denouncement of Stalinism by Nikita Khrushchev in 1956, the next few years brought in the period known as the ‘Thaw’; this included the loosening of the regime’s control over the Arts. Tarkovsky was skilled at getting his work released and perhaps the often non-linear and stripped down narrative of his work, its ambiguous poeticism, made it possible for the censors not to recognize the potentially anti-Soviet elements; they could interpret his films in a positive Russian light. Because he was able to release Ivan’s childhood in 1962, with high acclaim, before the end of ‘the Thaw’, Tarkovsky was accepted by the bureaucratic institutions such as Goskino and Mosfilm. He was able to release the films he wanted even though it involved battling against their bureaucracy. Having said this, Andrei Rublev’s release was greeted with great controversy. The film was then banned for five years but afterwards released again. Tarkovsky often completely reworked his script while filming, once he had got it passed by the relevant authorities.
Despite these conflicts, Tarkovsky had an interesting and loving relationship with his homeland. But he once said ‘neither dead nor alive do I want to return to the country that caused me and those close to me so 4
Vsesoyuzny gosudarstvenny institut kinematografii: the All-Union State Cinema Institute 6
much pain, suffering and humiliation. I am Russian, but I do not consider myself a Soviet.’5 He was, in fact, made a ‘non-person’ after deciding to stay in the West in 1984. He had an ambivalent relationship with the West which he saw as lacking in spirituality and too materialistic. As an Orthodox Christian he saw Russia as his spiritual home6 and recognized a tendency for Eastern European society to be more spiritually rich7. Johnson and Petrie note that ‘his call for spiritual and religious rebirth and his vision of a technological apocalypse have come to be seen as both timely and prophetic.’8 It is this spirituality and call for a more poetic portrayal of life that can be seen as a reaction towards both the Soviet climate and the West. His emphasis on spirituality can be seen to underlie his work’s invitation to ‘feel’ what a film is about rather than insist on a logical intellectual understanding of narrative and plot. For Tarkovsky, it does not even matter if we do not ‘understand’ what is happening as long as we absorb his ideas as presented through the different moods and atmospheres he creates.
It is important to recognize that this paper understands mood in his films to be different to the understanding of mood as the wholly subjective and personal experience belonging to a more psychological perspective. Mood in Tarkovsky’s work relates to a deep ontological mode of human being. It ‘appears as a result of the 5 6 7 8
Vita Johnson and Graham Petrie The Films Of Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual Fugue Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1994 p3 John Gianvito, ed. Andrei Tarkovsky Interviews University Press of Mississippi 2006 p175 Gianvito p151 Johnson and Petrie p4 7
ability to concentrate on what’s most important.’9 It can, therefore, be best understood in the context of Heidegger’s ideas in Being and Time.
For Heidegger, mood (Stimmung) is precognitive10 and a primordial kind of Being11. ‘It comes neither from ‘outside’ nor from ‘inside’, but arises out of Being-in-the-world, as a way of such Being.’12 This emphasis on mood arising from a person’s deep involvement in the world has a significant bearing on Tarkovsky’s work. One of his major themes is that of the person in relation to place. This may be a particular place such as the home, a specific location, a culture a character finds himself in or a spiritual milieu. It may relate to an experience of exile or ‘feeling at home’. It is also important to note Heidegger’s rejection of Cartesian dualism with its separation of mind and body, subject and object, internal and external, which informs scientific and technological pragmatism. Tarkovsky’s reaction against this has already been mentioned. He is not alone in his view of a negative impact of the modern concern with technological development and scientific rationalism to the detriment of our sense of self and ability to live in faith with the world around us.
Tarkovsky sees the need for a precognitive and a primordial mode of being primarily as a spiritual issue 9
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Robert Bird Elements of Cinema. Reaktion, London, 2008 p211 Heidegger Being and Time p175 Heidegger Being and Time p175 Heidegger Being and Time p176 8
and one at the heart of a world in crisis. For the philosopher Heidegger, the sense of feeling out of place in the world is part of our human condition. However, through our modern emphasis on the quantitative and measuring aspects of scientific rationalism we have managed to increase our sense of dislocation and unsettledness. Our emphatic pragmatism has eroded a poetic response to the world and thereby our appropriate and wholesome relationship with the world around us. In contrast to scientific rationalism, Heidegger places the experience of ‘mood’ as integral to our Being-in-the world.
For Heidegger our interaction with the world is always affecting us. We are never free of moods and when we master a mood it is always through a counter mood.13 He also writes of moods ‘assailing’ us,14 indicating the connection between the external environment and the internal experience. Throughout his writings Tarkovsky emphasized the importance of pre-cognitive and sensory experience in his approach to film making and this emphasis underlies his welcoming appreciation of an open childlike reception of his work.
Tarkovsky makes use of the movement of the camera, to paradoxically slow us down and focus our attention on the sensory world it encounters. Film can be used in this way particularly to heighten our sensory awareness, our tactile awareness of textures and forms. It can also sharpen our kinaesthetic sense 13 14
Heidegger Being and Time p175 Heidegger Being and Time p176 9
of space by the way the camera itself moves through space but also watches the movement of the characters it films. With mood as the outcome of the relationship of a person with the world, the camera can mediate and make the connection between subjective and objective. Since film can make this connection between the interior experience and the external place so well through the focus of the camera it is particularly suited to Tarkovsky both to create mood and also to provoke an awareness of mood itself.
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CHAPTER ONE
Mirror and Solaris : The Dacha : Wholeness One of the architectural forms that is most evocative of mood and that constantly appears in Tarkovsky’s films is the Russian dacha (fig.2). Tarkovsky draws on the rich connotations of the house as a universal archetype. The dacha resonates with many of the qualities and meanings of home, one of Tarkovsky’s key concerns, linked as it is to a sense of identity. In the film Nostalgia15 the dacha is a recurring and haunting motif. The scenes focusing on the dacha, the traditional rural Russian home, project a positive atmosphere and refer specifically to the childhood home, the idyll.
The films Solaris16 and Mirror17 begin and end ‘in the space of an idyllic home’.18 The mood he creates is one 15 Nostalgia :1983 : Gortchakov, a Russian poet, is traveling in Italy to research the life of an 18th century Russian composer. He is accompanied by an Italian translator, Eugenia. Along the way he meets a well known local madman and gets drawn in to spend time with him. The film is interspersed with flashbacks and dreams of his homeland and his wife. 16 Solaris :1972 : Most of the film takes place on a space station orbiting the planet Solaris. Its scientific mission begins to fail because the scientists are overwhelmed by a power coming from the ocean on Solaris which makes them materialize whatever most preoccupies them. Kris, a psychologist, is sent to investigate but he too succumbs to this power and materializes his dead wife. The film explores faith, memory and love. 17 Mirror :1974 : The film is autobiographical. The narrator, however, does not appear. It covers the narrator’s childhood in the countryside and this is juxtaposed with scenes expressing anxiety about his parents’ separation and with scenes involving his son, Ignat. The film is made up of flashbacks, dream scenes and newsreel footage 18
Bird p65 12
fig.1
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fig.2
of wholeness, where an authentic mode of being is possible. The scene shows the impact of architectural form, of location and the relationship between an architectural form and its location. It also shows aspects of the use of lighting, for itself and for the way it draws out material textures.
Mood is evoked partly by the dacha’s coherent structure which can be read easily from the outside. The dacha scenes in Mirror, Solaris (fig. 3, fig. 4) and Nostalgia present a welcoming and protective building. The form and material of the dacha in Mirror, the low sloping roofs and the heavy wood, convey a mood of permanence, of being the firm base that will not easily disappear. In Nostalgia the dacha is always viewed from the outside, comfortably settled in the surrounding countryside. In both Mirror and Solaris the first view of the dacha follows scenes focused on the natural environment; the camera approaches the dacha through the green surroundings, then holds a view of it placed as part of that natural environment so that it evokes the nurturing forces of the earth and nature from which Tarkovsky understands humanity to have alienated itself. This is suggestive of Heidegger’s response to his own ‘hut’, the traditional Bavarian house in the countryside: ‘it was also a refuge against – but simultaneously with – the elements. Here Heidegger felt himself in immediate contact with natural forces. ….. the building intertwined with the landscape, as somehow honest….nobility in an intimate connection with the slopes.’19 For Heidegger, this puts us in touch with ‘the bluntness of existence’, a view Tarkovsky would surely have shared. For both Heidegger and 19
Adam Sharr, A. Heidegger’s Hut MIT, Cambridge, Mass, 2006 p65 14
fig.3
fig.4 15
Tarkovsky the relationship between this type of rural house and the surroundings is indicative of the dacha and the ‘hut’ as ‘dwellings’, places for an authentic way of being20. In Solaris the dacha (fig.4) connects with the richness of the natural world, an evocative memory of homeland, in contrast to the distancing world of science and the decaying space-station. The mood, therefore, associated with the dacha is one of authenticity and of open pre-cognitive experience itself.
One way that Tarkovsky makes this mood more specific when we go inside the dacha in Mirror is through his use of lighting, engendering simplicity, warmth and nurturing. Soft natural light from the late afternoon sun outside comes in from the windows to the dimly lit interior. It maintains the soft brown rich colour and the texture of the wood. It is worthwhile considering Tarkovsky’s creation of atmosphere with reference to Jun’ichiro Tanizaki’s In Praise Of Shadows. ‘But in the still dimmer light of the candlestand, as I gazed at the trays and bowls standing in the shadows cast by that flickering point of flame, I discovered in the gloss of this lacquerware a depth and richness like that of a still, dark pond, a beauty I had not before seen.’21
The walls of the dacha have a sheen which, just like that of Tanizaki’s lacquer, reflects the candle light 20 21
Martin Heidegger, Martin ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’ in Poetry, Language and Thought Harper & Row, New York, 1971 Jun’ichiro Tanizaki In Praise of Shadows Vintage, London, 2001 p13 16
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creating a dream world. Tarkovsky places glass containers where they pick up and reflect light in shadowy areas just as the gold on lacquer does. Tarkovsky carves small patches of light out of the darkness, creating shadows and the feeling of the whole interior as the ‘deep pond’. As King notes, ‘this is then a remembered idyll, the childhood paradise, in which there are few troubles and things need not be understood, only felt.’22 We are immersed in sensation. And the ‘pond’ becomes ‘a store of memory, a refuge for all our hopes and dreams, and a place to avoid our fears’, a place of ‘protected intimacy’.23
The low light levels of the interior in this scene make the view through the windows to the natural environment outside even stronger (fig. 13). The windows are not obscured by any curtains or hangings; we can see the interior of the dacha and the view through the windows at the same time so that the dacha and the natural world remain one. There is no tension between interior and exterior. The continuity between the house and the natural landscape, between interior and exterior is important as it expresses the attunement of the child with memory and with its world. The mood is one of wholeness.
The dacha in Mirror, contrasted with that in The Sacrifice, which will be discussed later, is a place of nurturing, where the messiness of life, eating, playing and animals, can take place; life itself is not 22 23
Peter King ‘Memory and Exile: Time and Place in Tarkovsky’s Mirror’ Housing, Theory & Society Vol. 25, Issue 1, March 2008, p74 King p76 18
fig.13
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constrained. The texture of life is presented and heightens our senses and awareness, our appreciation of the textures around us. Tarkovsky creates a juxtaposition of textures of the different substances when the two children are eating at the table: the smooth pale liquidity of the milk against the dark rough wood and the small crumbs (fig.14). These textures deepen the mood and a sensory presence, drawing us in closer to this world.
The small details of everyday objects are also important for building the atmosphere of the dacha and evoking the feeling of it as home. Both the dacha in Mirror and in Solaris have specific objects placed carefully, often on window ledges where the light will catch them and point them out, arranged with consideration of their formal relationship to each other as in a still life, contributing both to the reality of the place - the focus of the scene - as well as the possible significance of the objects themselves (fig. 15). Even if we do not know what these are, we can be affected by the tangible presence of things which have an importance for someone else and come across as containers of meaning and memory. They convey that person’s place in the world, that person being well situated with objects that extend them and contribute to the mood of their world. Here, in the child’s world, they particularly make the space a familiar setting with a sense of security and stillness. The atmosphere of the dacha itself, then, is an integral part of the child’s mood and it is this that we are drawn into and then experience as our mood. 20
fig.15
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CHAPTER TWO
The Sacrifice : The Home: Disharmony If the dacha house projected a sense of home in the beginning of Mirror and in the flashes of Gortchakov’s memories in Nostalgia, the dacha in The Sacrifice24 is the external element of a mood of disharmony. Tarkovsky’s use of the architectural features, such as windows and doors, which mediate between the interior and exterior is distinctive in this scene. The scene also draws on the connotations and spatial impact of domestic furniture.
The film begins and ends away from the house, under a newly planted tree, in the open air. At the beginning, Alexander, the main character is with his young son. At the end, the son is alone with the tree. In both scenes the mood is of authentic dwelling. The father and son are attuned to each other and the place. The mood of disharmony that dominates the scene that takes places in the house is a complete contrast.
24 The Sacrifice :1986 : The film focuses on Alexander, a retired actor and writer, who is celebrating his birthday with his family and a couple of friends. They hear that a world war has started. Alexander asks God to return everything to normal if he sacrifices everything which is important to him. 22
fig.17 23
Both the particular details of the house and the interactions between the characters, the way they move around the space, create the opposite to the ‘idyll’, the ‘dreadful disharmony’ referred to by Sean Martin25. The ‘sharply metallic colours of the interiors and the shiny glistening floors….create a coldness that echoes the characters’ relationships with each other’.26
The formal gestures and poses of the characters are one with Tarkovsky’s choice of colours and reflective floors. Moreover, the way he places characters in the space destroys any potential mood of the house as a place for gathering, for dwelling. The characters pace uneasily with a constant movement accompanied by the echoing sounds of their footsteps. When they come to rest, it is invariably by windows and thresholds, by the architectural features that pierce the walls of the house and take them closer to the outside while remaining at the edge. For example, Alexander and Victor stop for a moment to talk with Alexander looking out through the window while Victor sits leaning awkwardly into the window space away from the room (fig. 18). The daughter joins them with Alexander now seated as she places herself between them, framed by the window. The focus is away from the centre of the room. Similar groupings by windows or thresholds take place throughout the scene in the house. Alexander talks with Victor and his wife around a window (fig. 19), a little while later Alexander’s daughter sits looking at a book in the chair by a window 25 26
Sean Martin Andrei Tarkovsky Pocket Essentials, 2005 p187 Johnson and Petrie p180 24
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(fig. 20), and afterwards Otto and Victor engage in conversation by a different window (fig. 21). It is the frequency and repetition of this kind of grouping that contributes to the mood of fragmentation and disharmony.
Though they halt by windows there are no views to the outside. For example, when Alexander’s daughter sits by the window her focus drifts out of the window but we cannot follow her gaze. A lace curtain prevents our view. The interior emphasis of the house is exaggerated. It is as if the house is confining them. The film has been described as ‘exploring tension between outer and inner worlds’27. This tension is evoked most tangibly at the moment of the exchange through the window between Otto and Alexander about the Magi painting (fig. 22). Otto’s breath on the window brings a sudden shocking realization that the glass has been between them and they have managed to have this exchange with a membrane of the house separating them. As Bird puts it, ‘The home has windows, through which denizens peer out into the world, while strangers look in.’28 Otto suddenly becomes a stranger. This tension between inside and out can be seen to be the tension of ‘bad moods’, such as disharmony, which arise from ‘unreflecting devotion to the ‘world’.29 27 28 29
Martin p186 Bird p53 Heidegger Being and Time p175 26
fig. 22 27
A table, potentially a focal point for dwelling, stands in the middle of the room of the dacha surrounded by chairs ready for a family meal. However, it becomes an island around which the family members hover rather than gather. It ends up separating them from each other. The only time they sit around it is after the sound of the planes but they sit with their backs to the table away from each other. This expression of disharmony is exaggerated when the television is on and they turn from their backwards seating around the table to watch it. The television is placed in front of the impressive fireplace which takes up a central position in the room. But instead of the warm glow of a fire, the fireplace gives out the uncomfortable and eery flicker of the electric light of the television, marking out the formal poses of the family as they halt to watch it. This alludes to the spiritual emptiness created by an excessive attention to scientific and technological values. Is it intentional that Alexander starts the fire specifically by stacking up chairs on one of the tables in the house? The house is destroyed starting with that very object which is usually the epitome of home.
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The house is not only divided between the kitchen and the ‘living’ room but also between upstairs and downstairs. Alexander’s son never enters the main space of the ground floor of the house. We only see him in his bed and on the land outside.30 This division maintains the mood of disharmony. The only characters who connect with Alexander are his son and Maria31. If his son were to enter the downstairs living room an alternative mood of the affection and harmony between Alexander and his son would completely take over the mood which Tarkovsky has skilfully created downstairs. The mood permeating the house, then, is one of malaise and also of lost spiritual connection. It is this against which Alexander struggles. Heidegger clarifies that one mood can only be displaced by another32; but Alexander does not have the strength to displace the mood that is present. In the end he can only destroy the the mood by making his sacrifice, destroying the house, everything in it and the family life it purported to contain. It is replaced by the mood of the natural surroundings, Little Man and the tree, suggesting Alexander has sacrificed all for authentic being.
30 31 32
Bird p213 Johnson and Petrie p174 Heidegger Being and Time p175 30
fig. 27 31
CHAPTER THREE
Stalker: The Home: Claustrophobia The bedroom at the beginning of Stalker33 can be seen to be bound up, similarly, in the mood of the eponymous character’s tormented existence. Tarkovsky uses it to create the dominant mood of claustrophobia experienced by Stalker whenever is he not in the Zone, a place with the possibility of faith and authentic being. The scene is notable for its emphatic use of material texture and of the camera to focus our attention on this sensory dimension of the space.
The plot’s bareness was central to a conscious strategy to focus attention almost wholly on the image itself and avoid ‘entertaining or surprising the spectator’34. Tarkovsky stressed more than ever before or ever again the need for the film to affect viewers ‘emotionally and sensuously’35, to draw them in to the moods he creates.
33 Stalker :1979 : A guide, the Stalker, takes two people, a Writer and a Professor, into a forbidden waste ground, an area called the Zone. At the core of the Zone is the Room of Desires, where your deepest wish will come true. However, it requires faith to enter the Room. 34 35
Bird p211 Bird p211 32
The architecture of the Stalker’s dwelling, in contrast to the dacha in The Sacrifice, does most of the speaking while the characters remain mute and their physical actions are subdued.36 From the outset we are alerted to that fact that in terms of narrative Stalker is ‘reduced to the barest minimum’.37 As Tarkovsky muses in Sculpting In Time, ‘the most interesting characters are outwardly static, but inwardly charged with energy by an overriding passion’.38
The bedroom heightens our sense of him throughout the film as a man that is fighting in a desperate world for a forgotten spirituality. At the same time, it underpins the whole message of the film that there is hope, despite and through all the external torments and sadness of the world. How could the Stalker be inhabiting such an uninhabitable space without hope? This balance between inner and outer runs through the way Tarkovsky builds up mood, here the interface between Stalker and his environment, to involve us in his world.
When we are introduced to the Stalker in his home we see Tarkovsky’s fondness of dwellings revealing information about characters: there is no better way to learn about the protagonist. We are introduced to the Stalker’s family bedroom by looking into the space through a set of half shut doors, the camera being 36 37 38
Bird p162 Bird p162 Andrei Tarkovsky Sculpting In Time University of Texas Press, Austin, 2000 p17 33
located outside the space observed. We, as the viewer, hover tentatively on the threshold between public and private, outer and inner. Through the narrow slot in the semi-open doors we can see the family bed, located slightly asymmetrically, heightening the sense that we are viewing family life voyeuristically (fig. 28). The space between the camera and the far wall behind the bed are set up as a series of planes parallel to the screen. This combines with the eerily slow pace of the camera to lure us into a meditative state, allowing us to experience the atmosphere of the space. Through this we experience one of Tarkovsky’s characteristic shots, which Juhani Pallasmaa identifies. ‘The camera never rushes into the depicted space, and the viewer remains at the edge of the painterly image’39 (fig. 29). Once the camera has slowly focused into the depicted space through the doors we are now over the threshold and enter the Stalker’s life. At this point we are given a fifteen second pause in order to observe and absorb the atmosphere created by the bedroom. Tarkovsky uses real time to focus our attention, to ‘peer into the pseudo mundane’40, ironically in a way we may not actually do in ‘real time’.
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Juhani, Pallasmaa, The Architecture of image : existential space in cinema Rakennustieto, Helsinki, 2001 p75 Bird p211 34
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More than in any other dwelling in Tarkovsky’s films time has had a scarring impact on the fabric of the interior of the building. The walls are brown and overly textured, and we can sense damp and nature invading the room. Combined with the frugality of the bedroom it is an alarming environment. The simple perspective also contributes to our idea of the simplicity of the dwelling. This is highlighted by the floorboards running parallel to the camera, and with the two sides of the bed. Areas of light are carved out of the dark drawing us in to the feeling of claustrophobia, which is intensified by the lack of views out. The vertical slats silhouetted in front of the window allude to a prison. This prison-like atmosphere is later made explicit as our protagonist exclaims ‘I am imprisoned everywhere’. He cannot escape the mood created between himself and the place.
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CHAPTER FOUR
Mirror: The Apartment: Dislocation The dominant mood of this scene is dislocation. Tarkovsky particularly deploys the relationships between the spaces of an architectural setting with a strong lateral emphasis. He combines this with the use of the camera to explore the way that ‘the ‘truth’ of environments is held in their resonance with human beings.’41
The apartment belongs to the character of Alexei whom we encountered earlier in Mirror’s dacha scene as the little boy. The owner of the apartment, Alexei, has been ‘exiled’ as Peter King notes.42 Andrei and his wife have separated. Therefore, the apartment is a place of exile from the family rather than a home like the dacha. The scene focuses on Ignat, Andrei’s son. During the scene he is left alone. The mood of dislocation is introduced through the character of the apartment itself which is depicted in stark contrast to the dacha shown earlier in the film. The apartment is located in abstract space. We have no understanding of where it is or, in fact, on what floor of the building it is on. The views the camera gives us out of the building are onto other neighbouring buildings (fig. 31). There is only one shot of a tree that locates us above street level. Nor do we have an idea of the size of the apartment or how far it sprawls 41 42
Teal p8 King p75 38
fig. 31
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laterally. We are invited to see the apartment as a confusing warren of spaces. Spaces to the corridor’s left and right are shown as light sources that intersect the corridor at a perpendicular (fig.32). This indicates further spaces than the ones immediately visible. However, this does not tell us the size or the type of spaces that are beyond the openings.
Once the mother has left Ignat on his own the camera gives us the boy’s understanding of the space; we are disorientated and confused. The way the camera relates the boy to the external environment of the apartment creates a mood of dislocation. This mood is the outcome of ‘the unexplained mysteries, with all their discontinuities and distortions of time; a child’s eye view of the world’43.
The ‘unexplained mysteries’ and ‘distortions of time’, contributing to the mood of dislocation, are created partly through the way the camera interacts with the space. It starts with a close up of Ignat’s head (fig. 33). In the same shot the camera quickly rotates on an axis (maintaining a proximity to Ignat) to pan into the neighbouring room where we see an unidentified woman in black and her maid (fig. 36). These two women seem to have appeared out of nowhere. The camera then rotates on the same axis and follows the maid’s movement as she leaves the room and walks down the hallway (fig. 38). The rotation then continues to return to the close up of Ignat’s head. This variation in close ups and more distant views within the same 43
Peter Green Andrei Tarkovsky : the winding quest Macmillan, Basingstoke,1993 p85 40
fig. 33
fig. 34
fig. 35
fig. 36
fig. 37
fig. 38
41
rotating shot disorientates us, giving us a sensation of Ignat’s dislocated mood.
The woman dressed in black is an unexplained character. When Tarkovsky was quizzed about her mysterious presence, he simply retorted ‘what do you think, is it worth explaining?’44 On Ignat’s return from answering the door to his grandmother, both failing to recognise each other, the mysterious woman has disappeared. The only remnant of her presence is a heat mark from her teacup on the table. After a long close up of this heat mark slowly fading away we focus on Ignat calling to her, looking mystified as to her whereabouts (fig. 39). This ‘unexplained mystery’ is followed immediately by a ‘distortion of time’. He is suddenly standing in front of a different unidentified room (fig. 40). This jump in space is the climax of our dislocation in the apartment. When the phone rings a moment afterwards and Ignat answers to his father, Alexei, we can calmly locate Ignat within the space next to the phone (fig. 41). This suggests that emotionally he is now more firmly connected with family, the audible existence of his father being present; the mood has changed. We can see in this scene how Tarkovsky has used architectural structure, location, disjointed narrative and camera movement to create the scene’s powerful mood of dislocation.
44
Andrei Tarkovsky Time Within Time The Diaries Faber and Faber, London, 1994 p370 42
fig. 39
fig. 40
fig. 41
fig. 42
43
CHAPTER FIVE
Nostalgia : The Lobby Scene : Alienation The film Nostalgia45 focuses on Andrei Gortchakov’s time spent in Italy and his powerful mood of alienation. This scene highlights the resonance of particular architectural types of spaces, the use of lighting, materials and the impact of furniture. Its use of the camera also points to the way we connect within a space. The scene is in the lobby of the hotel early in the film, and Gortchakov and his interpreter guide, Eugenia, are sitting, discussing the possibility of intercultural understanding.
For Heidegger mood is not only associated with an individual but also with a culture or a place46. Nostalgia can be seen to involve the meeting of two moods, the mood of Russian culture that Gortchakov carries with him (fig. 43), and the mood of Italian culture, that he resists taking the place of his existing culture. He is unable ‘to relate meaningfully to his actual existence in Italy’47, and he succumbs to ‘the fatal attachment
45 Nostalgia :1983 : Gortchakov, a Russian poet, is travelling in Italy to research the life of an 18th century Russian composer. He is accompanied by an Italian translator, Eugenia. Along the way he meets a well-known local madman and gets drawn in to spend time with him. The film is interspersed with flashbacks and dreams of his homeland and his wife. 46 47
Hubert Dreyfus Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1991 p196 Johnson and Petrie p161 44
fig. 43 45
of Russians to their national roots, their past, their culture.’48 It is significant that the film includes several scenes that take place in intermediary type spaces such corridors, lobbies, and forecourts. They seem to express being between one culture and another, A hotel itself can be seen as intermediary: it is no one’s ‘world’. Following Andrei and Eugenia’s visit to the church (another mood Andrei interestingly does not enter) we see them in the lobby of the hotel.
The mood of alienation is evoked from the start of the scene when we cannot locate them; we only see them sitting and talking. We see each of their faces, singly, close up with a blurred and indistinct background of the space they are in (fig 44, 45). In addition, the way they themselves are seated and talking to each other confuses any possible identification of the space. The way they are seated and the confusion it initially expresses reflects the mood of their discussion. They are each sitting with the backs of their heads to each other so that they need to turn to each other as they speak. Tarkovsky has them filmed individually so that we cannot tell initially how they are connected in space. This is reinforced by the dislocating way the sound of Gortchakov’s voice in particular is projected. It sounds as if it is coming from a more distant part of the room than the equal sized close ups of their heads suggest. A subsequent shot then shows us that they are sitting in two barrel shaped armchairs with their backs to each other facing the walls of a lobby-corridor type space and we may be surprised. Tarkovsky has manipulated the sense of space 48
Tarkovsky Sculpting In Time p202 46
fig. 44
47
fig. 45
to reflect the emotional tension of the discussion. The lobby is just wide enough to take the two armchairs whose bulk and implied weight contrasts with the sense of transition of the space. They are planted at either side, set apart from each other.
The mood is deepened by the part of the lobby they are sitting in being dark. In addition, the space is layered by a series of doorframes and light varies along the space, the darkest area being in the foreground. This is counter to what we might expect. The use of light is key to the mood of this scene. On the one hand it creates a pensive atmosphere : ‘the darkness creates the opportunity to think and contemplate’.49 It also creates a despondent atmosphere to accompany the weight suggested by the way Eugenia and Gortchakov are seated. It increases their lack of connection already implied by the seating as it literally obscures them from each other.
49
Michael Auping Seven Interviews With Tadao Ando Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas 2002 p53 48
fig. 46 49
The use of light also combines with the layering effect to emphasise the transitory nature of the space. This is exaggerated when another female guest with a dog walks from the distant end of the space through, between the chairs, to exit to our left as she opens a door. Tarkovsky has given her a voluminous white dress which billows like the curtains on one side of the lobby (fig. 48). It emphatically catches the light as she moves into the light sections of the lobby before becoming obscured again by darkness near Gortchakov and Eugenia.
The choice of this architectural space, with the arrangement and character of the chairs and the use of darkness, conveys Gortchakov’s unsatisfactory being-in-the-world. His inability to enter into the mood of the culture he encounters, in favour of his own Russian mood of longing, becomes the overpowering mood of alienation. It is intensified by a moment of disjointed narrative, the introduction of the woman with the dog, interrupting with another mood of her own.
50
fig. 46
fig. 47
fig. 48 51
CHAPTER SIX
Nostalgia : Church Scene : The Secular and The Religious The church scene at the beginning of Nostalgia, which precedes the scene in the lobby, also presents us with an encounter of two contrasting moods: the secular and the religious. This scene draws on the evocative connotations of a specific architectural form. It shows the demands to a person of a sudden transition from one space to another and highlights the process of reorientation.
The scene begins with Eugenia entering the church. She walks through the space towards a painting of the Madonna, the focal point in an apse. She has a conversation with the sacristan and a procession of women with an icon of the Madonna fills the space. Eugenia seems to stand apart from the ritual. The scene comes to a climax when birds are released from the clothing of the icon.
The church or cathedral is a space most people would immediately associate with a powerful presence of mood, the numinous evoked by a sacred space. This association is often indicated by a change in behaviour, in recognition of a reluctance to disturb that mood.50 This church, in fact the crypt of San Pietro 50 Randall Teal ‘Dismantling the Built Drawing: Working with Mood in Architectural Design’ International Journal of Art & Design Education Volume 29, Issue 1, February 2010 p9 52
fig. 49 53
in the town of Tuscania, Tuscany, has its own powerful mood which Eugenia enters when she steps into the space at the beginning of the scene. Throughout the scene Tarkovsky manages to create a dissonance between her secular mood and the mood of the space, expressing tension between her and the potential for authentic dwelling offered by the church.
Tarkovsky establishes an emotional tone as soon as Eugenia enters the space as we follow her weaving pensively through the columns. (fig. 49) We get a sense of a transition of mood, from that of the secular space outside the church to that inside. Eugenia’s pensiveness and hesitancy is part of her response to the mood of the crypt after entering, of the encounter of her own mood with the mood of the space.
The density of the columns in the crypt is suggestive of the birch forest in Ivan’s Childhood, which Bird likens to ‘the columns of a natural cathedral’51. (fig. 50) Tarkovsky uses these and the layout of the crypt to create spatial and temporal confusion52 53. This will, in turn, create the dissonance between the mood of the church and the mood Eugenia brings in with her. 51
Bird p61
53
Bird refers to Macgillivray’s analysis but focuses on the term ‘folds in space’ to describe Tarkovsky’s effects.
52 Macgillivray makes a detailed analysis of the Nostalgia scene’s camera movement: he focuses on how Tarkovsky uses suture to ‘create a second apse’ In my view this analysis is limited because of its focus on the Piero della Francesca painting. James Macgillivray ‘Andrei Tarkovsky’s Madonna del Parto’ Canadian Journal of Film Studies/Revue canadienne d’études cinématographiques, Vol. 11, No. 2, Autumn 2002 p.92-94 54
fig. 49
55
fig. 50
When Eugenia enters the church, taking us with her, we have some expectations of a type of space that will be encountered and its accompanying mood. Unlike Eugenia, however, we are at the disadvantage of only being able to read this specific space in the way that Tarkovsky directs. He will create our sense of the space through camera views and angles as well as through the use of suture. He has decided not to give us the initial overview of the space that would orientate us and inform us about the precise space we are in, that it is, in fact, a crypt: we have to figure out the space for ourselves. Instead, he confuses us about the location of the focal point, a Madonna painting in an apse. As Eugenia walks through the space the camera looks through the rows of columns (Fig 49). Viewers can be forgiven for assuming that they are looking down a church with an apse behind them, the small window ahead being in place of a rose window type feature. ‘Usually, in church architecture, a grid of columns reinforces one’s orientation in space relative to the Eastern direction.’54
The first shot he gives us of the apse with the Madonna painting is head-on as one isolated shot (fig. 51), without a visible transition from the columned space so that we do not know how to connect it to the rest of the space. At this point the painting could be in an apse facing the wall with the small high window and the focus of Eugenia’s attention (fig. 52) as she walks through the ‘church’. 54
Macgillivray p93 56
fig. 51
fig. 52
fig. 53 57
The placing of groups of women in black (fig. 49, 52, 54), seated at different points in the space, add to our disorientation. When we see Eugenia facing a ‘side chapel to our right (fig. 54) we have no sense that the camera has moved to the other end of the space. We have the impression that the space has two side chapels and an apse that we have not seen. We rely on certain key markers to orient ourselves. The high window at the end of the aisle could be one such marker, for example, and the seated women another. Since we do not know the layout of the crypt we can think that there is only one small high window and that when we see it, it is the same one in each shot. We may be unaware that there are two identical windows facing each other. Similarly, when we see the group of seated women we expect them always to be in the same place.
58
fig. 54 59
We are, therefore, also confused initially as to where the Madonna painting is in relation to the procession that is about to take place. It would seem that the procession is makes its way looking at the Madonna straight in front of it(fig. 55, 56, 57). In fact, the Madonna painting in the apse is to the side. But we only understand this from the later shot (fig. 59) looking through the procession at a right angle to the painting. When we do get this view, it comes as a surprise and demands that we shift our reading of the space. We may have read the part of the apse that we glimpsed earlier (fig. 51) to be part of a side altar, for example. Without giving us a full view into the apse, the painting and the columned area together we cannot read the space correctly. Tarkovsky has used the spatial confusion created by the camera to express Eugenia’s dissonance within the church. This can be compared to the way de Chirico also creates dissonance through distortion of space to create a ‘fertile state of suspension in which quasi-mystical revelation temporarily enables the poet to glimpse the deeper, ontological nature of reality.’55 Here we have Eugenia’s mood, on the one hand, and the mood of the space on the other in a process of attunement which we can understand as this ‘state of suspension’.
Tarkovsky often uses temporal confusion to express a more authentic mode of being. Here it also adds to 55
Dagmar Motycka Weston ‘The Hour of the Enigma’: The Phenomenal Temporality in the Metaphysical Painting of Giorgio de
Chirico’ in Symbols of Time in The History of Art, Brepolis, Michigan, 2002 60
fig. 55
fig. 58
fig. 56
fig. 57
fig. 59 61
the spatial confusion, contributing to the dissonance between Eugenia’s mood and that of the church. Tarkovsky uses suture to create a temporal dislocation between the shots of the procession and the shots of Eugenia: the shots of Eugenia take place in the same part of the church (fig. 51, 55, 56, 57) as the procession of the Madonna. As Macgillivray points out: ‘In fact the two elements are not simultaneous in shooting and cannot be since they occur in the same part of the crypt and do not include each other.’56
It is not until the end of the scene, at its climax when the birds are released from the Madonna, that there is temporal simultaneity and a sense of Eugenia’s mood and that of the church becoming one. At the end of the scene the camera focuses on Eugenia’s face and this time we can see, from the glow of the candles on her face (fig. 60), that the shooting of the Madonna group and Eugenia are now on the same time frame. What is happening here? On this occasion we can interpret this movement to a single time frame as a moment of engaging with the spirituality of the church, when Eugenia experiences more authentic being, also expressed by the glow of the candles on her face.
56
Macgillivray p93 62
fig. 60 63
CHAPTER SEVEN
Stalker : Final Scene : Faith This scene creates and explores a mood of faith. The use of light is combined with volume, interior detailing and material texture to evoke the qualities of an architectural type with the need for its specific form.
In the dying stages of the three men’s time in the ‘Zone’ they spend it in a room that is on the ‘threshold’ of the Room of Desires, as the Stalker calls it. In this scene faith is being questioned. So Tarkovsky saw it fitting to give the room cathedral-like connotations. We register these immediately contributing to a mood of faith and a presence of higher power. The connotations are established through the use of light, which is diffused in the centre of the space from above creating a sense of height. In addition, a strong light source coming through the threshold door suggests the Stalker’s faith (fig. 62). Indeed, the three men stop and look through the large door and into the light. The light is far more tranquil and relaxed than in previous scenes: it is neither grey nor overly contrasted. The claustrophobia, which has been felt previously in scenes such as the one with the ‘meat grinder’ is dispersed by the vertical space. The white walls echo the white walls used in Andrei Rublev. Vertical lines on the walls create a sense of movement upwards into the light and we have no sense of where the wall may finish (fig. 61). The three men do not even have to speak for us to know that 64
fig. 61
65
fig. 62
they are on the ‘threshold’. The use of water in the scene is also evocative of the Christian theme of baptism implying death and regeneration.
When the writer and the scientist reject faith the camera moves from being inside the Threshold Room into the Room of Desires. The mood has immediately changed, being replaced by one of acceptance, acceptance of their rejection of faith and acceptance of their fate. The Stalker is accepting that his faith has been rejected. The three men are now sitting on the ground and as the camera zooms out and they are seen through a doorway, framed by the architecture. The men are now no longer shown against a white background as when the camera was placed in the Threshold Room. They are now shown against a dark brown textured background adding to the mood of acceptance. It is more earthy, rather than transcendent as suggested by the white walls. Light streams down from above in the Threshold Room highlighting the fact that the light source coming from the Room of Desires (in which the camera is placed) has now vanished. This indicates that hope and faith is now lost, now that the two men – the scientist and the writer - have rejected going into the room. Part of the floor in the foreground is filled with water, creating a beautiful stillness and suggests the sublime. The space in the Room of Desires that we see is not a cathedral space as in the outer area. It is dark and mysterious and its space is only suggested in the darkness, indicating that what is on the other side of faith is unknown and what they have rejected will never be known. 66
fig. 63 67
Before the men sat down the Stalker explained that ‘my happiness, my freedom, my self respect, its all here!’ making explicit the connection between himself and the environment. The space is silent and perhaps the men are at peace with nature just as the building is. As the camera zooms out the light changes hues. As this light fades on and off we experience the pulsation of another presence. At this point we are able to view the walls of the Room of Desires, which we can now see are dark and highly textured (fig.64). The walls are reminiscent of the sepia tones at the start of the film, we accept that this is the end of the mens time of in the zone now faith has been rejected. A shower of rain falls in the room of desires directly in front of the camera and relives the tension as we the audience accept that this is indeed the end of their jouney (fig. 65).
While the church scene in Nostalgia drew on the connotations of existing architectural forms to contribute to the evocation of a powerful mood, in this scene Tarkovsky uses basic architectural elements to evoke the numinous which the two – the scientist and the writer – cannot enter. We can compare their reluctance to engage with a mood which perhaps is perceived as too alien or too powerful or too unreal with Gortchakov’s refusal to enter the church in Nostalgia: is it sometimes too problematic to allow one mood to be supplanted by another? Here it is a possible contrast of beliefs rather than culture as in Nostalgia.
68
fig. 64
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fig. 65
CHAPTER EIGHT
Nostalgia : The Final Scene : Ambiguity The final scene of Nostalgia draws together different aspects of Tarkovsky’s manipulation of mood. The scene uses a very explicit relationship between the external environment and the individual. It relies on the public and private connotations of architectural forms and explores the ideas of interior and exterior, the relationship between the built and natural environments and the contrast of different building materials.
It has been suggested that this is overly literary in its collaging of different cultural features to indicate a final resolution for Gortchakov between Italian and Russian culture. However, it is possible to see ambiguity in the scene and Tarkovsky himself was open to this.57
As the final scene is introduced we have an image of Gortchakov and his dog in front of a pool of water and in front of his home, the dacha, in a countryside setting. Our impression is of the openness of the countryside and we register the connotations of the dacha explored earlier in this paper. At this point, Tarkovsky gives us two indicators that this is no ordinary scene. The head-on orientation of the scene, the way Gortchakov and the dog are seated, and the reflection in the water of windows that are not otherwise 57
Johnson and Petrie p150 70
fig. 66 71
evident in the scene. Slowly the camera pulls back so that we see that the windows reflected belong to the ruins of a cathedral and that the main part of this ruined cathedral surrounds the whole scene (fig. 67). The scene is no longer one of potential open countryside. Do we now experience the scene as safely shielded by the cathedral ruin or do we experience it in terms of imprisonment? We are made uncertain about how to experience the scene. At the same time, we are made immediately aware of the way in which different elements contribute to mood.
Is the scene a direct allusion to the Romantic painting by Caspar David Friedrich of Eldena58 (fig. 69) suggesting positive aspects of the ruin becoming part of the natural surroundings? Does Tarkovsky’s scene suggest the same kind of relationship between the dacha and its surroundings as that of the little cottage in the painting? Or is there something more ominous about the scale of the cathedral in relation to the dacha? The presence of the cathedral, on the one hand, evokes the spirituality for which Tarkovsky searches. On the other hand, this is the same structure that Gortchakov walked through during one of his ‘dream’ scenes (fig. 68), part of the Italian cultural setting with which he feels ill at ease. This could suggest that the presence of the cathedral is still the presence of the ‘other’ with which Tarkovsky has been wrestling. 58
Bird p66 72
fig. 67
fig. 68
fig. 69 73
Alternatively, we can see the ruined state of the cathedral as liberating and a point of union between the two cultures. Ruins, as Walter Benjamin said, ‘…not only signal mortality, they point to a deep belonging to the natural world, ….In the ruin history has physically merged into the setting’59. For Palasmaa, ‘ruins are buildings which have lost their function’ and ‘have a special hold on our emotions because they challenge us to imagine their forgotten faith’. They are also ‘stripped of their mask of utility and rational meaning’.60 This would allow the cathedral ruin to be redemptive, leading to truth and transcendence. So even though Tarkovsky’s reference to the Caspar David Friedrich painting does not, in my view, include its full Romanticism – his ruin is less engulfed by vegetation and the dacha does not nestle cosily – the way he brings the dacha and the cathedral ruin together can be the synthesis of opposites, or as Johnson and Petrie put it, ‘Interpretation is no longer a question of A or B, but both A and B.’61 Palasmaa suggests that the snowflakes at the end of the scene ‘fuse the southern and northern elements of the collage into a single coherent image’62 and thereby evoke unity. On the other hand, the snow can be seen as creating a veil, enclosing the scene even on the front side. We could also have in our mind reverberations of Andrei Rublev’s statement, ‘there’s nothing more frightening than when it snows in a church.’ (fig. 70) 59 60 61 62
Walter Benjamin The Origin of German Tragic Drama NLB, London, 1977 p178 Pallasmaa p79 Johnson and Petrie p178 Pallasmaa p78 74
fig. 70 75
Finally, how are we to respond to the reflections in the pond? Not only are there the windows but also the reflection of Gortchakov himself. It is difficult not to be reminded of Narcissus and his reflection. The overall mood Tarkovsky creates in this scene is one of ambiguity and continued displacement. It gives a different meaning to the Caspar David Friedrich painting Eldena, throwing up a possible dissonance between forms for which we assume meanings and connotations by posing new juxtapositions. Perhaps Tarkovsky has converted the image of the painting from Romanticism to the rigour of a spiritual challenge, suggested by adding the snowfall.
In this scene, though, Tarkovsky makes the interplay between the person and the environment, between internal and external, most explicit as Gortchakov sits surrounded by an external structure and his sense of place is defined by that which surrounds him. The final image also questions our encounter with moods that are different to our own and challenge who we are.
CONCLUSION
Through this close analysis of various scenes from Tarkovsky’s films this paper has explored and identified the elements of space and place that Tarkovsky makes use of to create powerful moods which we, in turn, become part of. I have shown how he makes us aware of the presence of mood itself through his use of 76
the camera, its slow pace emphasising sensory experience and giving us time to become conscious and reflective. His creation of and focus on rich environments brings to the fore the importance of place and space for mood. It indicates that the interplay between the person and the setting, internal and external, is key, whether it leads to wholeness and absorption as in Mirror’s dacha scenes in, or to dissonance as in the apartment in Mirror, or to ambiguity in the final scene of Nostalgia. Through the use of the camera, Tarkovsky shows us how different people experience space and how space can be experienced when part of a specific mood. Tarkovsky provokes a study of the complexities of dwelling and the components that comprise our being-in-the-world. As Peter King has pointed out, Tarkovsky shows us ‘why dwelling and our notion of home, and why we should connect to a place, is so important to us, and, moreover, that this is a universal condition’63. He helps us understand that we experience this, primarily, through mood, through awareness of mood and through an insight into all the elements that create mood. He strives to show us ‘that absolute spiritual truth which is hidden from us in our positivistic, pragmatic activities’64. This is a spiritual imperative for Tarkovsky. It is also one which informs the call for a refocusing on the experiential dimension of architecture by many architects and writers. As Pallasmaa has written, ‘Both forms of art (cinema and architecture) define the dimensions and essence of existential space’65. 63 64 65
King p.75 Tarkovsky Sculpting in Time p37 Pallasmaa p13 77
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canadienne d’études cinématographiques, Volume 11, Number 2, Autumn, 2002) pp 92-94 Martin, S. Andrei Tarkovsky Pocket Essentials, 2005 Pallasmaa, J. The Architecture of image : existential space in cinema Rakennustieto, Helsinki, 2001 Pallasmaa, J. The Eyes of the Skin Wiley & Sons, Chichester, 2005 Petric, V. ‘Tarkovsky’s Dream Imagery’ Film Quarterly Vol.43 No.2,1989, pp 28-34. Redwood,T. Andrei Tarkovsky’s Poetics of Cinema. 2010 Samardzija, Z. ‘1+1=1: Impossible Translations in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia’ Literature-Film Quarterly Vol.32, No.4, 2004, pp 300-304. Sharr, A. Heidegger’s Hut MIT, Cambridge, Mass, 2006 Tanizaki, J. In Praise of Shadows Vintage, London, 2001. Tarkovsky, A. Sculpting In Time University of Texas Press, Austin, 2000 Tarkovsky, A Time Within Time The Diaries Faber and Faber, London, 1994 Teal, R. ‘Dismantling the Built Drawing: Working with Mood in Architectural Design’ International Journal of Art & Design Education Volume 29, Issue 1, February 2010 pages 8–16 Weston, D. ‘The Hour of the Enigma’: The Phenomenal Temporality in the Metaphysical Painting of Giorgio de Chirico’ in Symbols of Time in The History of Art, Brepolis, Michigan, 2002 Wright, A. ‘A Wrinkle in Time: The Child, Memory, and the Mirror’ Wide Angle, Vol.18, No.1, January1996, pp 47-68 Zumthor, Peter. Atmospheres Birkhauser, Basel, 2006 79
FILMOGRAPHY Tarktovsky, A. Ivan’ Childhood 1962 [DVD] UK: Artificial eye Tarktovsky, A. Andrei Rublev 1966 [DVD] UK: Artificial eye Tarktovsky, A. Solaris 1972 [DVD] UK: Artificial eye Tarktovsky, A. Mirror 1974 [DVD] UK: Artificial eye Tarktovsky, A. Stalker 1979 [DVD] UK: Artificial eye Tarktovsky, A. Nostalgia 1983 [DVD] UK: Artificial eye Tarktovsky, A. The Sacrifice1986 [DVD] UK: Artificial eye
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