ISSUE#6

C.O.B.A.C. EVERLASTING

International Art Magazine

NO COLOR WORLD

Master

Issue# 6 November 2010

of the Cinematic Image

Andrei Tarkovsky

I'M INTERESTED IN THE PROBLEM

OF INNER FREEDOM

TOJOURNEYWITHIN

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NEA ARTS number 3 2010

The Art (and Science) of Creativity

Robert Bresson on Directing Actors

A STAR ALLIANCE MEMBER

THE STATE O

Free entrance

OF THE ART

Curated by Luisa Conte Opening: Friday, 10th December 2010, h 7 pm On the 10th of December 2010, at 7 pm, at the Romanian Academy in Rome, Kunsthaus presents The state of the Art, a collective multimedia exhibition of selected artworks in different sectors such as video art, photography, installation, performance and painting. The exhibition, curated by Luisa Conte, is supported by Romanian Academy in Rome and patronaged by the Department of Rome for Cultural Politics and Communication.

The expression “state of the art” comes from a technical language, used to establish the most advanced level reached by a technology or by a scientific field, that is what really determines innovation or evolution. The transposition of this concept in the art field is an attempt to show how some contemporary artists are working to research new ways of expression. It will be demanded to visitors’ individual experience, to establish the effective grade of advancement.

The quality of manipulation possibilities of video art and images are continuously increasing due to the advances achieved in digital technology, becoming integral part of contemporary production. One of the halls of the Academy will be set as video zone, where videos of established and young artists will be shown.

Concerning the photography section, 12 “Cold Landscapes” of Massimo Pastore, which will be displayed also in Berlin during the incoming year, and artworks of Cristiano Pettinelli will be exhibited.

Moreover, the investigation about “the state of the art” will consider traditional painting and other different art languages put together in several installations, where painting may be included. Main actors of this section will be: Andrea Liberni, with a project including painting and video; Carlo De Meo, well known artist for his skills to represent surreal perspectives and who will create a site specific artwork; Paola Romoli Venturi, who is going to present an “abstract” of „La Sentenza_Das Urteil” exhibited in Munich (Germany), inspired by the Sentenza Spartacus and by Roberto Saviano’s fight against camorra; Carin Stoller, a german artist representing the traditional painting technique.

During the event, a light installation will interact with the façade of the Academy by means of computer generated graphic effects, aimed to inspire with the help of this technology different interpretations of the urban landscape. The performance will be held by Quiet Ensemble, expert artists in the field. Afterwards, the same artists will entertain the auditorium with an audio video performance completed by a dj set until late night.

Other performances will be represented by different artists throughout the week. On 11th December the Basmati group will exhibit live in one of their involving experiments concerning artistic languages, after the exhibition of the actor Alex Pascoli. Moreover, on 17th December, a performance by the artist Sabina Bernardelli will close the event.

ARTISTS

Rebecca Agnes, Basmati (Saul Saguatti, Audrey Colaniz), Sabina Bernardelli, Sarah Buckius, Carlo De Meo, Quiet Ensemble, Silvio Giordano, Marco Lamanna, Andrea Liberni, Enrico Luciani, Alfredo Maddaluno, Dario Madonna, Luca Matti, Matteo Mezzadri, Alessandro Morino, Gianmaria Nicotina, Andrea Pacanowsky, Alex Pascoli, Massimo Pastore, Tommaso Pedone, Diego Petruzzi, Cristiano Pettinelli, Paola Romoli Venturi, Michael Salisbury, Claudia Secchi, Candas Sisman, Carin Stoller, Paula Sunday, Ohashi Takashi, Devis Venturelli.

Official partner of the event: Kunsthaus, Stoller Edtore. Media partner: Art a part of cult(ure), Roma C’è, Digicult.

PROGRAM Opening friday 10th December 7 pm Vernissage and video set.

8.30 pm Performance audio video by Quiet Ensemble. Bio-buffet.

Saturday 11th December 5 pm Lectures about the exhibition’s leading theme, with the participation of: Prof. Vezio Ruggieri (Psychophysiologist, author of the book “Aesthetic experience. Psycophysiological institutes for an aesthetic education”), Luisa Conte (curator), Dr.Ing. Marco Stoller (expert of technology and researcher by “Sapienza University of Rome”) and other guests.

7.30 pm The actor Alex Pascoli acts “Giotto da Bondone”, a monologue

by Giorgio Gaber.

8 pm Performance live audio video by Basmati. Music by Sergio Altamura.

Friday 17th December 7.30 pm Performance and video set by Paola Romoli Venturi.

9 pm, Rotating dance performance and video set by Sabina Bernardelli.

Finissage and dj set to follow.

Romanian Academy in Rome Valle Giulia, P.zza Jose’ de San Martin, 1, Rome Opening hours: from the 10th to the 17th december, h 11am – 8 pm Info line: +393394852954 mail: info@kunsthaus.it web: www.kunsthaus.it www.accadiromania.it Press Office Tiziana Talocci tiziana.talocci@libero.it tel: +393288981986 Patronage:

Support by:

Organization by:

C.O.B.A.C. EVERLASTING

International Art Magazine

NO COLOR WORLD

Issue# 6 November 2010

O Part i andrei tarkovsky master of the cinematic image

By Stuart C. Hancock

Master

of the Cinematic Image

Andrei Tarkovsky

I'M INTERESTED IN THE PROBLEM

OF INNER FREEDOM

TOJOURNEYWITHIN c.o.b.a.c. international art magazine november 2010 Director: Ali Saadat R&D: Mehdi Derafshi Cover: Stalker by the legendary film maker Andrei Tarkovsky cobac.a.c@gmail.com cobac.blog.com cobacac.blogspot.com Publishing texts and photos of this magazine can not be reproduced without permission of the owners.

All Rights of photos used in the content of this magazine belongs to the owners.

Part II I'M INTERESTED IN THE PROBLEM OF INNER FREEDOM Interview Part ]]] AFTER NOSLALGIA Book Sculpting in Time By Andrei Tarkovsky Part IV TO JOURNEY WITHIN Interview with Andrei Tarkovsky

By Gideon Bachmann Part V WORKSHOPS

By Bita Moghisi, Bruce New

速

Special thanks to: babak ghanaat, mEhdi derafshi, omid saadat,

Editorial There are many reasons to get away from a No Color world. When we face with cultures and costumes of humankind, I think always we know how should to learn enjoy it.

I want to describe you No Color world in my vision. You can analyze it in different ways. Someone maybe imagine that it is Black and White and the other one guess about the darkness and light. For me No Color world means having not freedom.

Andrei Tarkovsky was my favorite artist and he was the victim of Stalin dictatorship. Of course he could invent extra ordinary works there. But he could not able to show everything and faced censorship. So he went to Italy and then the No color world finished.

I hope after his death we can remember him in this way and I could do it perfect.

I present this Issue of magazine to all fans and men who love Tarkovsky and his special style in film making.

I wish nobody have to live in a No Color world and freedom help us to be with peace and live together.

And finally I apologize cobac fans to our delay. The cobac magazine was working on a reforming and reviews its visions. And I know it will be real to have a great society.

Best wishes Ali Saadat cobac.a.c@gmail.com

Mars Hill Review

By Stuart C. Hancock Copyright Š 1996 Mars Hill Review 4 • Winter/Spring: pgs 136-146.

Master

of the Cine

Andrei Tarkovsky

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"Let us put it like this: A spiritualthat is, significant-phenomenon is 'significant' precisely because it exceeds its own limits, serves as expression and symbol of something spiritually wider and more universal, an entire world of feelings and thoughts, embodied within it with greater or less felicity-that is the measure of its significance."

Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

"Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual."

Andrei Tarkovsky

will never forget the first time I saw Andrei Rublev.

A friend had told me about a Tarkovsky retrospective at the Film Forum, which at the time was just off Varick Street in lower Manhattan. I had never heard of Tarkovsky, and when I arrived at the theater, I was surprised to find hundreds of Soho types lined up around the block, all dressed in black, smoking Egyptian cigarettes and looking like extras from a Fellini film. It was then that my friend informed me, "The movie is in black and white, is threeand-a-half hours long, and in Russian with subtitles." I entered the theater expecting the worst.

The film, about a fifteenth-century Russian icon painter, began with a peasant taking flight in a homemade hot-air balloon, followed by a scene of a jester being beaten senseless by soldiers, then proceeded into lengthy discussions among various monks about art, and later portrayed an unexplained crucifixion in a snowbound Russian village. Thirty minutes into the film, I was hopelessly lost.

It was then, however, that I began to notice little things: the quality of light on water droplets as horses splashed through a puddle. The play of evening shadows on an ancient stone wall. The loveliness of birdsong, providing a peaceful counterpoint to the horror of the blinding of a troop of artisans, victims of internecine warfare. I did not know how to fit all the pieces together, but I knew I was in the presence of genius, and I wanted to learn. Six years later, I am still learning.

Put into words, many images in Tarkovsky's films seem mundane, ordinary-horses eating a cartload of apples spilled upon the beach, a mysterious wind caressing a field of buckwheat, a father and son planting a dead tree beside a sparkling sea.

For Tarkovsky, the world is overflowing with spontaneous perceptions. In Tarkovsky's vision, however, these are moments of creation that act as doorways to truth and the infinite. In his treatise on the aesthetics of cinema, Sculpting in Time, he writes, "The image is an impression of the truth, a

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nematic Image

interactions with one another and with the larger world. Ingmar Bergman credited Tarkovsky with the invention of "a new language which allows him to seize hold of life as appearance, life as a dream." Bergman also called him "the finest contemporary filmmaker."

Considering the limitations Tarkovsky was forced to work within-the strictures of the Soviet film industryit is a miracle his visions ever saw the light of day.

Tarkovsky and Soviet Cinema Before the appearance of Sergei Eisenstein in the 1920s (October, Battleship Potemkin), Russia had contributed little to world cinema.

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glimpse of the truth permitted to us in our blindness. The incarnate image will be faithful when its articulations are palpably the expression of truth, when they make it unique, singularas life itself is, even in its simplest manifestations."

Throughout his remarkable career, Tarkovsky strained to portray the numinous, to somehow glimpse the unseen through the depiction of ordinary scenes and subjects filmed in an utterly fresh and original way.

He believed in a reality beyond that apprehended through the senses, a superabundant reality that lends an astonishing beauty and pathos to our

Lenin, recognizing the power of visual images-"of all the arts, for us the most important is cinema"-set about to create a film industry tailored to the goals of the revolution. A Communist Party resolution of the time stated, "Cinema can and must occupy an important place in the process of cultural revolution as a medium for broad educational work and communist propaganda, the organization and education of the masses around the slogans and tasks of the Party." Toward that end, Eisenstein developed the theory of montage, loosely based on the philosophy of dialectical materialism. Mon-tage is achieved through the juxtaposition of seemingly disparate images. For example, a shot of "bourgeois capitalists" cuts to a herd of swine, then culminates in an image of the murder of unsuspecting proletarians. Eisenstein left the synthesis of these distinct images to the mind of the filmgoer, suspecting that intuited conclusions reached by the audience would be more powerful than any direct indoctrination of Marxist philosophy.

The other major movement in Soviet cinema, socialist realism, was developed in the 1930s. Socialist realism was a reaction to the perceived psychologizing and surrealist tendencies in Western cinema. Rather than dealing with the inner struggles of the individual, the aim of socialist realism was to set forth a vision of Marxist

utopia and to provide a model of the average citizen as warrior for the revolution. It was in direct competition with Christianity, as is shown in the following release from a 1928 conference on socialist realism and the cinema: In Church only one drama is performed and always one and the same, year in, year out, while in the cinema next door you will be shown the Easters of heathen, Jew and Christian, their historic sequence, with their similarity of ritual. The cinema amuses, educates, delights the imagination by images, and liberates you from the need of crossing the Church door.

The cinema is a great competitor not only of the public-house, but of the Church. Here is an instrument which we must secure at all costs!

Socialist realism concentrated enormous energy toward redirecting faith in a transcendent reality to, rather, faith in society as it would be once the goals of Marxism were fulfilled.

Tarkovsky's Life and Work Tarkovsky, born in 1932 into the comfortable Moscow household of Arseniy Tarkovsky, a well-regarded poet of the people, was surrounded by works of classical art, literature, and music. As a teenager, Andrei spent long hours with his father, listening to Bach, gazing at books of Russian religious art, and attending to the recitation of his father's poetry. These classical influences, as well as a love of the woods and fields he experienced on visits to his grandmother's dacha in the country, are foundational in all of Tarkovsky's films. They seem to have engendered a hunger for more than could be accounted for in the materialist philosophies put forth in Soviet art and literature.

There is scant biographical information available on Tarkovsky. We know little about his early experiences in the Christian faith and what led him, a member of the intelligentsia, into the Orthodox church. What is known, however, is that by the time his first feature film, Ivan's Childhood, was

completed in 1962, Tarkovsky had developed a deeply religious aesthetic sense. Ivan's Childhood, the story of a twelve-year-old Russian scout on the German front in World War II, at first glance resembles the socialist realist films of the time: a young hero sacrifices his life in the service of the motherland. However, by using dreams and a complex system of symbols and images in the film, many of them Christian, Tarkovsky attempted to represent Ivan's longings for his mother (killed by German soldiers) and his twin desires to return to the innocent beauties of childhood and to wreak vengeance upon the enemy.

Tarkovsky's religious consciousness registered profoundly in the sensibilities of the Russian people, yet at the same time Tarkovsky succeeded in placating the Soviet censors by the startlingly realistic portrayal of life in wartime. Ivan's Childhood placed Tarkovsky in the forefront of Soviet directors, as One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich had propelled Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn into the literary world the year before.

Tarkovsky's second feature, Andrei Rublev, initially met the same fate as Solzhenitsyn's novels after Ivan Denisovich-official suppression

by Soviet authorities. Whereas the

religious themes in Ivan's Childhood were cloaked in obscure symbolism, Rublev treated the protagonist's crises of faith openly, to the consternation of the Communist Party. Completed in 1966, Rublev would not be released until 1971, whereupon it was described as "the most profound, most powerful and most moving historical film ever to appear on the Russian screen." Andrei Rublev garnered prizes in festival competitions around the world, and subsequently has been acclaimed as "one of the top fifteen films ever made." After Rublev, Tarkovsky was recognized worldwide as the greatest Russian director since Eisenstein. Tarkovsky was grudgingly allowed to continue directing, but from Rublev onward the Party exercised greater control over his films.

Tarkovsky often complained bitterly about the struggles he endured in his attempts to complete each of his films in the Soviet film system.

His diaries are filled with ideas for dozens of films, but he was only able to create seven in his twenty-five-year career, largely due to bureaucratic entanglements. Scripts had to be approved by the official censors (Tarkovsky, however, often altered his films significantly in the final stages), and Mosfilm, the leading film agency,

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controlled the purse strings. Tarkovsky would never again receive the epic-sized budget he had been granted for Rublev. After Rublev, Mosfilm deliberately withheld permission for the entry of his subsequent films into most international competitions. Yet each film, surreptitiously submitted to festivals such as Cannes, Telluride, London, or Paris, received major prizes, and often was awarded the highest honors.

Increasingly bewildered by his inability to receive approval for his film ideas, Tarkovsky and his wife, Larissa, defected to the West in 1983 after completion in Italy of his sixth film, Nostalghia. They left behind his son, Andriuschka, and Tarkovsky devoted the rest of his life both to attempting to persuade Soviet authorities to release his son and to completing his final film, Sacrifice, in 1986. After completing Sacrifice in Sweden, Tarkovsky learned he had a malignant tumor. He died in Paris in December 1986.

Images and Themes in Tarkovsky's Films Poetic Reasoning Whereas Eisenstein had utilized the theories of montage to create artificial links between images where there were none, Tarkovsky applied laws of "poetic reasoning" to the creation of his films from Andrei Rublev onward. Tarkovsky felt his task was to unveil relationships between images and events as created and set

into motion by God, rather than imposing relationships upon filmgoers in order to manipulate them into a prescribed point of view. Tarkovsky was especially drawn to the internal logic of Japanese haiku, wherein three very different images are combined to form a whole much larger than the parts. Concerning this circuitous method of arriving at new perceptions, Tarkovsky wrote, "The birth and development of thought are subject to laws of their own, and sometimes demand forms of expression which are quite different from the patterns of logical speculation. In my view poetic reasoning is closer to the laws by which thought develops, and thus to life itself, than is the logic of traditional drama."

Each of Tarkovsky's films has its own dreamlike inner coherence, but a number of images remain constant from film to film, acting as unifying links and providing clues to the cinematic language Tarkovsky created.

In several films, for instance, at moments of crisis a jug of milk spills onto the floor and shatters, underscoring the splintering of heretofore comfortable domestic relationships.

Or, without warning, characters are suddenly lifted off or struck to the ground by an invisible hand. For example, in a dream sequence at the beginning of Ivan's Childhood, Ivan, to his delight and astonishment, is raised through the trees and begins to fly over the Russian landscape. In Tarkovsky's final film, Sacrifice, Otto

the postman falls to the ground, then gets up and declares, "An evil angel touched me." When characters are on the threshold of some great moment of self-discovery or spiritual illumination, they inexplicably fall to the ground, as if humbled by the hand of God. In several films lovers suddenly rise into the air, levitating in the act of lovemaking.

There are no easy explanations to these images, but they seem to point to an interpenetration of the seen and unseen worlds, visible manifestations of the spiritual battles that are continually being waged around us. Tarkovsky refused to limit imagination with easy explanations; he believed that deliberately leaving his images open-ended would allow their meanings to continue to grow in the mind of the viewer. He said, "What I'm interested in is not symbols, but images.

An image has an unlimited number of possible interpretations." Tarkovsky's refusal to explain the inner logic of his films makes them intriguing-and baffling. Rather than providing direct connections between scenes, events and images, Tarkovsky relied on the laws of associative linking to provide oblique relationships that, when added up, create a mood that strikes the viewer on a preconscious level.

Tarkovsky, however, does explore certain themes throughout his films.

I will examine three of these themes in particular.

FILM

DIRECTOR

NEWS

CONNECT www.tarkovskyfilm.com

1. Fragmented Relationships The heroes and heroines of Tarkovsky's films are filled with intense yet unmet longings. Ivan, having lost his family to the hands of the enemy, tries to fulfill his yearning for his parents by latching onto the officers at the front and by inflicting vengeance upon the Germans as a spy. Andrei Rublev takes a vow of silence after he murders a Tartar invader in defense of a young woman, and for the rest of his life he is alienated from God, doing acts of penance in an attempt to find restoration with him. Kris, in Solaris, spends most of the film attempting to make up for the personal failures that led to his wife's suicide.

The families in Mirror and Sacrifice long ago abandoned any pretense of communication, and now live desperately in an intensely private world of verbal violence.

Tarkovsky's parents divorced when he was a child, and his own first marriage painfully disintegrated, events which possibly explain the pervasive lack of hope within the relationships in his films. He repeats several techniques throughout his films to visually express his characters' inner turmoil and alienation. Mirrors abound in his films, and often his characters speak to one another's mirror image rather than to each other. In carefully staged scenes, characters stare off in different directions, aiming their words into thin air, even though those words work into each other's hearts like daggers. Tarkovsky often used long takes-sometimes as long as ten minutes-to follow a character ever deeper into his own world of relational isolation.

The most notable of these long takes occurs near the end of Sacrifice when Alexander, in fulfilling his vow to God, destroys all of his family's possessions-an act guaranteed to separate himself from them forever.

In this shot, the camera is an impassive observer following Alexander as he burns down his house. The family returns, horror-stricken, and Alexan-

der is taken away in an ambulance. our behalf by Christ. In making conIn this single, seven-minute sequence, we see the violent, irrevocable journey of a brilliant man-from a domestic, mundane existence to the frontiers of spiritual isolation where his only solace will be God. (An interesting note: While Tarkovsky was filming this uninterrupted take, the camera jammed. The house had to be rebuilt from scratch and burned down again.)

2. Guilt and Loss Throughout the film Sacrifice, one hears the sound of coins dropping onto the floor. The protagonist, Alexander, overcome with a sense of guilt and worthlessness, has made a wager with God: He will give up everything he owns-even the only thing he loves in the world, his son-if God will spare the world from impending nuclear disaster. The constant aural presence of the coins reminds us of the tremendous cost Alexander must pay if God is to grant his prayer to redeem the world. Alexander receives God's acknowledgment of the wager when he experiences a vision in which he observes himself trudging through mud where silver coins lie next to the sleeping (or dead) form of his son.

The coin scene here is reminiscent of an episode in Andrei Rublev: Monks are walking through the mud while the church's treasury is being looted

by Mongol invaders. A sacristan is tortured and called a "Tartar-faced Judas" by the peasants, from whom the church has stolen for generations.

In Mirror, the son has a moment of dejรก vu when he drops a pocketful of coins, saying, "I feel like I've been here before." Later in the film, we learn that his father also dropped a handful of coins in a scene in which his grandmother is selling her most precious possession-her earrings-in order to provide food for the family.

Tarkovsky uses the simple medium of coins to intimate the bargains and sacrifices we make in our moments of desperation, reminding us of the story of Abraham and Isaac and ultimately of the great sacrifice made on nections from film to film, the images

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3. Memory Tarkovsky's films are filled with specific objects and events from his own childhood memories-ceramic milk jugs, lace curtains, children watching a barn burn down in the rain. He believed that simple, homely images from his own life would register deeply in the mind of the viewer, calling forth the viewer's own subconscious childhood associations.

For his autobiographical film, Mirror, he reconstructed his grandmother's wooden dacha, and even went so far as to plant the neighboring field in buckwheat, waiting a year for the grain to ripen in order to recreate the landscape as he remembered it.

(Such memories tend to resonate with a greater intensity in the Russian heart, battered as it is with the drabness of decades of socialism, than with Western audiences.) The belief that individual memories are of inestimable value in the economy of existence was a revolutionary idea to Tarkovsky's audience in the Soviet Union, indoctrinated as they were to years of collectivist teaching that the individual must be subservient to the state.

Tarkovsky wanted to call the Russian people to an examination of their national memory as well. In Ivan's Childhood and Mirror, he interspersed newsreel footage with narrative events, grounding the thoughts and actions of his characters in moments of shared tragedy and grief familiar to all Russians. Scenes from the Spanish Civil War and World War II form a backdrop of pathos to the sufferings of the characters in these films, reminding us that the alienation and pain experienced in his stories has been multiplied millions of times in that strikes us at the heart of our own the history of his tortured nation.

The events that occur in Tarkovsky's films, though they are brilliant storytelling in their own right, are merely external means that point to the internal spiritual development of his characters. It is futile to attempt to merely recall plots and story linesnot least because they are so complex and ambiguous-in order to arouse interest in Tarkovsky's works; rather, it is the images-the manipulation of the external world to portray the internal workings of the characters-that give his films their power. We often feel as if we are undergoing a dream, where surface events have enormous meanings that lie just beyond our grasp yet which resonate deeply with that which lies most deeply hidden in our own lives, aching to be exposed.

The Responsibility of the Artist Art is not merely self-expression, but in its purest form is a selfless act of communion. Tarkovsky believed that self-expression is meaningless unless it meets with a response in the other. Rather than merely hearing one's own echo, the artist seeks to create, in Tarkovsky's words, "a spiritual bond with others." True artistic communication is neither didactic nor a soliloquy, but occurs when we bring our longings, fears, and questions into dialogue with the other.

The artist must not only exhibit his strengths but expose his weaknesses, for only humility can shatter the walls that separate the artist from the patron. In Tarkovsky's opinion, it is a sacrifice on the part of the artist to bring his doubts, bewilderment, and half-formed beliefs into the presence of another, knowing he may be misinterpreted and misunderstood. The greatest artists, however, have always been willing to take that chance.

In Tarkovsky's words, "The artist is always a servant, and is perpetually trying to pay for the gift that has been given to him as if by miracle. Modern man, however, does not want to make any sacrifice, even though true affirmation of self can only be expressed

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begin to build into a personal vision guilt and betrayal. With a shock of recognition, we realize that Tarkovsky is telling us that we, too, are all like Judas -that we are all accomplices in a crime of universal magnitude and in profound need of redemption.

in sacrifice." The sacrifice to which Tarkovsky refers includes vulnerability and even humiliation before his audience. But it is more than that. In his thinking, the artist points to unseen realities, to larger questions of purpose and meaning. In doing so, she reminds us that, although the universe is astonishing in its richness, beauty, and complexity, we are but a vapor that lasts a short while.

"The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as example," Tarkovsky explains. "The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good." Any artist or prophet who is willing to devote his life to the illumination of this great and simple truth"You are going to die, so what manner of person ought you to be?"-will necessarily suffer persecution, and therein lies the sacrifice. Tarkovsky's is not a popular message. But any artist or prophet who be-lieves in the core of his being that Something exists beyond the reach of his five senses can afford to do no less. He has not been given an option.

Tarkovsky and the Western Audience Goethe said that it is as hard to read a great book as it is to write one. It is our relationship with reality that allows us to bear the ideas and spiritual judgments that the author has endured-to suffer along with her in her wrestling with the world. If we have not struggled with truth, we will not recognize truth when we see it.

Tarkovsky's films are bewilderingly complex and confusing, especially to Western audiences accustomed to the conventional narrative structures of mainstream Hollywood films. The viewer is often left adrift with the beginning of each new scene, wondering how this event or that image fits into the plot, and often doesn't learn the identity or purpose of a character until well into the film.

Halfway through any Tarkovsky film,

the viewer is bound to have more questions than answers. The authors of a fine study of Tarkovsky's films, Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual Fugue (Indiana University Press, 1994), describe the ambiguous nature of his narrative structure: In almost every case Tarkovsky either ignores or thwarts the narrative expectations that most viewers will apply to interpreting the film's structure: To make sense of the films, and to respond to their strong inner coherence, we have to learn to ask different questions and to tolerate an unusual amount of both narrative ambiguity and denial-or diversion into different channels-of what we consider to be legitimate narrative demands.

The average Western film re-

quires nothing from the viewer. Its narrative structure sets up a series of questions in order to preserve an air of suspense: "What will happen to this character?" "How will he/she overcome the problem of a difficult marriage?" "Will Lassie bring the insulin to the diabetic hunter with the broken leg before he dies?" Then it logically answers each question and dilemma so that the viewer leaves satisfied that a resolution has come about. Thus the typical Western film gives us what we want by telling us what we already know. As Tarkovsky says, "Generally people look to familiar examples and prototypes for confirmation of their opinion, and a work of art is assessed in relation to, or by analogy with, their private aspirations

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lute judgments about his films. He knows that to truly see, we must first admit our blindness-that by groping in the darkness of our understanding we may, for the first time, experience some corner of life as it really is.

Tarkovsky realized that his films were difficult to comprehend, and that multiple viewings were necessary to extract the deep truths buried within.

He acknowledged that film audiences are unused to this level of demands, since most directors do all of their thinking for their audiences. He wrote: The beautiful is hidden from the eyes of those who are not searching for the truth, for whom it is contraindicated. But the profound lack of spirituality of those people who see art and condemn it, the fact that they are neither willing nor ready to consider the meaning and aim of their existence in any higher sense, is often masked by the vulgarly simplistic cry, "I don't like it!" "It's boring!" It is not

a point that one can argue; but it is like the utterance of a man born blind who is being told about a rainbow. He simply remains deaf to the pain undergone by the artist in order to share with others the truth he has reached.

Grappling with Tarkovsky's films over the years has been like learning a new language. I have seen most of his films four or five times, read numerous treatises, and had long discussions with other lovers of his work-yet often I feel as if I am only scratching the surface of his works.

But the rewards that have come from the effort are inestimable-glimpses of profound beauties, insights into devastating psychological realities, rumors and intimations of Glory. For me, Tarkovsky, more than any other director, has portrayed the doubts, fears, and joys that await the stalker of truth upon his often sad and lonely pilgrimage through life.

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or personal position."

Tarkovsky knew that in real life there are few such pat resolutions to our tragedies and dilemmas. In most of his films, the questions are not so easy. For example, in Andrei Rublev, the question, "Will Andrei ever paint again?", does not even come up until halfway through the film. Far more important is our identification with Andrei's sufferings, questions pertaining to the purpose of art, and crises of belief. In Sacrifice, we are deliberately left with the question, "Was this all a dream, or did the events of Alexan-der's night with the witch really happen? Did Alexander, in fact, avert a nuclear holocaust?"

Tarkovsky is in a sacred dialogue with creation, and he wants the viewer to join in the dialogue. The only way for him to gain our participation is to undermine our expectations from the outset by giving us less information than is necessary to form abso-

Filmography Andrei Tarkovsky

Ivan's Childhood, 1962 (American title: My Name is Ivan) The story of Ivan, a twelve-yearold Russian scout on the German front in World War II. The film details twenty-four hours in his life, between dangerous missions, his desire for vengeance against the Germans who have slaughtered his family, and his dreams of happier times. A bleak, arid view of war, and Tarkovsky's most conventional film.

Length: 95 mins. Black & white.

dealing with the mistakes of his past relationships with his wife and father.

Solaris has been unfavorably (and incorrectly) compared with 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Length: 165 mins. Color.

Mirror, 1975 A highly complex, ambiguous autobiographical film, starring Margarita Terekhova as Tarkovsky's wife and mother in one of the finest acting performances in cinema history. Mirror also stars Tarkovsky's real mother and his father, in voice-over, reading his father's poetry. The film is full of nostalgic details and resonates with a homely, simple beauty combined with complex psychological and spiritual observations.

Length: 106 mins. (Some American video versions are only 90 minutes. Obtain the longer version, if possible.) Color and black & white.

Andrei Rublev, 1966 Eight episodes in the life of Rublev, a fifteenth-century Orthodox monk and the greatest of Russia's painters of icons. The film traces Rublev's development as an artist and philosopher in terrifying times of Mongol raids and crises of faith.

An astonishingly beautiful film, incorporating many of the methods Tarkovsky would use throughout the rest of his career.

Stalker, 1979 Length: 185 mins. Black & white Stalker, a paid guide, leads two and color. characters known as Writer and Scientist into The Zone, a forbidden reSolaris, 1972 gion, possibly created by a meteorite, A treatment of Stanislaw Lem's in which one's deepest wishes are science fiction novel. Protagonist purported to come true. Stalker has to Kris Kelvin journeys to planet Solaris, deal with the doubts and cynicism of which has a power to bring to life his compatriots, and ultimately with the dreams of those within its orbit. the unbelieving nature of humankind.

Kelvin's wife, who had committed Length: 161 mins. Color, with suicide years before, comes to life on long sections in black & white. the spaceship, and the film primarily Nostalghia, 1983 deals with Kelvin's moral dilemmas in Tarkovsky's first film shot outside

the Soviet Union. Set in Italy, the film concerns the relationship between a Russian expatriate, Andrei Gorchakov, his Italian guide Eugenia, and a "madman," Dominico, who had locked his family up for several years, awaiting the end of the world. One of the most dreamlike of Tarkovsky's films, with a highly complex-and confusinginternal logic.

Length: 126 mins. (Video is not available due to copyright complexities.) Color.

The Sacrifice, 1986 Shot by Sven Nykvist, Bergman's cinematographer, Tarkovsky's last film is perhaps his most beautiful.

Filmed while Tarkovsky was already in the throes of cancer (yet before the final diagnosis), Sacrifice appears as a last will and testament. It is the story of Alexander, his loving relationship with his son, and the strain he feels with the rest of his family in Sweden. A nuclear war has been announced, and Alexander prays that if God would make everything as it was before, he would give up his family and possessions and never utter another word. The audience is never certain if the events that transpire are real or a dream, but Alexander fulfills his vow in a remarkable closing sequence.

Length: 149 mins. Color, with long segments of near-black & white.

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Suggestions for Viewing Tarkovsky's Films

Most people who live outside a major city or university town will seldom, if ever, have the opportunity to see a Tarkovsky film the way it was meant to be seen-on a theater screen, the larger the better. However, viewing a video is better than nothing. For those of you who aren't within hailing distance of a metropolis such as New York, Los Angeles, or Boulder (The Video Station there is probably the only location in Colorado with all of Tarkovsky's films in stock), you will need to badger your local librarian into obtaining the videos through interlibrary loan.

Inviting a group of friends together to watch a Tarkovsky film is a memorable experience-at least you won't be baffled by yourself. Mirror and Stalker are probably the most representative places to begin a study of Tarkovsky's works. Plan on seeing them more than once, preferably with breathing space between viewings. If, after all of this effort, you still feel challenged to pursue a deeper comprehension of the director's themes, the best books to read on the subject are Tarkovsky's treatise on the cinema, Sculpting in Time, or Johnson and Petrie's The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual Fugue.

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"I'm interested in inner fre The following interview was tape-recorded in March 1985 in Stockholm. It is presented here for the first time in English.

Nostalghia.com wishes to thank Mr. Illg and Mr. Neuger for giving us their permission to translate and post this remarkable interview. Translation from the Polish language was done by Jan. Here is the authors' 1987 introduction:

The conversation presented here took place in March 1985 in Stockholm. At that time Tarkovsky worked on his — as it turned out — last film, a deep metaphysical treatise whose title The Sacrifice was as significant as that of his previous film. He was shielded from the journalists and the curious by a large group of collaborators and associates, and our interview took place mainly because Tarkovsky knew he would be meeting someone from Poland, a country close to his heart, whose achievements and transformation in the early '80s he welcomed — as he admitted — with great joy, concern, and hope. Thus it became more than an ordinary interview granted the press by a great creator.

The conversation instead of taking the agreed-upon one hour has taken four hours during which we moved from the Stockholm TV building to Tarkovsky's home. Disappointed with misunderstandings his contacts with people in the West had frequently resulted in, he was clearly happy to talk to someone from "there." Over two hours were recorded on audio tape and are transcribed below. It is one of the last statements of this length by Tarkovsky — soon after it took place, the news of his illness was spreading around the world.

(We'd like to thank Ms. Janina Ludawska and Mr. Waclaw Mucha for their help in translating this conversation to Polish — J.I., L.N.) Reference: "Z Andriejem Tarkowskim rozmawiaj? Jerzy Illg, Leonard Neuger", in Res Publica (1), Warsaw 1987, pp. 137–160.

Other versions...

"Interesuje mnie problem wewn?trznej wolno?ci...", in Powi?kszenie 1/2 (25/26), Cracow 1987, pp. 146–176. [the most complete version and the basis for this translation] German: "Kunst, Freiheit, Einsamkeit", in Individualit?t 1987 (16), pp. 4–29.

Russian (slightly abbreviated): "Vstat na put", in Iskusstvo kino 1989 (2), pp. 109–130.

Italian: In Corriere della Sera (exact reference not known).

French: In Lettres internationales, No. 64, printemps 1988 Swedish and Norwegian translations also exist.

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n the problem of eedom..."

A: Cinema in general always creates a possibility of putting pieces together into a whole. A film consists after all of separate shots like a mosaic — of separate fragments of different colour and texture. And it may be that each fragment on its own is — it would seem — of no significance. But within that whole it becomes an absolutely necessary element, it exists only within that whole.

That's why cinema is important to me in the sense that there is not, there cannot be any fragment in film which wouldn't be thought through with an eye for the final result. And each individual fragment is coloured so to speak with a common meaning by the entire whole. That is, the frag-

ment does not function as an autonomous symbol but it exists only as a portion of some unique and original world. That's why Mirror is in a sense closest to my theoretical concept of cinema.

You are asking: what kind of mirror is it? Well, first of all — this film was based on my own screenplay containing no invented episodes. All the episodes were really part of our family history. All of them, without exception. The only made up episode is the illness of the narrator, the author (whom we do not see on the screen).

By the way, this very interesting episode was necessary in order to convey the author's spiritual crisis, the state of his soul. Perhaps he is mortally ill and perhaps this is the reason for the recollections that make up the film — as with a man who remembers the most important moments of his life before he dies. So this is not a simple violence done by the author to his memory — I remember only what I want — no, these are recollections of a dying man, weighing in his conscience the episodes he recalls. Thus the only invented episode turns out to be a necessary prerequisite for other, completely true recollections.

You are asking whether this kind of creation, this creating of one's own world — is this truth? Well, it is truth of course but as refracted through my memory. Consider for example my childhood home which we filmed, which you see in the film — this is a set. That is, the house was reconstructed in precisely the same spot

where it had stood before, many years ago. What was left there was a... not even the foundation, only a hole that had once contained it. And precisely at this spot the house was rebuilt, reconstructed from photographs. This was extremely important to me — not because I wanted to be a naturalist of some kind but because my whole personal attitude toward the film's content depended upon it; it would have been a personal drama for me if the house had looked different. Of course the trees have grown a lot at this place, everything overgrew, we had to cut down a lot. But when I brought my Mum there, who appears in several sequences, she was so moved by this sight that I understood immediately it created the right impression.

One would think: why was such an elaborate reconstruction of the past necessary? Or not even the past but what I remembered and how I remembered it. I didn't try to search for a particular form for the internal and subjective memories, so to speak; on the contrary — I strived to reproduce everything the way it was i.e., to literally repeat what was fixed in my memory. And the result turned very strange... It was for me a singular experience. I made a film with not a single episode composed or invented in order to interest the viewer, to attract his attention, to explain anything to him — these were truly recollections concerning our family, my biography, my life. And despite the fact — or perhaps because of it — that this was

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: In Mirror you have presented us your biography. What kind of mirror did you use? Is this a mirror like Stendhal's, a mirror which travels down the road, or is it a mirror in which you have found yourself, learnt something about yourself that you didn't know previously? In other words: is this a realistic work or a subjective auto-creation? Or perhaps your film is an attempt to put together pieces of a broken mirror and frame them within cinematic image, to compose a complete whole from them?

really a very private story, I received a lot of letters afterwards in which the viewers were asking me the rhetorical question: "How did you find out about my life?" And this is very important, very important in a certain inward sense. What does it mean? I mention it as a very important fact in a moral, spiritual sense because if someone expresses his true feelings in a work of art, they cannot remain secrets to others. If the director or the author is lying, makes things up artificially, his work becomes entirely...

"Sophisticated"...

Yes. In Italy they say cervellotico, troppo cervellotico, it means "artificial, contrived." Such work does not move anyone. So a mutual understanding between the author and the audience, without which work of art does not exist, is possible only when the creator is being honest. Which doesn't imply an honest author automatically means an outstanding work, ability and talent remain the basic prerequisites, without artist's honesty, however, true artistic creation is impossible. I believe if one tells the truth, some kind of inner truth, one will always be understood. You see what I'm saying? — even when the problems shown are most complex, the sequence of images, formal structure of the work most complicated — for the creator the fundamental problem will always be honesty.

Concerning its structure, Mirror for me is in general the most complicated of my films — as a structure, not as a fragment considered separately but precisely as a construction; its dramaturgy is extraordinarily complex, convoluted.

For example, it was very important for me to have my mother in some scenes. There is one episode in the film in which the boy, Ignat, is sitting... not Ignat... what was his name?

— the author's son, he is sitting in his father's empty room, in the present, in our times. This is the narrator's son although the boy plays both the author's son and the author himself when he was a boy. And as he is sitting there we hear the doorbell, he opens the door and a woman enters and she says: "Oh, I think I've got the wrong place" — she was at the wrong door. This is my mother. And she is the grandmother of this boy who opens the door for her. But why doesn't she recognise him, why doesn't the grandson recognise her? — one has completely no idea. That is — firstly, this wasn't explained by the plot, in the screenplay, and secondly — even for me this was unclear.

Not everything in life is understandable Just like the structure of and clear...

No, for me it is — how can I put dreams or reminiscences. After it — coming to terms with various all this is not just a regular ret- emotional bonds. It was extremely rospection. important for me to see the face of Right. This is not a regular retrospection. There are many such complications there which I don't even completely understand myself.

my mother, this is a story about her after all, who enters the doorway uneasily, kind of timidly, a bit à la Dostoievsky, à la the Marmyeladovs. She

says then to her grandson: "I think I've got the wrong place." Can you imagine this psychological state? It was important for me to see my mother in this condition, to see her face when she is confused, when she feels timid, ashamed. But I understood it too late to compose some precise subplot, to

write the screenplay in such a way as to make it clear why she didn't recognise him — whether it was because her eyesight was bad... It would have been a very easy thing to explain this.

But I simply said to myself: I'm not going to invent anything. Let her open the door, enter, not recognise her son

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humiliation, certain feeling of being brought down. And when one puts this side by side with the scenes of her youth — this episode reminds me then of another one: when as a young woman she comes to that doctor to sell her the earrings. She is standing in the rain, she is explaining some-

thing, talking about something, why in the rain? What for?

Perhaps it would be much better if there were no riddles of this sort.

But there are several episodes like that completely with no explanation, incomprehensible, we just have no idea what they mean. For example, people would say: "and who is this older woman sitting over there asking him to read the letter from Pushkin to Chaadayev?

What woman is this? Akhmatova?" — Everybody says that.

She in fact does look a bit like her, she has the same profile and she could remind her. The woman is played by Tamara Ogorodnikova, our production manager, she was in fact already our production manager for Rublov, she is our great friend whom I photographed in almost all my films. She was like a talisman to me. I didn't think this was Akhmatova. For me she was a person from "there" who represents a continuation of certain cultural traditions, she is attempting at all cost to tie this boy to them, tie them to a person who is young and lives in this day and age. This is very important, in brief — it's a certain tendency, certain cultural roots. Here is this house, here is the man who lives

in it, the author, and here is his son who somehow is influenced by this atmosphere, those roots. After all it is not precisely delineated who this woman is. Why Akhmatova? — A bit pretentious. This isn't any Akhmatova.

Simply put, it is precisely this woman who mends the torn thread of time — just as in Shakespeare, in Hamlet.

She restores it in a cultural, spiritual sense. It's a bond between modern times and the times past, the time of Pushkin or perhaps a later time — it doesn't matter.

A very important, most important experience I gained with this film was that it turned out to be as important to the audience as it was to me. And it didn't matter that it was a story only about our family and nothing else. Thanks to this experience I saw and I understood many things.

This film proved there was a bond between me as a director, as an artist if you will, and the people for whom I worked. That's why this film turned out to be so important to me because when I understood that, nobody could complain to me that I did not make films for people. Although everybody complained about it later anyway. But I couldn't make this complaint to myself anymore.

Your life and that of your family did not shape according to typical requirements of realism. It wasn't very typical — although viewers found in it, as you mention, a reflected image of their own lives. What have your parents, your home, your closest family circle, given you? And later, what was the source of your artistic and cultural inspiration? We ask this question because for a Polish viewer Russian artists are people with no biography — this is very characteristic — while western artists frequently have

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[sic] and the boy won't recognise her, and in this state she will leave and close the door. It's a state of human soul which is particularly close to me, a state of some kind of despondency, spiritual restriction — it was important for me to see this. It's a portrait of a human being in a state of certain

almost nothing but biography.

You know — this is correct, but also incorrect. You are right and also wrong in a sense. You are wrong about Russian artists in the sense that you take no notice of original stories of their lives. Of course, if one draws a parallel with modern artists then perhaps you are right. But I never drew parallels between myself and present-day artists. I have always felt somehow connected with artists of the 19th century. And if you take for example Tolstoy, Dostoievsky, other writers from this circle, Chekhov, Turgenev, Lermontov or, say, Bunin — then you'll see how unique their lives were and how closely their works were connected with those lives, with their fate.

Naturally, what I have said does not mean I'm completely removing myself, so to speak, from the context of the culture of the '60s, '70s, and '80s in the Soviet Union. This is not the case. But I am categorically against opinions that suddenly some gulf opened after the revolution. This gulf was intentionally created in order to begin some new stage in the development of Russian culture. But I believe no culture can develop in vacuum. We can try to transplant some precious plant, pluck and transplant it.

But it won't grow, nothing will grow.

That's why the writers at the turning point experienced their fates so tragically, those who began writing before the revolution and continued their work afterwards: Alexei Tolstoy, Gorky, Mayakovsky, Blok. That's the drama. Bunin... This is in general a whole terrible drama. Akhmatova...

God knows who else. Tragedy. Tsvetaeva... Nothing was gained, the transplant was an impossibility. And there should have been no transplant.

One simply should have never allowed this terrible experiment on culture. Such vivisections are even more cruel than violations of human body as they imprison the spirit.

Take Platonov for example. He completely belongs to the period,

let's say, of the development of the Soviet period in Russia. And he is a typically Russian writer. His life is of course one of a kind and it reflected sharply on his works. So you are not completely right. And when you talk about me in this context then my ties with classic Russian culture are very important to me. This culture naturally had its continuation and it has it to this day. I don't think it's dead. I was one of those artists who through their life and work attempted — perhaps even unconsciously — to realise this bond between Russia's past and future. The loss of this bond would be fatal to me, I could not exist without it. It is always the artist who ties the past with the future. He lives not just at a certain instant, he is a medium so to speak, a ferryman from the past into the future.

What can I say then about my family here? My father is a poet.

He was quite a young boy when the revolution came and one cannot really say he was an adult before the revolution. That wouldn't be correct at all. He grew up already during Soviet times. He was born in 1906, so in 1917 he was 11 years old, he was a completely immature boy. But he was familiar with the cultural tradition, he was educated. He graduated from the Bryusov Literary Institute and he knew many, almost all of the leading Russian poets. Of course one cannot imagine him apart from Russian poetic tradition, from that line of Blok, Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Pasternak, Zabolotsky. This was for me very important, in certain way I received all this from my father.

I was brought up by my parents, especially by my mother because my father left her when I was 3 years old.

That's why in reality I was brought up by my mother. It would be difficult to say anything definite about my father's influence on me as a poet.

He influenced me more in some biological sense at an unconscious level — although I'm not a Freud fan. I'm absolutely not a Freud fan. Jung does

not suit me either. Freud is simply a vulgar materialist. Same as Pavlov only from a different angle. His theory is merely one possible materialistic variant of explaining human psychology.

I think my father had no influence on me, inner influence. I owe everything mainly to my mother. It was she who helped me find myself. And even in the film one can clearly see our living conditions were very tough, very difficult. Such were the times.

Then my mother was left alone, I was 3 years old, my sister 1 year and a half and mother was bringing us up simply all the way, she never married, she was always with us. She didn't marry for the second time, she loved her husband, my father, all her life. She was an amazing woman, really a saint. In the beginning she was completely unprepared for life, in no way. And then around this completely defenceless woman the whole world collapsed, i.e. firstly, she had no profession as she had two children. Both parents were studying at the Bryusov Institute but my mother was then pregnant with my sister and she got no diploma, nothing. She had no time to find herself as an educated woman, prepared. She tried her hand at literature, I've seen samples of her prose, etc. She could have realised herself completely differently were it not for that catastrophe that beset her.

So we really had no means, my mother got a job simply as a proofreader at a publishing house and she worked there to the end, i.e., still after the war, for a long time, until she had an opportunity to retire. I cannot comprehend at all how she managed, how she withstood it, even physically... It's incomprehensible. How did she manage to provide education for us? I finished a school of painting and sculpting in Moscow and you had to pay for it. Where did she get the money from? I have also finished a music school and took lessons from a teacher paid by my mother.

That was before the war?

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then — I did not fully understand what it was about. I thought I was making a film about myself, like Tolstoy who wrote Childhood, Boyhood and Youth when he lived in Odessa — he wrote about himself. And only when I finished the film I understood it was not about me but about my mother. This is a film which — from my point of view — became in this way considerably more noble-minded than its original idea. The change which ennobled this idea so perfectly occurred during the work on film, that is to say the film began with me as I was the eye of those recollections so to speak; but then something completely different turned out. And the longer I worked on the film the more obvious it was to me what this film was about.

When I left the cinema I was thinking that here was a film made as a poem, that it was — a cinematic impossibility it would seem — an intimate lyrical monologue.

Perhaps, I don't know. I wasn't thinking then about form at all, I wasn't trying to invent anything special. What I was after was a resurrection in memory, or rather not in

memory but on screen, things that were important to me. And in general the most important thing was to take just this path and not the path of, say, Alain Resnais who constructs his recollections, or Robbe-Grillet to take an example from modern literature. A very important aspect of artistic creation for a Russian artist has always been not making it more beautiful but a sense of moral obligation.

What is your relation to the great Russian cinema tradition?

Who are your masters?

And what does it mean the great Russian cinema?

Eisenstein, Pudovkin...

Ah yes. Yes... You know, for me Dovzhenko and Pudovkin are much more important than Eisenstein.

As the creator of Ivan the Terrible and Alexander Nevsky?

In general. By the way, Eisenstein was a director completely misunderstood by Soviet leaders, especially

by Stalin. Misunderstood — because had Stalin understood the essence

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That was before, during, and after the war. I was supposed to become a musician but this didn't appeal to me. I cannot understand at all how all this was possible. One could say: well, of course, there must have been some means, a child in an educated family, etc., naturally. — Well, there was nothing natural in this because we walked literally barefoot. In the summer we didn't wear shoes at all, we hadn't any. In the winter I wore felt boots, and my mother when she needed to go outside... we... — poverty is not even the right word, this was worse than destitution. Totally incomprehensible, she... Incomprehensible. If it wasn't for her, none of this would have happened of course. I simply owe everything to my mother.

Because of that she obviously had a very strong influence on me — influence is not even the right word — simply the whole world is for me connected with my mother. Except I didn't really realise this while she was alive.

And only later, when she died, I suddenly became aware of this. What's more, even when I was making that film — of course she was still alive

of Eisenstein's work he'd never have started to persecute him. This is a total mystery to me. I know how it happened, more or less I have an idea.

Eisenstein was brilliant, thoroughly educated; at that time in cinema no director was so educated, so intelligent. Cinema was made by young boys then, typically self-taught, with no formal education at all, they came to cinema sort of straight from the revolution.

But there were emotions...

Oh yes, there were emotions...

Revolutionary pathos, hopes for the future, some constructive cultural transformation... In general it was a good thing... Eisenstein was one of the few, perhaps the only one who appreciated the significance of tradition, he knew what continuity was, cultural heritage. But he didn't absorb it, in his heart, he was over-intellectualised, he was a terrible rationalist, cold, calculated, directed only by reason. He tried his constructions on paper first. Like a calculator. He drew everything. Not that he drew film frames but that he would think everything over and then he'd cram it all inside the frame. He didn't draw from life, life didn't influence him in any way. What influenced him was ideas which he constructed, transformed into some form, as a rule completely lifeless, rigid as iron, very formal, dry, devoid of any feeling.

Film form, its formal features, photography, light, atmosphere — none of it existed for him at all, it all had this thought-out character, whether some quotes from paintings or other contrived compositions.This was in a sense a typical concept of synthetic cinema, where cinema appeared as a union of graphic arts, painting, theatre, music, and everything else — except cinema as such wasn't there.

As if the sum of all these parts were to result in this new art.

To put it mildly — it's a huge misunderstanding as cinema is governed by its own specific character which distinguishes it from other

Ah, then I know him, that's arts. Eisenstein didn't succeed in exPavlik Morozov. pressing through his art what we call Well, that's exactly who I'm talkthe specific art of cinema, he utilised a bit of everything and didn't notice ing about. what was specific to cinematography.

But I don't know this film.

Had he noticed, he'd have cut, thrown Here is the hero of the film whom aside all remaining types of art and Eisenstein presented as a saint, as a would have left only "it" in it.

There is, however, this film victim, a holy victim, a martyr who gave his life for idea. And Eisenstein about Mexico... is losing himself, suddenly it appears Yes, I've seen this material he is on the verge of a catastrophe. I abroad. To me it seems very weak, don't understand it. It's like everything naive — the acting, character devel- is just backwards. He was searching opment, stage situations. That's poor for a possibility to strengthen certain theatre, a poster of a terribly naive ideas that were in the air at that time design. and later prevailed. And all of a sudBut let's consider Ivan the Ter- den they are rejecting it. rible for example. I cannot understand Although... This should be told — at all why the first part of this film the history of this film was as follows. was, as you know, approved, it was When Eisenstein began shooting it, praised while the second part was his friends, colleagues, warned the resoundingly condemned. Why?! I authorities that Eisenstein was makcannot comprehend it. It talked about ing some anti-Soviet film. Formalistic the oprichnina as well, he was talk- and anti-Soviet with some suspicious ing precisely about that, justification mysticism added to the mix, someof terror, of the oprichnina which was thing along these lines. A frightened cutting heads right and left, boyars' cinematography administration deheads especially. Eisenstein in this nounced this to Stalin. There was a film sided with reinforcing autocracy, calculation in it. And Stalin ordered with strengthening of centralised the materials brought to the Kremlin. power. It was clear even for the blind He watches the material and he sees what this film was about. And sud- something on fire, barrels are rolldenly instead of showering him with ing down an incline from the second gold and medals they begin to perse- floor, an attempt to save the kolkhoz cute him for this film. A total mystery. goods which the kulaks — naturally Then he makes his next film (and I — had set on fire. The barrels are rollwon't even mention Alexander Nevsky ing down from a shed on fire, once, as here everything is obvious, the de- twice, three times, in a close-up, in a sire to satisfy society's expectations long shot, from a high angle, from a is clear) titled Bezhin Meadow. low angle... After a while Stalin could not stand it any longer: Enough of this I don't know this one. scandal! And he left the room. From What do you mean you don't my point of view Eisenstein, being know? You should know it if you one of the greatest theorists and indiask me about Eisenstein. He was a vidualities of the Soviet cinema, was 1920s and '30s hero, the time of col- simply done for by his colleagues. lectivisation, he was a boy, a school- Because I knew the people, I used to boy who was a Pioneer [Boy Scout] meet the people who at those unendand whose bad luck was to be from ing meetings were accusing him of a kulak family. And he became, how formalism and ideological deviation, should I describe it, a kind of Soviet they shouted, they demanded selfsaint because he denounced his own accusation from him. I know them, parents to the authorities.

I discussed this subject with them.

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They looked completely different after the 20th Congress, they presented themselves as colleagues who defended him, they were telling some fairy tales about Eisenstein, claimed they were his friends. And all of them were trampling him with their own feet. Most of them. I know this very well from those people themselves.

Well, that's how it was... These are very strange life stories.

And Dovzhenko?

Dovzhenko is certainly closest to my heart because he felt nature like nobody else, he was really attached to earth. This is for me very important in general. Of course here I have in mind the early Dovzhenko from his silent

important. After all Soviet filmmak- great attention to them, he strived to ers could not feel nature at all, they find himself in nature. didn't understand it, it didn't resonate Would you agree to call your with them in any way, it didn't mean films Romantic? anything. Dovzhenko was the only No, I would not. director who did not tear cinematographic image away from the atmoYet we find in them such sphere, from this earth, from this life, recurring motifs as Romantic etc. For other directors all that was a background, more or less natural, journeys in search of one's a rigid background while for him this identity, absolute values; we was the element, he somehow felt in- are dealing with sacralisation ternally connected with nature's life. of the world, search for the sa-

Currently one such artist who is sensitive to nature, feeling it, is probably Shukshin in The Red Cranberry Tree for example.

cred, mythologising of events; finally, we have faith in the original purity of the spiritual culture an artist is to express.

The spirit of all this is very Romantic.

You said it very beautifully but I get the impression what you've characterised here isn't Romanticism at all. What you've just described has absolutely nothing to do with it. I guess Romanticism... Whenever I hear the word "Romanticism" I get frightened. Because Romanticism is an attempt... it's not even an attempt, it is a way of expressing a world view, a perception of reality in which man sees in real events, in the real world, more than there really is. Thus when you mention something sacred, search for truth, etc. — for me this...

This isn't Romanticism?

Ah yes, yes... Of course, he could feel nature, having grown up in the country he could not but feel and understand it. He lived it, definitely. But Dovzhenko had the ability to show it, Shukshin couldn't show it at all, one can at most surmise it. His landscapes lack artistry, they are commonplace sometimes, they enter his films as if accidentally. But Dovzhenko paid

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period — he meant a lot to me. I'm thinking above all about his concept of spiritualisation of nature, this sort of pantheism. In some sense — not literally of course — I feel very close to pantheism. And pantheism has left a strong mark on Dovzhenko, he loved nature very much, he was able to see and feel it. This is what was so meaningful to me, I consider it very

This isn't Romanticism because I do not make reality larger than it is. For me reality is in general much greater than what I can find in it, much deeper and more sacred than I'm able to perceive. Romanticists thought life was much richer than what they could see, i.e. they were guessing, they believed life was not so plain, that there was depth in it, a lot of what we call the exotic, metaphysics, what in itself escapes our cognizance, what cannot be grasped through knowledge. They were guessing it, were attempting to express it. Let me use an example: there are people who can see an aura,

a certain multi-coloured glow around human body, those people have certain senses developed to a higher degree than most people. I spoke not too long ago to one such man in Berlin, a Chinese — he could treat you, he knows perfectly well what your condition is, how you feel, what are your problems — he can see all this in the aura.

This phenomenon was confirmed by the Kirlian photography.

fectly. But if someone said he could see the "starry hosts of heaven" and an angel flying around, it would be a sanitised, allegorical form, totally untrue, removed from life. But that's the key, Dovzhenko could see it because he was a poet, life for him was much fuller, filled with spirituality, than for those who searched in reality around them merely an addition, a supplement to their own creative activities.

For a romanticist life provides a mere reason to create while for a poet creation is a necessity because from the very beginning the spirit that's alive in him demands that. Thus an artist, a poet — as opposed to a romanticist — understands better than anybody else that he becomes God-like. That's logical. This is what ability to create is all about. It's as if this ability was assumed from the very beginning, it does not belong to man. A romanticist on the other hand would always attempt to find in his talent, in his own creative activities, some particular beauty.

Yes, these experiments are related to it — but such person simply can see this aura with his own eyes while romanticists tried to invent it, to guess that it should exist — while a poet can see it.

You might say: but there were poets amongst romanticists. Of course, I'm not denying it. There was Hoffmann whom I simply adore, there was Lermontov, Tyutchev, one of the deepest, a staggering poet, there were many of them... It's all true. But can we really call them romanticists?

Or a mission.

— They are not romanticists, absolutely they are not romanticists. And A mission. Beautiful. Here I would Hoffmann is a romanticist. So when agree with you completely. they tell me: Romanticism... ObviousThere is a word in Polish, ly — the form used by these artists "wieszcz," we say for example becomes sort of dignified, enlarged, beautified, ennobled. I think life is that Adam Mickiewicz was the beautiful enough, there is enough nation's "wieszcz," a prophet, a depth and spirituality in it that it's not seer who revealed before the necessary to change anything — it is nation concealed truths... us who should take care of our own development, in the spiritual sense, Yes, yes, yes. Except this isn't instead of attempting to make real- Romanticism. ity more beautiful. Therefore this RoHow so? mantic costume results from a lack of faith within man or faith mostly in Also Pushkin was someone like products of one's own imagination. that, and later many artists as well, they are present even today and they That's solipsism. serve... I believe that Romanticism — Yes. For me personally Romanti- in a narrower sense — manifests itcism, or at least one of its important self when an artist is intoxicated with ingredients, seems something quite self-adoration, he creates himself in different. Well, Dovzhenko once said his art. That's a Romantic trait I find very aptly that even in a muddy pud- abhorrent. Also this self-confirmation, dle he could see stars reflecting. This this unending self-presentation is sort of image I can understand per- not a result of his art, it is its goal.

This is something I do not find very agreeable and in general this is the Romanticism I don't like, stuffy, terribly pretentious, pretentious paintings, artistic concepts, etc. As in Schiller when the hero travels on two swans.

Remember that? That's kitsch. That's simply kitsch. By the way, in Russia, and I think in Poland, there were never artists who would talk so much about themselves as Novalis, as Kleist, Byron, Schiller, Wagner.

But this is Romantic individualism, one of the main distinguishing features of Romanticism.

That's egocentrism, thinking only within the bounds of "And what else is there for me?", that's terrible pretentiousness, a need to make oneself the centre of the universe. The polar opposite is another world, the world of poetry which I think of as Eastern, as Eastern culture. Take for example the music of Wagner or, I don't know, Beethoven — that's an unending monologue about oneself: look how poor I am, all in rags, how miserable, what Job I am, how unhappy, how I suffer — like nobody else — I suffer like the antique Prometheus... and here is how I love, and here is how I... You understand? I, I, I, I. — Not too long ago I deliberately listened to music from the 6th century B.C., it was classical Chinese ritual music. It offers absolute dissolution of individual in nothingness, in nature, in cosmos.

That's the polar opposite in quality.

Whenever an artist sort of dissolves himself in a work of art, when he himself disappears without a trace, this then is unbelievable poetry.

I'll quote an example which I find utterly spellbinding. In mediaeval Japan there lived many painters who would find shelter at shoguns' courts or stay with some feudal lords — Japan was partitioned into many provinces back then — and they were excellent artists, highly praised, they would reach heights of fame. And having attained this, many of them would

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suddenly disappear, walk away. They would disappear completely and then reappear at another shogun's court as completely unknown individuals, under different names, and they would begin from scratch the career of a court painter creating works in a totally different style. And in this manner some of them would live five or six lifetimes.

Humility...

This is not humility. One could, I suppose, call it humility but I would rather use a different word — for me this is almost like a prayer in which my own "I" has no significance. Because the talent bestowed upon me was given from on high and — if I'm indeed given this talent — I'm somehow distinguished. And if I'm distinguished it means I should serve it, I'm a slave, not the centre of the universe — it's all clear. You quite rightly mentioned humility but this is something much more important than humility.

Now we are close to Andrei Rublov...

doubt about that. Alosha Karamazov — yes, of course. He is also always on a path — but he is no romanticist.

That's why when you say "man always on a path" — this isn't necessarily a defining feature of Romanticism, that's not what's most important in Romanticism.

When we talked about your heroes we called them wanderers, pilgrims. And here is a question: for your hero, wanderer, pilgrim, is there any chance to break through the threatening him chaos of events? Time is merciless in your works, it turns everything into ruin: time and events harm and annihilate the characters, everything material. Do you believe in permanence of values such as faihtfulness, a sense of one's dignity, the right to individual self-realisation?

Hmm. It's difficult to call this a Indeed, he was after all a religious question, it's more like a multitude of man, a monk... various problems you've listed. It's But the characters in your very difficult for me to answer such films are like Romantic heroes, a broadly formulated question. On the one hand you mention the merciless they are always on a path and time which annihilates the characters this journey-pilgrimage be- — and then you say: "and everything comes initiation: for example material." That's not very clear to me.

Stalker is built around a typical- After all those characters are not exly Romantic initiation pattern. clusively "material." Everything material undergoes destruction but these In that case... I don't think you characters are not only matter — first would claim Dostoievsky was a ro- and foremost they are spirit. manticist? But he is no romanticist — Of course. as shown by his epoch, his outlook on life. Yet his heroes are always on That's why I always thought it ima path too. portant — to the extent human spirit is indestructible — to show matter, More like in a labyrinth. which is subject to decay, destrucDoesn't matter. It's always the tion — as opposed to spirit which same story of man searching, march- is indestructible. You won't find it in ing towards his goal, like Diogenes Rublov yet; although we obviously with his lantern. Raskolnikov in Crime are dealing with destruction, annihilaand Punishment — that was the same tion there but this is in a sense moral thing of course, not the slightest destruction, not opposition of the

spiritual against the physical. While in Stalker or even, say, already in Mirror — we have for example this house which doesn't exist anymore and perhaps a touch of the spirit of the place which remains forever. The mother, when she goes outside — remember that? — always remains the same. It was important for me to show that this figure or soul of the mother was

immortal. And the rest undergoes decay; this is of course sad — as a soul feels sad sometimes watching itself leaving the body. There is some nostalgic longing in it, an astral sadness. It is also self-evident to me that this destruction does not concern the characters, only objects. That's why it was important to obtain this contrast — so as to present reality from the perspective of transitoriness, if not

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that one entered the path to accomplish it in the first place. Why doesn't it matter where he arrived? Because the path is infinite. And the journey has no end. Because of that it is of absolutely no consequence whether you are standing near the beginning or near the end already — before you there is a journey that will never end.

And if you didn't enter the path — the

journey, also metaphorically, then one has to say that it is in fact unimportant where one arrived, what's important is to embark upon a journey.

most important thing is to enter it.

Here lies the problem. That's why for me what's important is not so much the path but the moment at which a man enters it, enters any path.

In Stalker, for example, the Stalker himself is perhaps not so important to me, much more important is the Writer who went to the Zone as a cynic, just a pragmatist, and returned as a man who speaks of human dig-

In Stalker, for example...

Always, under all circumstances. And in Stalker? Perhaps, I don't know. But I wanted to say something else — that what is important is not what one accomplished after all but

nity, who realised he was not a good man. For the first time he even faces this question, is man good or bad?

And if he has already thought of it — he thus enters the path... And when the Stalker says that all his efforts were wasted, that nobody understood anything, that nobody needed him — he is mistaken because the Writer understood everything. And because of that the Stalker himself is not even so important.

Something else is interesting in this context. I wanted to make another film, a sequel to Stalker in which... — This was possible only in Russia, in the Soviet Union, it's impossible now because the Stalker and his wife would have to be played by the same actors. Something else is important here: that he changes, he doesn't believe anymore that people could go to this happiness, towards the happiness of self-transformation, an inner change. And he begins to change them by force, he begins to force and kidnap them to the Zone by means of some swindles — in order to make their lives better. He turns into a fascist. And here we have how an ideal can — for purely ideological reasons — turn into its negation; when the goal already justifies the means man changes. He leads three men to the Zone by force — this is what I wanted to show in the second film — and he does not shy away even from bloodshed in order to accomplish his goal. This is already the idea of the Grand Inquisitor, those who take on themselves sin in the name of, so to speak...

Salvation.

Salvation. This is what Dostoievsky had been writing about all the time.

In Demons...

In Demons and in The Brothers Karamazov. In Demons he even didn't write about that — there he in general negates the first impulse, whatever it could be, even a most noble one... He

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for its having grown old, outliving its time, and its existence at a particular time in general — while man always remains the same, or more appropriately, does not remain the same but develops, to infinity.

You talk about dignity. Obviously dignity is very important, most important. And you talk about the path, the journey. If we are to talk about a

negates even that.

That's Demons.

Yes, that's Demons. But in The Brothers Karamazov he wrote about socialism, exactly about all those people who take on themselves the sin of violence in the name of happiness of the masses.

Or in the name of some ideas or other.

Or ideas. That's not important. In this sense what's much more important for me is not the path itself — which is also important, of course — but in general the topic of those who enter or do not enter the path, they undertake a journey or they do not.

So all these aspects I'm listing here are naturally important to me.

All human traits are to me extremely important: dignity, freedom... Internal freedom — since as you are aware political freedom and spiritual freedom are two different concepts. When we speak of political freedom then in fact we do not mean freedom — we mean rights. The right to live in a way that's agreeable to our conscience, that we think of as necessary. The right to serve society — as we ourselves understand this task. The right to feel free. The rights. And some duties, naturally. One must have rights regardless of anything else. But when we talk about freedom, we have in mind... I don't know — if you want to be free you are always free. We know that people even in prison can be free.

One should also never link freedom with progress, this absolutely cannot be done. Since the beginning of human consciousness and individuality man could either be free or not free — in the inner sense of the word. That's why when we talk about freedom we shouldn't confuse the topics of rights and freedom, inner, spiritual freedom.

Here they don't understand anything of what I say on the subject.

Not too long ago I was at one such meeting and then they wrote in the newspapers: it's very strange that

Tarkovsky should talk about some spirituality. Of course — for them it is strange, they simply have no idea, they don't understand what I'm saying. They cannot comprehend that I'm talking about spirituality in the sense that man ought to know why he lives, ought to think about the meaning of his life. One who began thinking about that has been in certain sense illuminated with some spiritual light, this question will not be forgotten again, thrown away, he has embarked upon a path. However, if he never asked himself this question, he is deprived of spirituality, he lives pragmatically, like an animal. And he'll never understand anything. They understand none of this. And when it is a journalist who writes that — I am simply shocked. He is certainly thinking: since spirituality is mentioned, this is certainly something about the Orthodox Church, about some clericalism almost. For him there absolutely do not exist questions of human soul or of a moral effort man should perform during his lifetime.

They seem slaves to freedom, slaves to progress.

Yes, yes, yes. For him the notion of freedom...

Is a value.

Clearly. And by the way, if I asked him what freedom was he'd never give me an answer because he doesn't know. Because he doesn't know what to do with it, with this freedom.

But I digress. The question wasn't stated this way. But this issue is extremely important to me. I was never proposing the question of human rights, this does not interest me.

I'm interested in the problem of inner freedom.

This is indeed an absolutely fundamental problem. And now — with your permission — a small provocation. What is your opinion — in this day and age is an artist, director, a prophet,

a Moses leading his people to the Promised Land, or is he a Moralist (with a capital "M") fulfilling his mission, or perhaps a craftsman selling his goods, or finally a "spiritual aristocrat"? Don't you perhaps resent people's attachment to material things, to small consumer pleasures? Wouldn't you rather see them wearing penitent's garb?

I think in order to limit somehow the breadth of these aspects it makes sense to consider this question from a general and at the same time fundamental perspective, i.e., I could sketch here artist's general function, his role, place in society.

Naturally my opinion is that before all else an artist expresses ideas ripening within the society he lives in. In brief, he appears a kind of medium, expressing ideas which society itself engenders. But society cannot be an artist. An artist after all is an individual, a personality; he is like a nation's personification precisely because he turns out to be the nation's voice, its product. And it so happens sometimes that the nation, people and the society, do not even accept this artist, sometimes they chase him away, sometimes they do not understand, and they comprehend him only many, many years later. But this isn't important, it means only one thing: that they do not know themselves, they do not know their own problems.

And because of that an artist can never oppose his own culture, his own people, by no means he can oppose it; even when he expresses concepts containing ideas unacceptable to the contemporary society it doesn't mean these ideas did not originate inside, within that society. The society hadn't yet enough time to become aware of these problems and the artist as a rule is not consciously aware of them either — he just expresses them, he can feel them. Precisely because he expresses them. Because he is not

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they should not do. Taking any positions in art — leftist, rightist — this is all such nonsense as, as... to be completely meaningless. An artist can be made your supporter in a political sense only much la-a-a-a-ater, la-a-aa-ater, when he is dead already, when only his books or films are alive. And it can be like this: "See what he was saying? — same thing we are saying."

And later, say next year everything changes and it turns out he was saying something completely different, something that caught the attention of some second or third guy. In brief — an artist has no right, that is not that he has no right, he has no instrument which would make him any closer to his people's needs than he already is. He can only believe that God will grant him the possibility of eventually being needed by the nation. Whether he succeeds or not — this is something he does not know and cannot know at this moment.

From this vantage point cinema is a very dangerous art because it is expected to be immediately successful.

There is no time.

There is no time. Success has to come immediately. And that's why very often a filmmaker's success does not mean at all that his inner world is, so to speak, worthy of his times and his contemporaries, contemporary problems — and of his people — let's put it this way.

Then we have a question...

Good. But I haven't answered yet any of the previous questions. So I'd like to tell you one more thing regarding all this; of course, you say: prophet. What does it mean: prophet? Let's say they frequently call Dostoievsky a prophet. Well, yes, but he could be called that.

He had this imperative. A prophetic imperative.

Yes, but Pushkin also had a prophetic imperative as he wrote about it himself as you know — in Prophet,

this magnificent poem that sinks into the mind. But you are right, completely right. Of course: a prophet, an artist is a prophet, and usually the kind of prophet which is not accepted in his homeland. Well, let's take Pushkin for example. He was a poet, he was popular in his small circle. And there weren't too many among his friends — or not even his friends, his contemporaries — who would say "he is a genius." He's only a poet, Pushkin. And nobody spoke of him like us today when we speak of this genius of ours. When Chopin composed his etudes he was simply a musician.

But today we hear: that's the soul of the nation, that's a unique phenomenon — considering its poetry and the subtlety of its spiritual structure — he has no equals whatsoever in European culture, that's an astonishing phenomenon. You understand? And when he was alive... they were just a group of friends, George Sand and everybody else, etc.

Life, just life itself.

Just life itself, somehow more elegant but most of the time frightening, difficult. That's why, well...

Or let's say Dostoievsky. In the beginning Dostoievsky was elevated to the top by this... Bielinsky who would later attack him. The terrible Bielinsky — from my point of view.

In brief, no one is ever able to predict this or that poet's stature in the future. Of course if he is a prophet, the voice of his people, if he possesses an inner spiritual instinct, if he personifies his people's spirtual summit, his nation's soul — then obviously he cannot be anything else but a prophet.

He definitely should be one.

What is prophet? Prophet is a work, a creation of people. It means the artist is himself a result, he is created by people in the same way works of art are created. As God created the nation, the nation creates the artist, and he creates his works. Perhaps you know this excellent short novel by Borges about God and Shakespeare...

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necessarily wiser beyond his times but he can sense more. He frequently does not understand what he is saying. He repeats words after the adults as a child, repeats without understanding and then the adults say: "Oh my, what is he saying? Did you hear that? Go stand in the corner! Get lost!" Or they give him a thrashing.

And they beat him up for repeating the words he heard at home. And he merely grew up in this environment.

In brief, I'd like to say this: an artist's role is to be a voice of his people — not even "to be," one cannot "be," one cannot tell oneself to "be" a nation's voice — one simply is.

Naturally, there is a problem here: if you are the people's voice then say only what people demand of you. But here lies the problem, people demand of you nothing. People demand nothing of nobody. It is the artist who behaves as if something was demanded of him, expected of him. Naturally, people do expect, but unconsciously.

And exactly in the name of this duty to the public, the people, the times he lives in, he ought to always remember that he does not create for himself.

But — although he does not create for himself — he should express only what he feels intimate. Here it may turn out that ideas close to your heart, some aspects of your creative work are not needed by anybody. But in this case you have no right... here you are powerless, you can at most just wait hundred years until it becomes clear whether people needed you at all in the first place. This is something one cannot confidently state in one's own time.

It is very difficult to be both useful to the society and at the same time truthful, it is difficult to be convinced about usefulness of one's work if nobody needs it. Nevertheless, there is but one path: to do what seems proper. And time will tell. Because no one can judge one's efforts at the time they are made. That's why I abhor attempts to moralise artists, telling them what they should and what

Everything and Nothing, I were appropriating, destroying him. spiritual development. And if this is believe.

And it is in this sense when we talk so, if it's necessary to call in order Perhaps, I forget the title. At any rate, God there tells Shakespeare that he was created by God in the same way Shakespeare himself created his works. All works are permeated with the same spiritual force. So we cannot negate the reality of prophetic mission resting on artist's shoulders, by no means. But how can one thump one's chest and proclaim to all concerned "I am a prophet"? We know there were such artists. And others kept silent — or simply created.

Pushkin never said he was a genius and a prophet. He wrote a poem titled Prophet but he himself...

But now we hadn't in mind any social function of an artist.

We meant the imperative. The characters in your films...

I'm not talking about social function. I'm talking about his striving for the ideal because without the ideal an artist cannot exist. And the ideal as we know is unreachable. That's why an artist is a useless entity in a practical sense, he constantly worries about the ideal and the ideal is not a concrete thing, it cannot be utilised in any way. And this in my opinion is the drama of the contemporary society which demands practical applications of the artist. And when you try to use him this way then you break and destroy him like a toy. And nothing is left of him — here, that's what happened to Mayakovsky.

about the imperative — you talk about "spiritual aristocracy." Let's settle first — what kind of aristocracy we have in mind. Aristocracy, spiritual condition, the artist's condition... What is art? What is masterpiece? What is its meaning and condition? What does a work of art express when it is a masterpiece? It expresses a certain greatness of human spirit. It expresses the ideal this spirit is striving for. We have already mentioned that this is a reflection of hidden expectations and desires of the people. And if this is so then we are talking about a kind of summit, a peak. And when we are talking about summits and peaks, we also question accessibility, attainability of this ideal expressed through the work of art. We are thus talking about characteristic uniqueness of this phenomenon — yes or no?

to make someone develop spiritually, it means he is still far away at a relatively low stage of spiritual development. As opposed to the work of art, the masterpiece, which is at the summit, as opposed to the author who is at the summit as he reflects everything in his people's potential.

By definition.

Yes.

We talk of a certain greatness. And one can talk about greatness only when the phenomenon is surrounded by vacuum. We can talk snow-covered Because he was a "voice." about peaks only if there are Because he was a voice whose precipices and valleys, tone they wanted to guide by force. isn't this so?

Those who were presenting him with But... "society's demands," they "knew well" what people's voice ought to sound One moment. So these are differlike. Thus they were taking away ences between peaks and valleys. If something holiest in any artist: hones- this is so and if a peak symbolises ty and listening to this voice himself. an internal elevation of the soul preAnd those who directed him would served in the work of art, it means say: "we know what this voice ought this unique phenomenon came into to be and you don't." They were de- being in order to attract, beckon, priving the artist of his function, they invite somewhere, call, enable one's

Yes. What does it mean? It means those masterpieces, their function which we've defined already, appear as an ideal one ought to strive for — which in turn already implies certain aristocracy, exceptionality, elevating oneself spiritually high above everything that's low, soulless, and miserable. There exists the spirit of the people which soars above the multitude, above the blackness. Pushkin distin-

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we speak of spiritual aristocracy, art is like a hilly landscape spreading over the lowlands, art is of itself aristocratic. But aristocratic not in any sociological or historical sense but in the spiritual meaning of the word. Art wouldn't exist if it were otherwise — if it weren't an expression of striving for a higher spiritual level.

I get the impression — per-

haps I am wrong — that whenever you talk about Western audiences the tone of your remarks turns very critical.

It is not so much critical... This is criticising not so much Western audiences but the situation this audience finds itself in, the state of culture in the West. For example, for Russians, even now, culture and works of art have always carried certain spiritual, mystic, or — if you prefer — prophetic significance.

A similar understanding of culture has to a very large extent also developed in Poland. Here, in the West, culture has long ago become an object of consumption, a consumer property. What does culture mean for them? Culture is what I can have. As a result of my being free. And what does it mean free? — I am free to have what everyone here has. Does culture exist in the West? It does. Thus I can and I have the right to use it. And what does it mean: I can? Well, just — physically, pragmatically — I can. It won't even occur to him to pause and think: yes you can but are you able to digest it? Let's take Goethe for example — you read Faust — but have you been able to read it? You can, obviously you can, please go buy yourself Faust. Only you'll never buy Goethe's Faust. You'll go to the pictures where you'd rather watch a Spielberg film; and if you go to a bookshop, you'll buy a comic or some bestseller or other which one ought to buy. That's all. You won't buy Thomas Mann, you won't buy Hesse, Faulkner, Dos-

toievsky. See, this is it: you can buy everything. Yet in order to absorb culture one has to make an effort equal to artist's own when he was creating his work. And this won't even occur to such consumer. He thinks: I can go and buy; all I have to do is pay.

This is where the lack of spirituality leads. It won't occur to him that art is aristocratic — in the spiritual sense of the word, I repeat, God forbid I should use it in any other sense.

They say: élitist art. What does it mean élitist? Art always expects everyone should be able to understand, to comprehend it. It awaits this moment. Every work of art is created for this purpose. Yet they say: élitist because it is not immediately understandable. And what does it mean not understandable? Art cannot be...

Goethe said that to read a good book is as difficult as to write one. This means in order to understand the author's aim one must perform certain spiritual work. I repeat: a creative artist is not someone who opposes his people, he is an individual who serves them.

If you allow us to use your phrase — can one say that this audience has not yet started on the path leading to your films, that it still has this journey before them?

It is very difficult for me to see whether it's true or not since I don't closely follow audience reactions to my films. I know only one thing: that my films were finding their audience in the Soviet Union with great difficulty. With each film the audiences grew and finally for the last two films it was simply impossible to get the tickets.

Those films were withdrawn from distribution as soon as the management of Goskino USSR realised my films were popular. They were withdrawn immediately. First they released them hoping they flop. When they did not, they were withdrawn.

Were all your films treated

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guished blackness from the folk. We know this very well. He wrote about the blackness, by the way, including in it aristocrats and courtiers. At that time in Boris Godunov he wrote about the folk — the folk is silent... — ascribing to it some particular sense, clairvoyance enabling it to penetrate into the mysteries of history. He endowed it with traits of spirituality, of higher inner wisdom. In brief — when

this way?

Now I'm referring to the last two: Mirror and Stalker. This is how it was planned. This was a difficult path because there was only one thing I could do: be honest and speak with my own voice about things that were close to me and which I hoped would also be seen as such by the audience. In the beginning this sort of repelled the viewers, then their numbers gradually increased.

It's very strange: when I was leaving — unfortunately — the Soviet Union, my audience consisted of very young people, 16–17 years old — and they understood me. They simply understood my cinema. What does it mean: understood? It means they accepted it, it was in some sense their world. I was very happy about that.

But as a rule people my own age did not find themselves emotionally close to these films, not as much as young people. This is very strange, I am not going to try to explain it.

The same process took place in the West. In London for example they had I think five, several anyway, of my film retrospectives. And for the last one, not too long ago, a month or so, the queues were colossal. What is it? Do they understand — or do they not understand? I cannot tell exactly.

Or here in Stockholm the queues were also enormous, many people came to see my films, even now a retrospective is taking place.

I don't know. I'm in general glad to see my films in distribution but there is a great danger in becoming... well, that everybody will be watching these films. Briefly, from what we were

discussing earlier it follows that it's very dangerous to become a director with a huge success at the box office.

Very dangerous. I don't think there is anything of importance in what one is trying to convey in this case. That one has then truly arrived at a spiritual summit, progressing through stages of inner development while inviting the audience to follow. Precisely the opposite — the artist himself is slipping down to a lower level. There is no doubt about that.

Naturally, in order for cinema to exist a director has to attain popularity and this is exactly cinema's tragedy, the fact that it was born at a fair, in sin, at a marketplace. They had a contraption there, you'd look inside and you could see some girl undressing, you'd put a coin and something else would be happening. And this is

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time incredibly important because until then cinema was quite untruthful, cardboard-like, fake. Both in its external layer and in itself. In films of the Polish School the fabric itself was remarkable already, Polish filmmakers understood they were dealing with fabric of a particular kind and were not destroying it. Earlier cinema had not differentiated the fabric of the image, it was all taped over with veneer, wallpaper, some drapery, well, you know — papier-mâché, and naturally shot in the studio. And they suddenly turned to pure nature, mud, dilapidated walls, to actors' faces with the make-up removed. Some completely different feeling was penetrating the image, a different rhythm — and this was very important for us then.

Speaking of connections with Polish culture, could you tell us why you based one of your films on Stanislaw Lem's Solaris? What attracted you to that novel?

Has Polish art and Polish I think very highly of Stanislaw cinema influenced your work in Lem and I like his works very much. I any way? read them whenever I can, everything Influenced? Of course, when I was studying at the VGIK Polish cinema experienced an extraordinary rise, it was a period of blossoming linked with names like the young Wajda, Andrzej Munk, and others.

I can, I read and I like his prose but it so happens that — and I'm sorry to say this — he does not like too much, does not understand, what cinema is.

That's why during our time working together we were unequal partners. I loved his books beyond all measure The Polish School. while he was entirely indifferent toThe Polish School. It was known wards my films. In brief, he would around the world and it could not but always think that he as a writer... that influence us as well. Particularly im- literature existed. pressive was the photography, the That literature was most imcinematic manner of perception of the portant. world as it was shown by e.g. Wójcik, I don't know. Not most important the cameraman who worked with Wajda and also with Munk, I think. — but that it existed — as a fact. As Ashes and Diamonds was for us a does music, poetry, painting. But he revelation, for many of us. All this could not comprehend cinema and he was very influential and very inspir- still does not to this day. He doesn't ing. Especially the relation to truthful- know what it is. There are many ness in life expressed in those films, people like that, even very intelligent poetisation arising from photography ones, who thoroughly know literature, based on naturalism. This was at that poetry, music but they do not consid-

er cinema an art. Either they think cinema hasn't been born yet or they do not feel it, they cannot see the trees in the forest — in the sense they cannot distinguish between true and commercial cinema. And apparently Lem does not seriously treat cinema as art. That's why he believed we should have followed his novel in the screenplay, should have simply illustrated it.

This I could not do. In this case he should have approached not me but a director who was an "illustrator."

They make those "living paintings."

Yes, we all know the type.

Only they create dead paintings most of the time.

There are directors like this, those who follow the writer scrupulously illustrating his work. There are many pictures of this type and they usually all look alike. Because it's a mere illustration everything is dead there, it has no life, in and of itself it has no artistic value. It's a mere reflection, something secondary to the literary original. And this is what Lem was expecting. If indeed he was expecting this. It is something I cannot understand. It's very strange to presume he had this kind of expectation but it's precisely his attitude towards film art that put him in the position of a man expecting exactly this result, an illustration — although he perhaps didn't want it at all. But he would invariably oppose any divergence between our screenplay and the exact narrative of the novel. He would become indignant whenever we invented a new thread.

At that time we had a screenplay variant which I was very fond of. In it almost all action took place on Earth, more than half of it, i.e., this whole prehistory with Harey, why she "came into existence" over there on Solaris.

It was reminiscent of Crime and Punishment and was of course completely at odds with Lem's original idea because I was interested in issues of inner life, spiritual issues so to speak,

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the tragedy — because cinema hasn't changed one bit since then. One has to make money in order to make more films. It's completely different with other arts. One can write a book sitting at home — like Kafka who wrote but published nothing. But the book has been written.

In brief: the question of relation towards the viewer and of popularity in general is very complex. And very frequently it depends not upon problems and tasks the artist imposes on himself but upon the tasks the producers, the money, impose on the artist. Perhaps sometime in the future when the technology reaches the level where cinema won't cost anything, we'll be putting a metal helmet on our heads and record all our fantasies and images like an encephalogram and then editing them into a film. This will be cheap. But you'd have to live for a long time to see this happen, to talk about this kind of cheap technology. For the time being it is very expensive.

and he was interested in the collision between man and Cosmos, the Unknown with a capital "U". This is what interested him. In some ontological sense of the word, in the sense of the problem of cognizance and the limits of this cognizance — it's about that.

He was even saying that humanity was in danger, that there was a crisis of cognizance when man does not feel... This crisis is on the increase, it snowballs, it takes shape of various human tragedies, also tragedies scientists experience.

And then it all ripens into a kind of explosion, a jump forward, everything marches towards the future, etc. etc. Explosion — that's very good, I don't deny it, but I'm not interested in this at all. And this novel attracted me only because for the first time I encountered a work about which I could say: atonement, this is a story of atonement. What is atonement? — Remorse. In a straightforward classical sense of the word — when our memory of past wrongdoings, sins, turns into reality. For me this was the reason I made such a film.

On the other hand if we are to talk about this issue of encounter with the Unkown — then again the ontological aspect of it was not important to me, it was instead recreation of a man's psychological situation, to show what is happening to his soul. And if the man remains human — to me that's the most precious thing. It's no accident the hero of my film is a psychologist, the hero of Lem's novel is a psychologist as well. He is an ordinary city dweller, a philistine, he looks just so, ordinarily. For me it was important that he would be just like that. He should be a man of a rather limited spiritual range, average — just in order to be able to experience this spiritual battle, fear, not like an animal which is in pain and does not comprehend what is happening to it. What was important to me was precisely that human being unconsciously forces himself to be human, unconsciously and as far as his spiritual abilities

would allow he opposes the brutality, he opposes all that is inhuman while he remains human. And it turns out that despite him being — so it would seem — a thoroughly average guy, he stands at a high level spiritually. It's as if he convicted himself, he went right inside this problem and he saw himself in a mirror. And it turned out he was a spiritually rich man — despite his apparent intellectual limitations we had seen earlier. When he talks to his father he is a plain bore, in his conversation with Berton he speaks in banal trivialities about knowledge, morality, he tells some banal stories; as soon as he begins to form his thoughts he becomes banal. But as soon as he begins to feel something or suffer — he becomes a human being. And this was leaving Lem completely unmoved. Totally unmoved. And I was deeply moved by this. And when the film received a prize in Cannes and someone was congratulating him, he asked: "And what have I got to do with this?" He asked this question with resentment — but one could look at it differently and ask: "Indeed, what has he got to do with it?" If he treated cinema as art he would understand that film, a screen adaptation, always arises on the work's ruins so to speak. As a completely new phenomenon. But he didn't see it that way.

But I am infinitely grateful to him for those days we spent together and talked... He is an extremely interesting man, very pleasant. So if I feel a bit bitter it is not because he treated me and my film that way — it is because he treated cinema this way in general.

By the way, I'd like to ask you to convey to him my best wishes, my regards and heartfelt gratitude. I shall always remember with gratitude the time we spent working together.

What I said earlier, however, had to be said at least for objectivity's sake.

These are two different issues.

Yes. Here we are touching upon an issue which has always presented me with a certain problem. Well, here is what happened once: I meet someone, he is a very intelligent man, well-read, knows about poetry, painting, music, etc. An intelligent man.

And he says that he loved my new film, he thought it was great, something like: "Oh, I'm so glad, thank you, thank you." I start talking to him and I realise that he hasn't understood a thing. And this is terrible. This is terrible. This is the reverse of what I was just talking about. It's somewhat similar — the guy says "yes, yes, cinema, I understand" — but in fact he does not understand cinema and does not know what it is, how to treat it, what can be expected from it — what shouldn't be expected from it, and what should.

What's it all about? While he feels completely at ease, like a fish in water regarding poetry, painting, literature, music, he is a total dilettante regarding cinema, completely unprepared for discussion or conversation about it — although he is ready! This is very strange. For me this was in general much more painful than someone saying "Well, I don't understand your film and in my opinion this is all drivel, dumb pretentious drivel; I just cannot understand how government money can be spent on films like this." I received this kind of letters as well.

During the Rublov debate someone wrote straight to the KGB with nothing less than "Tarkovsky must be brought back in line so he does not use government funds to create films against the Tatar nation."

Tatar?!

Would you believe it? I was simply... "During the war Tatars together with their Russian brothers were shedding blood for their common ideals while Tarkovsky makes an anti-Tatar film." You understand?

"Tarkovsky should not be allowed to make anything else if he is to make anti-Tatar films." There is more to it.

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Not so much understanding but reception. And if you receive then you'll understand, the time will come when you'll understand.

So if works of literature can show and interpret situations in ways specific to their nature, why shouldn't other works, cinematic say, be allowed to do this in their own way?

Right? I think they should.

those of one's new environment — like Solzhenitsyn.

Russians could never be emigrants...

Nobody can.

Besides, keep in mind that Nabokov left Russia when he was a child, and Bunin left, was forced to leave, as an adult, as a mature human beThe last question we'd like ing, and Solzhenitsyn was not only an to ask you — you live as an adult and a writer but also a writer who had lived through things neither émigré. Life of a Russian émi- of the two had ever dreamt about. gré artist can be symbolised, These are completely incomparable we think, by three names: lives. But if you say: model — then we Bunin, Nabokov, Solzhenitsyn. are closer although I don't know how These are three variants, three much closer. Nabokov does not fit here at all because he left as a child, types of living as an emigrant. this was completely different. The only To which of these ways of life ones left are Solzhenitsyn and Bunin.

To be sure, I haven't experienced what do you feel closest?

I could not feel close to anybody's Solzhenitsyn experienced and Bunin — way of life. I could feel someone's of course I haven't experienced what Bunin experienced either. Bunin as you personality as being close to mine.

Yes, but these three names noticed — for him life ended still beare three ways of living as an fore the revolution; everything for him fell apart much before the revolution. émigré.

Life he is describing is shown as a Of course. Bunin, without a doubt. retrospection, a life that is gone.

Without a doubt. I feel closer to him That's what I had in mind because I also feel closer to his when I said he locked himself works. I consider him a great writer.

up in the past.

But he lives in the past, he Yes, that's why he was in so much locks himself up in it. He recolpain. I love Bunin as a writer. I underlects, exclusively. stand his pain and what's more — I He recollects. What does it mean: recollects? Solzhenitsyn recollects as well. And Nabokov also recollects.

Excuse me, everybody recollects. The ideal of art is after all based on recollections.

We have in mind a model of émigré biography. Being an émigré one can lock oneself up exclusively in recollections of the past — like Bunin, or assimilate within a different culture, different language — like Nabokov, or live more the problems of one's own nation rather than

understand his character. He was a very acrimonious man, very blunt, not always just, judging others exceptionally subjectively — he was not a very good man, let's put it this way. But I don't know, was Nabokov a good man? And is Solzhenitsyn good? I don't know that.

So when you speak about a model of émigré life then Bunin is in some sense clearly closer to Solzhenitsyn — in the sense that he lived like a hermit, he could neither adapt nor open up to the new life. While Nabokov wrote both in English and in Russian — but this again follows from his having left the country at an early age. Bunin rep-

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These people as it turns out do not even know their own history and certainly they do not even know that they, these Tatars, are completely different people than those Tatar-Mongols shown in Rublov. Two completely different issues; they don't even know their own history. Once I was in Kazan and I told the same story there, I read the letter and said: you talk about your national Tatar dignity but you don't know — those of you who say that — you have no idea who you are, you do not remember who your forefathers are, you mix yourselves up with other nations.

Yes. So I received many different letters, sometimes insulting ones.

You do not even feel upset receiving letters like these because as a rule they are downright illiterate. But when you suddenly run into someone, well let's say someone used to having opinions about cultural trends, and when he suddenly begins to talk nonsense about something you've done — showing his lack of understanding — this is even more painful.

I don't know whether you agree with me or not but if we read a book for example, any work of literature, then there are as many books as there are readers. Every reader sees the image he created himself, an image built on the basis of his own experience — the more so that literature is descriptive and film demonstrative.

But cinema also allows for one's own vision and this I consider most precious. If this is possible in literature why must we fight it in cinema? And vice-versa — to consider only what applies generally, characterises everything, what is universally accepted? I cannot understand this at all, I consider it discrimination. I believe a work of art is created by the audience, viewers, readers. Art would not be art if it disallowed a possibility of individual perception. Of course one must be prepared for it to a certain extent. But what's most important is not so much preparation, education, but spiritual level. This is a reception.

resented a very bad type of émigré.

For example, no matter how much pain Solzhenitsyn may feel because of his emigration, he will be able to somehow occupy his mind with important matters, problems. And Bunin — I think — would constantly relive his pain which embittered him, he couldn't suppress it within himself, he was not as strong as Solzhenitsyn in a sense. Somehow he was very... He was also like a child. In those days frequently not a good child.

As children can be sometimes.

Yes. As it is always with children.

His character was difficult in general.

But whose character is easy? Nabokov's? No. Perhaps Solzhenitsyn's?

Not either.

And yours?

If you ask about me I cannot give you any answer because I'm completely unable to judge myself. I would judge erroneously if I attempted to do so.

Bunin would do the same thing.

Meaning what?

enon, the most important and closest to me — in the spiritual sense — is the problem, well, let's call it the St. Anthony complex. It's a conflict between spirit and matter. That's the Hamlet problem. Hamlet as we know is Shakespeare's creation, certainly not Dostoievsky's — one therefore cannot say this is a Russian discovery. And St. Anthony as we know isn't a Russian character either. However, this complex is for me the most important issue. It's the conflict between spirit and matter. It's the battle God is fighting against the devil within man. This is most important. And Tolstoy simply felt it, he suffered because of that. He would forever moralise, he posed directly the question: What is art? And he decided that nobody needed all this anyway. A bourgeois superstition. He was a big leftist already in those days. He negated his own creative work, began to write primers etc. etc.

He also wanted to farm. A conflict. A conflict between the ideal and that which is possible, which is realistically possible.

Bunin would give the same I think we should begin answer to our question. to wrap it up. We've taken so much of your time. We You think so?

Yes. I think everybody acts thank you very much for this conversation. this way thinking it is good.

You are welcome.

What is good?

We wish you a happy That it is good to act this return to your homeland — way. yours and your films.

But I could never say about myWhen are you going back to self that what I do was good. Firstly, Poland? [Tarkovsky directs this I don't believe I do everything well; question to me —J.I.] what's more, a good deal of what I do In about a month.

I do badly. Yes — but that's already another story.

And you came here doing Thus I feel much closer to Tolstoy what? As a reporter? as a character. As a type of artist — No, privately. I am visitcloser than, say, Dostoievsky or any- ing friends. body else. As a type, as a model.

For me the most Russian phenomWell, God be with you both,

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and if you are at all able, do not leave Poland.

I have no intent to leave.

Emigration is a heavy burden.

Someone came here from Russia, a friend of mine, doesn't matter who...

"Well, yes? I don't know. What? How? To leave — not to leave? What to do?

How to live?" — Try not to leave. Do everything you can not to leave. One should not do that.

One should not leave the motherland. Neither Poles nor Russians, Slavs in general. Where else will they find their Slavic roots? Of course Poland is a country belonging to the West, no doubt. But even her roots extend far into the East — not because Russia belongs to the East and in general not because of Russia but because the general pull is directed to a larger measure somewhere towards the East. I have a confession to make that for me some Thailand, Nepal, or Tibet, or even China — they are spiritually inspired lands, much closer to me spiritually than France or Germany. Despite everything. Although I know all this, I understand it and I like it, and after all one was brought up after a western fashion; Russian culture in general is a western culture today. But that spirit, that mysticism which ties us precisely with the East — this is very close to us. Even though Poland is a Catholic country. And Catholicism in Poland, by the way, is strange, it differs from the Italian one for example, they have nothing in common — although it would seem we have common pope.

Yes, this is all very interesting... Of course Poland was always in this position between two worlds, and Russia was always harassing Poland, and Russians remember it very well and know about it. What can one say...

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After N N

ow my first film made outside my own country is behind me. Of course it was made with the official approval of the film authorities, which at the time I took for granted though it irritated the bosses.

Subsequent events were to illustrate yet again how disastrously alien my aims and films are to certain official groups in the cinema.

I wanted to make a film about Russian nostalgia-about the particular state of mind which assails Russians who are far from their native land. I wanted the film to be about the fatal attachment of Russians to their national roots, their past, their culture, their native places, their families and friends; an attachment which they carry with them all their lives, regardless of where destiny may fling them. Russians are seldom able to adapt easily, to come to terms with a new way of life. The entire history of Russian emigration bears out the Western view that 'Russians are bad emigrants'; everyone knows their tragic incapacity to be assimilated, the clumsy ineptitude of their efforts to adopt an alien life- style. How could I have imagined as I was making Nostalgia that the stifling sense of longing that fills the screen space of that film was to become my lot for the rest of my life; that from now until the end of my days I would bear the painful malady within myself?

Working all the time in Italy I made a film that was none the less profoundly Russian in every way: morally and emotionally. It is about a Russian who has been posted to Italy on an extended visit, and his impressions of the country. I wasn't aiming at yet another screen account of the beauties of Italy which amaze the tourists and are sent all over the world in the form of massproduced postcards. My subject is a Russian who is thoroughly disorientated by the impressions crowding in upon him, and at the same time about his tragic inability to share these impressions with the people closest to him who had not been permitted to accompany him, and the impossibility of grafting his new experience onto the past which has bound him from his very birth.

I myself went through something similar when I had been away from home for some time: my encounter with another world and another culture and the beginÂŹnings of an attachment to them had set up an irritation, barely perceptible but incurable-rather like unrequited love, like a symptom of the hopelessness of trying to grasp what is bound-

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Nostalgia

less, or unite what cannot be joined; a reminder of how finite, how curtailed, our experience on earth must be; like a warning sign of the limitations which predetermine your life, imposed not by outward circumstances (those would be easy enough to deal with!) but by your own inner 'taboo' . . .

working again under a different name and in another style. Some are known to have lived up to five distinct lives.

That is freedom!

Gorchakov, the protagonist of Nostalgia, is a poet. He comes to Italy to collect material on the Russian serf composer, Bery6zovsky,Z6

doubt by that same inescapable Russian nostalgia, he eventually decided to return to serf-owning Russia, where, shortly afterwards, he hanged himself.

Of course the composer's story is put into the film deliberately as a kind of paraphrase of Gorchakov's own situation, of the state in which we see him,

I am always lost in admiration for those mediaeval Japanese artists who worked in the court of their Shogun until they had achieved recognition, and then, at the peak of their fame, would change their entire lives by going off in secret to a new place to start

on whose life he is basing an opera libretto. Bery6zovsky is an historical figure. He showed such musical ability that he was sent by his landowner to study in Italy, where he stayed many years, gave concerts and was much acclaimed. But in the end, driven no

acutely aware of being an outsider who can only watch other people's lives from a distance, crushed by the recollections of his past, by the faces of those dear to him, which assail his memory together with the sounds and smells of home.

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and in order to find expression for the idea, for the meaning of human life, there is no need to spread behind it, as it were, a canvas crowded with happenings.

It would perhaps be superfluous to mention that from the very start cinema as American-style adventure movie has never held any interest for me. The last thing I want to do is devise attractions. From Ivan's Childhood to Stalker, I have always tried to avoid outward movement, and have tried to concentrate the action within the classical unities. In this respect even the structure of Audrey Rublyov strikes me today as disjointed and incoherent . . .

Ultimately I wanted Nostalgia to be free of anything irrelevant or incidental that would stand in the way of my principal objective: the portrayal of someone in a state of profound alienation from the world and himself, unable to find a balance between reality and the harmony for which he longs, in a state of nostalgia provoked not only by his remoteness from home but also by a global yearning for the wholeness of existence. I was not satisfied with the scenario until it came together at last into a kind of metaphysical whole.

Italy comes into Gorehakov's consciousness at the moment of his tragic conflict with reality (not merely with the conditions of life, but with life itself, which never satisfies the claims made on it by the individual) and stretches out above him in magnificent ruins which seem to rise up out of nothing. These fragments of a civilization at once universal and alien, are like an epitaph to the futility of human Endeavour, a sign that mankind has taken a path that can only lead to destruction. Gorchakov dies unable to overcome his own spiritual crisis, to put right this time whichÂŹ evidently for him too-is out of joint.

The character of Domenico, at first sight irrelevant, has a particular bearing on the hero's state of mind. This frightened, defenseless man finds in himself the strength and nobility of

spirit to manifest his own understanding of the meaning of life. Once a mathematics teacher and now an 'outsider', undeterred by his lack of status, he decides to speak out about the catastrophic state of today's world. In the eyes of normal people he simply appears mad, In one form or another all my films have made the point that people are not alone and abandoned in an empty universe, but arc linked by countless threads with the past and the future; that as each person lives his life he forges a bond with the whole history of mankind. . . . But the hope that each separate life and every human action has intrinsic meaning makes the responsibility of the individual for the overall course of human life incalculably greater.

In a world where there is a real threat of a war capable of annihilating mankind; where social ills exist on a staggering scale; where human suffering cries out to heaven-the way must be found for one person to reach another. Such is the sacred duty of humanity towards its own future, and the personal duty of each individual.

Gorchakov becomes attached to Domenico because he feels a deep need to protect him from the 'public' opinion of the well-fed, contented, blind majority for whom he is simply a grotesque lunatic. Even so, Gorchakov is not able to save Domenico from the role he has implacably assigned himself-without asking life to let the cup pass him by. Gorchakov is amazed, and won over, by Domenico's childlike maximal ism, for he himself, like all adults, is to some extent a conformist.

But Domenico makes up his mind to burn himself alive in the crazy hope that this final, monstrous publicity act will bring home to people that his concern is for them, and make them listen to his last cry of warning. Gorchakov is affected by the total integrity, almost holiness, of the man and his action. While Gorchakov merely reflects on how much he minds about

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I have to say that when I first saw all the material shot for the film I was startled to find it was a spectacle of unrelieved gloom. The material was completely homogeneous, both in its mood and in the state of mind imprinted in it. This was not something I had set out to achieve; what was symptomatic and unique about the phenomenon before me was the fact that, irrespective of my own specific theoretical intentions, the camera was obeying first and foremost my inner state during filming: I had been worn down by my separation from my family and from the way of life I was used to, by working under quite unfamiliar conditions, even by using a foreign language. I was at once astounded and delighted, because what had been imprinted on the film, and was now revealed to me for the first time in the darkness of the cinema, proved that my reflections about how the art of the screen is able, and even called, to become a matrix of the individual soul, to convey unique human experience, were not just the fruit of idle speculation but a reality, which here was unrolling incontrovertibly before my eyes ..

But to return to when Nostalgia was first conceived and started...

I was not interested in the development of the plot, in the chain of events-with each film I feel less and less need for them. I have always been interested in a person's inner world, and for me it was far more natural to make a journey into the psychology that informed the hero's attitude to life, into the literary and cultural traditions that are the foundation of his spiritual world. I am well aware that from a commercial point of view it would be far more advantageous to move from place to place, to introduce shots from one ingenious angle after another, to use exotic landscapes and impressive interiors. But for what I am essentially trying to do, outward effects simply distance and blur the goal which I am pursuing. I am interested in man, for he contains a universe within himself;

the world's imperfections, Domenico takes it upon himself to do something about it, and his comm itment is total: his final act makes it clear that there was never any element of abstraction in Domenico's sense of responsibility.

By comparison, Gorchakov's agonising over his own lack of constancy can only appear banal. It is of course arguable that he is vindicated by his death, since it reveals how deeply he has been tortured.

I said that I was startled to find how accurately my own mood while making the film was transferred onto the screen; a profound and increasingly wearing sense of bereavement, away from home and loved ones, filling every moment of existence. To this inexorable, insidious awareness of your own dependence on your past, like an illness that grows ever harder to bear, T gave the name 'Nostalgia'. ... All the same T should advise the reader that it would be simplistic to identify the author with his lyric hero.

We naturally use our immediate impressions of life in our work, since these, alas, are the only ones at our disposal. But even when we borrow moods and plots directly from our own lives, it still hardly ever means that the author should be forcibly linked with his characters. It may be a disappointment to some to realize that an author's lyrical experience seldom coincides with what he actually does in real life ...

An author's poetic principle emerges from the effect made upon him by surrounding reality, and it can rise above that reality, question it, engage In bitter conflict; and, moreover, not only with the reality that lies outside him, but also with the one that is within him. Dostoievsky discovered yawning abysses within himself and that his saintly characters and his villains are equally projecÂŹtions of him. But not one of them is comÂŹpletely him. Each of his characters epitomizes what he sees and thinks of life, but not one could be said to embody the full diapason of his personality.

In Nostalgia I wanted to pursue the theme of the 'weak' man who is no fighter in terms of his outward attributes but whom none the less see as a victor in this life. Stalker delivers a monologue in defense of that weakness that is the true price and hope of life. I have always liked people who can't adapt themselves to life pragmatically. There have never been any heroes in my films, but there have always been people whose strength lies in their spiritual conviction and who take upon themselves a responsibility for others. Such people are often rather like children, only with the motivation of adults; from a common-sense point of view their position is unrealistic as well as selfless.

The monk, Rublyov, looked at the world with unprotected, childlike eyes, and preached love, goodness and non-resistance to evil. And though he found himself wit-nessing the most brutal and devastating forms of violence, which seemed to hold sway in the world and led him to bitter disillusionment, he came back in the end to that same truth, rediscovered for himself, about the value of human goodness, of openhearted love which does not count the cost, the one real gift which people can give each other. Kelvin, who seemed at first to be a limited, run-of-the-mill character, turns out to be possessed of deeply human feelings which render him organically incapable of disobeying the voice of his own conscience, and shirking the grave burden of responsibility for his own and others' lives. The hero of Mirror was a weak, selfish man incapable of loving even those dearest to him for their sake alone, looking for nothing in return-he is only justified by the torment of soul which assails him towards the end of his days as he realizes that he has no means of repaying the debt he owes to life. Stalker, eccentric and on occasion hysterical, is also incorruptible, and states unequivocally his own spiritual commitment in the face of a world in which opportunism grows like a malignant tumour.

Like Stalker, DomeÂŹnico works out his own answer, chooses his own way of martyrdom, rather than give in to the accepted, cynical pursuit of personal material privilege, in an attempt to block, by his own exertions, by the example of his own sacrifice, the path down which mankind is rushing insanely towards its own destruction. Nothing is more important than conscience, which keeps watch and forbids a man to grab what he wants from life and then lie back, fat and contented.; Traditionally, the best of the Russian intelligentsia were guided by conscience, incapable of self-complacence, moved by compassion for the deprived of this world, and dedicated in their search for faith, for the ideal, for good; and all these things I wanted to emphasize in the personality of Gorchakov.

I am drawn to the man who is ready to serve a higher cause, unwilling-or even unable-to subscribe to the generally accepted tenets of a worldly 'morality'; the man who recognizes that the meaning of existence lies above all in the fight against the evil within ourselves, so that in the course of a lifetime he may take at least one step towards spiritual perfection. For the only alternative to that way is, alas, the one that leads to spiritual degeneration; and our everyday existence and the general pressure to conform makes it all too easy to take the latter path . . .

The central character of my latest fi1m, Sacrifice, is also a weak man in the generally accepted sense of the word. He is no hero, but he is a thinker and an honest man, who turns out to be capable of sacrifice in the name of a higher ideal. He rises to the occasion, without attempting to shed his responsibility or trying to foist it onto anyone else. He is in danger of not being understood, for his decisive; just action is such that to those around him it can only appear catastrophically destructive: that is the tragic conflict of his role. He nevertheless takes the crucial step, thereby infringing the

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ural likeness, the inspiration of nature itself is brought into cinema.

Of late I have frequently found myself addressing audiences, and I have noticed that whenever I declare that there are no symbols or metaphors in my films, that present express incredulity. They persist in asking again and again, for instance, what rain signifies in my films; why does it figure in film after film; and why the repeated images of wind, fire, water? I really don't know how to deal with such questions.

Rain is after all typical of the landscape in which I grew up; in Russia you have those long, dreary, persistent rains. And I can say that I love nature-I don't like big cities and feel perfectly happy when I'm away from the paraphernalia of modern civilization, just as I felt wonderful in Russia when I was in my country house, with three hundred kilometers between Moscow and myself. Rain, fire, water, snow, dew, the driving ground windall is part of the material setting in which we dwell; I would even say of the truth of our lives. I am therefore puzzled when Tam told that people cannot simply enjoy watching nature, when it is lovingly reproduced on the screen, but have to look for some hidden meaning. Of course rain can just be seen as bad weather, whereas I use it to create a particular aesthetic setting in which to steep the action of the film. But that is not at all the same thing as bringing nature into my films as a symbol of something else-Heaven forbids! In commercial cinema nature often does not exist at all; all one has is the most advantageous lighting and exteriors for the purpose of quick shooting-everybody follows the plot and no one is bothered by the artificiality of a setting that is more or less right, nor by the disregard for detail and atmosphere.

When the screen brings the real world to the audience, the world as it actually is, so that it can be seen in depth and from all sides, evoking its very smell, allowing audiences to feel on

their skin its moisture or its drynessit seems that the cinema-goer has so lost the capacity simply to surrender to an immediate, emotional aesthetic impression, that he instantly has to check himself, and ask: 'Why? What for? What's the point?'

The answer is that I want to create my own world on the screen, in its ideal and most perfect form, as T myself feel it and see it. Tam not trying to be coy with my audience, or to conceal some secret intention of my own: Tam recreating my world in those details which seem to me most fully and exactly to express the elusive meaning of our existence.

Let me clarify what T mean with a reference to Bergman: in The Virgin Spring T have always been stunned by one shot of the dying heroine, the girl who has been monstrously raped.

The spring sun is shining through the trees, and through the branches we see her face-she may be dying or she may be already dead, but in any case she clearly no longer feels pain. . . . Our foreboding seems to hang in the air, suspended like a sound. ...

All seems clear enough and yet we feel a hiatus.... There's something missing.... Snow starts to fall, freak spring snow ... which is the piercing scintilla we needed to bring our feelings to a kind of consummation: we gasp, transfixed. The snow catches on her eyelashes and stays there: again, time is leaving its tracks in the shot. ... But how, by what right, could one talk about the meaning of that falling snow, even though within the span and rhythm of the shot it is the thing that brings our emotional awareness to a climax? Of course one can't. All we know is that this scene is the form the artist found to convey precisely what happened. On no account must artistic purpose be confused with ideology, or we shall lose the means of perceiving art immediately and exactly with the whole of our being. . .

I would concede that the final shot of Nostalgia has an element of metaphor, when T brings the Russian

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rules of normal behavior and laying himself open to the charge of folly, because he is conscious of his link with ultimate reality, with what could be termed world destiny. In all this he is merely obeying his vocation as he feels it in his heart-he is not master of his fate but its servant; and it may well be that through individual exertions such as his, which nobody notices or understands, world harmony is preserved.

The human weakness which I find attractive does not allow for individual expansionism, for the assertion of the personality at the expense of others or of life itself, nor the urge to harness another person to the realization of the individual's own aims and fulfillment. In fact I am fascinated by the capacity of a human being to make a stand against the forces which drive his fellows into the rat race, into the rut of practicalities: and this phenomenon contains the material of more and more of my ideas for new works.

It is the basis, too, of my interest in Hamlet, of which I hope to make a film sooner or later. This greatest of dramas sets out the eternal problem of the man who is of higher moral stature than his peers, but whose actions necessarily affect and are affected by the ignoble real world. It is as if a man of the future were forced to live in the past. And Hamlet's tragedy, as I see it, lies not in his death but in the fact that before he dies he is obliged to renounce his own quest for perfection and become an ordinary murderer. After that, death can only be a welcome way out-otherwise he would have had to kill himself...

As to my next film, I shall aim at ever greater sincerity and conviction in each shot, using the immediate impressions made upon me by nature, in which time will have left its own trace.

Nature exists in cinema in the naturalistic fidelity with which it is recorded; the greater the fidelity, the more we trust nature as we see it in the frame, and at the same time, the finer is the created image: in its authentically nat-

house inside the Italian cathedral. It is a constructed image which smacks of literariness: a model of the hero's state, of the division within him which prevents him from living as he has up till now. Or perhaps, on the contrary, it is his new wholeness in which the Tuscan hills and the Russian countryside come together indissolubly; he is conscious of them as inherently his own, merged into his being and his blood. And so Gorchakov dies in this new world where those things come together naturally and of themselves which in our strange and relative earthly existence have for some reason, or by someone, been divided once and for all. All the same, even if the scene lacks cinematic purity, T trust that it is free of vulgar symbolism; the conclusion seems to me fairly complex in form and meaning, and to be a figurative expression of what is happening to the hero, not a symbol of something outside him which has to be deciphered .

Clearly I could be accused of being inconsistent. However, it is for the artist both to devise principles and to break them. It's unlikely that there are many works of art that embody precisely the aesthetic doctrine preached by the artist. As a rule a work of art develops in complex interaction with the artist's theoretical ideas, which cannot encompass it completely; artistic texture is always richer than anything that can be fitted into a theoretical schema.

And now that I have written this book I begin to wonder if my own rules are not becoming a constraint.

Nostalgia is now behind me. It could never have occurred to me when T started shooting that my own, all too specific, nostalgia was soon to take possession of my soul forever.

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To Journey

Gideon Bachmann in conversation with Tarkov

This article is taken from the Swedish film journal Chaplin, no. 193, September 1984 (a Tarkovsky special issue), where it appeared in a Swedish translation prepared by Marianne Broddesson, entitled Att resa i sitt inre. Chaplin is no longer in existence, but Ms. Broddesson has kindly given Nostalghia.com her personal permission to post an English translation of her article. So, the article was translated from Swedish into English by Trond at Nostalghia.com. Interested readers should also see the article Begegnung mit Andrej Tarkovskij by Gideon Bachmann, in Filmkritik, Dez. 1962, pp. 548-552.

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Within

vsky

GIDEON BACHMAN: First of all I would like to hear you talk about your impressions from working in the West.

ANDREI TARKOVSKY: This is not only the first time I make a film abroad, it is also the first time I work under foreign conditions. I suppose it is difficult to make a film wherever you go in the world, but I notice that the nature of the difficulties vary a great deal from place to place.

Here, the greatest hindrance has turned out to be the constant lack of money and time. Especially the lack of money hinders one's creativity and the dearth of funds also results in a lack of time. The longer I have to work on the film, the more costly it gets.

Here in the West, money rules. In the Soviet Union I never have to think about what things cost. I just never have to worry about that. It is indeed correct that the Italian TV Company, RAI, has been very generous and invited me here to make this film, but the budget they have allocated is obviously insufficient [Footnote: 1.2–1.5 Lire]. As I have no prior experience working abroad, some of this may just be presumptions on my part. The current project is actually labeled a "cultural initiative," and not a commercial venture.

On the other hand, it has been an extremely rewarding experience to work alongside the Italian film team and their technical crew. They are extremely professional and highly knowledgeable, and they appear to be enjoying their work. Everybody appears to be loving what they are doing.

But I don't want to make comparisons between our methods and theirs.

It is complicated and excruciating to make a film wherever you go, what-

ever the reasons may be. What I consider most worthy of criticism here is the total dependence upon purely economical factors, this has the potential of jeopardizing the very future of cinema as an art form.

There has in the five films you have made during the last 20 years — Ivan's Childhood, Andrei Rublov, Solaris, Mirror, and Stalker — always been a strong conflict between the individual and his surroundings.

Is this the theme of Nostalghia as well?

It is always the conflict itself that is strong, not the individual. On the contrary, the central characters are almost always weak persons whose strength is born out of their weakness, out of the fact that they just do not fit in, and are at odds with their surroundings.

Of course, there always exists a conflict between the individual and the society, between distinctive individuals and their milieu. That is, there always exists an opposition between these, and it is this we refer to as conflict. Where there are no human relationships, neither are there conflicts.

I am interested in working with characters whose relationship to society is characterized by a strong element of conflict. They have an intense relationship to the reality that surrounds them, and because of this they always seem to end up in a conflict with their surroundings. I wish to follow that kind of person so as to find

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G

ideon Bachmann first met Tarkovsky when Ivan's Childhood was being screened and awarded at the Venice Film Festival in 1962. He tape recorded their conversation for his weekly WBAI-NY radio film column.

During the subsequent 20 years, Bachmann kept himself informed on Tarkovsky's further work and often ran into him at various film festivals.

In 1982 they met again in Rome while Tarkovsky was making preparations to shoot Nostalghia. Bachmann subsequently had the opportunity to follow the actual shooting of the film.

The following interview is transcribed from taped material obtained during the shooting of Nostalghia. As well, there are excerpts from conversations that were never recorded, and a brief excerpt from their first 1962 conversation, along with a few statements made by Tarkovsky during press conferences in connection with the film's production and some comments found in documentary material recorded during the the shooting.

The continuity is from Bachmann's most recent recorded material. Excerpts and quotes from other sources have been used when some statement was in need of further clarification and explanation. The questions have been somewhat re-written for cohesiveness.

out in what way they resolve their problems: will they cave in, or will they remain true to themselves.

In a sense, one may say that this is the issue that is at the very root of my dramaturgy.

Can you talk about how Nostalghia came into being?

I have been to Italy several times, and about three years ago I decided to make a film together with a good friend, the Italian author, poet, and scriptwriter Tonino Guerra. The film was to revolve around my experiences in Italy.

Gortchakoff, who is played by Oleg Jankovskij, is a Russian intellectual who comes to Italy on a business trip. The title of the film, for which the word "nostalgia" is only a very insufficient translation, indicates a pining for what is far from us, for worlds that cannot be united. But it is also indicative of a longing for an inner home, some inner sense of belonging.

The "action" of the film, the sequence of events themselves, was modified several times, partly during the preparations while we were writing the script, and also during the filming itself. I want to give expression to the impossibility of living in a divided world, a world torn to pieces.

Gortchakoff is a Professor of History, an internationally known expert of Italian architectural history. It is now the first time ever he has had occasion to see and touch the monuments and buildings which he heretofore only has known and taught on by using reproductions and photographs. As soon as he comes to Italy he starts to realize that one cannot communicate, transfer — not even learn to know — a work of art unless one is an integral part of the culture from which the work of art has sprung.

So, he comes to Italy to trace the footsteps of a little known composer from the 1700s, one who had originally been a Russian slave sent to Italy by his Master to be educated as a court musician. He studied at the

Conservatory of Bologna under Giambattista Martini and eventually became a renowned composer and thus subsequently lived in Italy as a free man.

An important scene in the film is when Gortchakoff shows his Italian interpreter and companion, a young woman, a letter written by the composer and sent to Russia, in which he expresses his homesickness, his "nostalghia." Indications are that this man actually returned to Russia, but that he turned alcoholic and subsequently committed suicide.

To Gortchakoff as well, the Italian experience turns out to be life changing. The beauty of Italy, and her history, makes a great impression upon his soul, and he suffers because he cannot internally reconcile his own background with Italy. In spite of his experiences in Italy initially only having a character of being purely external, he soon realizes that when he returns to the Soviet Union it will involve the end of something. This causes him to feel depressed, as he knows that he will never be able to forget or put behind him what he has experienced in Italy.

Knowing full well that he cannot make use of his Italian experiences increases his internal pain, "nostalghia," which includes an awareness of the fact that he is totally unable to share his experiences with his dear ones at home, even with those who were closest to him before he left for Italy.

This awareness of not being able to share with others his impressions and experiences makes his stay quite painful. He is tormented, but at the same time the need to find a soul mate is stirred within him, someone who can understand him and share in his experiences.

The film is really a sort of treatise on the topic of the nature of nostalghia, or about that experience which may be referred to as nostalgia but contains so much more than a longing. A Russian can only with the greatest of difficulty part with new friends and acquaintances. His impending return to the Soviet Union turns into a nightmare, but this longing back to Italy is only one of many constituents comprising this complex phenomenon referred to as "nostalghia."

What in the film expresses his seeking for a soul mate?

Gortchakoff abandons his original intention of writing a book about his experiences and decides to rather pass on — or try to pass on — the experiences he had in meeting an Italian, a teacher of mathematics from a village in Toscana, played by Erland Josephson. For seven years this Italian has prevented his wife and children from leaving the home in order to save them from the disaster he fears the most: the end of the world.

This somewhat insane, mysterious

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Do the main characters —

the architecture professor and human relationships. the math teacher — have charWhen it comes to a love relationacteristics which you can per- ship between a man and a woman, I wish to show how difficult it is to live sonally identify with?

Let us say that what I like the most in them is the confidence with which the madman acts and the tenacity of the traveler in his attempts at achieving a greater level of understanding.

That tenacity could also be called hope.

Does the relationship which unites these two people reflect of your own feelings...?

My hero considers the "madman" to be a consistent and strong personality, one who is certain of his own actions, while he himself lacks this kind of confidence. He is therefore utterly fascinated by Domenico, and in the end it is he who ends up helping my hero to dare live without always having to think and to rationalize everything. It is in this sense — thanks to this development — that Domenico becomes Gortchakoff's alter ego.

The strongest ones in life are always those who have succeeded in retaining a child's confidence and intuitive sense of safety.

Does there exist some sort of external reason for making this film, some sort of obvious theme that provides us with the key to its internal tensions?

To me it is very important to again and again show how crucial it is for people to be able to meet and to function together. When one lives for oneself, in one's own hidden away corner, there seems to rule a deceptive calm.

But as soon as two people come into contact with each other the problem arises of how this contact can be made deeper and more profound.

This film is thus first and foremost about the inherent conflict between two forms of civilization, two different ways of living, two different ways of thinking. Secondly, it is a film about the kinds of difficulties encountered in

together and feel an affinity towards one another when one knows so little about the other. It is easy to become acquainted on the surface, but much harder to really get to know each other. Gortchakoff is in the company of a female Italian interpreter, Eugenia, who is played by the young actress Domiziana Giordano. It is also — put in a simple way — an unconsummated love story between the professor and the woman.

But seen from a wider perspective, the film will show the impossibility of importing and exporting culture. We in the Soviet Union pretend that we understand Dante and Petrarca, but this is not true. And Italians pretend to know Pushkin, but that is also and erroneous assumption. Provided there are no sweeping change, it will never be possible to transfer a people's culture to a person who is foreign to that culture.

Gortchakoff's suffering begins when he realizes that he sooner or later has to stop being absorbed by all the new that surrounds him — emotions and people which have caught his attention during his stay in Italy.

New fascinations and interests have begun to stir within him. He meets a person, who, just as himself, understands that real relationships are impossible, and who therefore sacrifices himself. He, Domenico, suffers from the same kind of internal fragmentation: that of not being able to unite the enitre world within oneself, all that is good, people, emotions and spirit.

Everyone considers Domenico to me "mad," and perhaps he is. But the reason why he is considered insane, and the resons for his reactions and feelings, feelings which Gortchakoff recognizes very clearly, are absolutely normal.

Is it an encounter with Self in a different incarnation?

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fanatic becomes a sort of alter ego for Gortchakoff, who recognizes in him his own feelings and doubts. The teacher, Domenico, might be considered a positive influence in the film, as his character personifies a necessary condition for the future. He becomes Gortchakoff's main conversation partner and he represents an extreme case of the spiritual unrest which Gortchakoff feels emerging within himself.

Domenico also stands for the constant search for the meaning of life, a meaning to the concepts of freedom and insanity. On the other hand, he is in possession of the receptiveness of of a child and the extraordinary sensitivity often found in children. But he has some additional characteristics which the Russian is lacking. Where the latter is easily hurt and finds himself in a deep crisis of life, the somewhat mad Italian is simple, no beating around the bush, and convinced that he in his own enlightened outsidedness has found a solution to the general problem.

Tonino Guerra found this person in a newspaper clipping and we since developed it a bit further. We have given him a touch of a kind of childish generosity, which is strongly present with him. His straightforwardness in relation to his surroundings reminds one strongly of the kind of trust seen in a child.

He is obsessed with the thought of of committing an act of faith, such as walking straight across the pool — a gigantic, square, old Roman bath in the center of the Tuscan village Bagno Vignoni — with a lit candle in his hand. Gortchakoff attempts to do this, but Domenico, who considers that an even greater sacrifice is required, goes to Rome and burns himself alive on the Marcus Aurelius statue at the Capitoleum. It is a violent sacrificial act, yet without any element of fanaticism, performed with a calm faith in the salvation to be revealed at the moment of revelation.

Gortchakoff recognizes the similarities, and in spite of the fact that their encounter is relatively brief he can sense the connection between them. It is the similarity of their suffering that unites them.

During the shooting of the film, Domenico became even more important and we have given his character a much firmer shape. He expresses even more clearly Gortchakoff's increasing awareness of the impossibility of real contact. To a certain extent he also gives expression to the fear which we are all forced to live in, our uncertainties when it comes the the future. It is fear that is the problem in the psychological state in which we are — in our waiting for the future and what it holds.

Everybody are worried, not at rest, about the future, and this film is very much about this our unrest. It is also about our apathy, which causes us to allow things to develop any which way. We are worried, but at the same time we do nothing to change the situation. Granted, we actually do a whole lot, but what we do do is hopelessly insufficient. We should do more.

As far as I am concerned, all I can do is this film. It is what little I have to offer: to show that Domenico's struggle concerns us all, and to show that he is absolutely correct when he accuses us of being too passive. He is "the fool" who accuses "the normal" of being too lazy, and sacrifices himself so as to shake up his surroundings, thusly underlining his own warning.

This is his sacrifice and it is all he can do. His intention is to force us to act, to change the "now."

Do you share the world view which causes Domenico to commit this act?

The essential element of Domenico's character is not his world view per se, that world view which leads him to commit the ultimate sacrificial act, but rather the way in which he chooses to resolve his internal conflict. Thus, I am not as interested in his

starting point as I am in his emerging conflict. I want to understand and try to show how his protest was born and the way in which he expresses it.

I am actually not as interested in how he expresses it; the most important thing is the very existence of the protest itself. I consider any way in which a person choses to express a protest to be significant. Even a simple opinion that is expressed clearly and without fear (an opinion for which one may very well be considered insane) can mean more, and be more significant, than the talk of the so-called "normal," who are given to idle chatter and never actually do anything.

Is it important for you to reach a large audience with your ideas?

again.

I think that I, in my own way, have succeeded in getting the attention of the viewer without having compromised my own ideals. And that is, after all, what counts. I am not some intellectual type drifting up in the blue yonder, and I am most definitely not from some different planet. On the contrary, I feel close ties with the earth and its people. Briefly put, I don't want to seem more nor less intelligent than what I actually am. I stand on the same level as the spectator, but I have a different function. My mission is different from the viewer's.

It is not essential for me to be understood by everyone. The most important to me is not to be understood by everyone. If film is an artform — and I think we can agree that

I don't believe that there exists any form of art film that can be understood by everyone. Consequently, it is almost impossible to make a film that works for everyone watching it, and if it did it wouldn't be a work of art at all. Irregardless, a work of Art is never accepted without objections.

A director like Spielberg has an enormous audience and earns enormous sums and everybody is happy about that, but he is no artist and his films are not art. If I made films like him — and I don't believe I can — I would die from sheer terror. Art is as a mountain: there is a peak and surrounding it there are foothills. What exists at the summit cannot by definition be understood by everyone.

I don't believe that it is my task to capture the audience, to make them interested in what I am doing. Because that would imply that I was underestimating their intelligence. After all, I don't believe that the audience consists of idiots.... But I often do reflect over the fact that no producer in the world would dare invest 15 kopek if all I promised him was to make a work of art. Therefore, I invest all my energy and diligence into every film I make.

I try to do my best, otherwise I may never get the chance to make a film

it is — one must not forget that artistic masterpieces are not consumer goods, but rather artistic pinnacles expressing the ideals of an epoch, both from the viewpoint of creativity and with respect to the culture from which it springs.

A masterpiece gives form to the ideals of the particular epoch in which we live. Ideals can never be made immediately accessible to everyone. To be able to approach them, one must grow and develop spiritually. If the dialectical tension between the spiritual level of the masses and the ideals to which the artist bears witness disap-

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action, the narrative of the film. But in film one does not need to explain, but rather to directly affect emotions.

The heightened state of emotions then naturally lead the intellect forward.

I am trying to arrive at a principle of editing the film that will permit me to communicate the subjective logic — the thought, the dream, the memory — instead of the subject's own logic.

I am looking for a form which springs out of the actual situation and the human condition of soul, i.e., the factors that influence human behavior. That is the first condition for presenting psychological truth.

Is "the logic of the subject" the same as the plot of the film?

In my films, the story itself is never particularly important. The real significance in my works have never been expressed through the plot of the films. I attempt to speak about what is significant, but without unnecessary distractions. By showing certain things that are not necessarily joined at the purely logical level. It is the stirring of thoughts within that conjoins them for us, in the inner man.

Would you say, then, that what is important to you is the emotions that you communicate in your films, and not the stories being told themselves? something that is entirely obvious to the originator. But even if one must respect the viewer's ethical principles, one must not allow oneself to compromise one's duty to create a modern form of film art.

One must never allow oneself to be swayed by the regressive tastes of the audiences.

I don't believe in the literary theatrical dramatical construction. It has nothing in common with the dramaturgy that is particular to cinema as art form. Most modern films serve no other purpose than to explain to the viewers the circumstances surrounding the

I am often asked what this or that means in my films. It's terrible! An artist does not have to answer for his purposes. I do not harbor any particularly deep or profound thoughts about my own work. I simply have no idea what my symbols represent. The only thing I am after is for them to give birth to certain emotions. Whatever feelings emerge based on your response from within.

One always tries to discover concealed meaning in my work. But wouldn't it be strange to make a film and at the same time try to hide one's thoughts? My images mean nothing beyond what they are.... We don't know ourselves very well; sometimes

we just give expression to forces that cannot be measured in conventional ways.

In your films you have often used "the traveler" as a metaphor, but never before in such a clearly defined theme as in Nostalghia. Do you consider yourself a traveler?

Only one journey is possible: the journey within. We don't learn a whole lot from dashing about on the surface of the Earth. Neither do I believe that one travels so as to eventually return.

Man can never reach back to the point of origin, because he has changed in the process. And of course we cannot escape from ourselves; what we are we carry with us. We carry with us the dwelling place of our soul, like the turtle carries its shell. A journey through all the countries of the world would be a mere symbolic journey. Whatever place one arrives at, it is still one's own soul that one is searching for.

In order to conduct the search for ones own soul one must have a strong confidence in oneself. But today I think it seems as if Man's belief in his own capacity to take a stand has given way — everywhere — to a fanaticism which rather values the belief in external events, ideas which come from the outside.

Yes, I have the sense that mankind has stopped believing in itself. That is to say, not "humankind" per se — that concept does not exist — but rather every single human individually. When I consider contemporary man I see her as a choir singer, who opens and closes her mouth in synch with the rhythm of the music, but without uttering a note. After all, everybody else is singing! She just pretends to be singing along as she is convinced that the others' singing is sufficient. She behaves

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pears, it would simply mean that art had completely lost its purpose and function.

Unfortunately, one can rarely say that the films one see exceed the level of mere entertainment. The fact that I treasure Dovsjekos's, Olmi's, and Bresson's films is due to that fact that I am attracted by their pure, simple ascetic touch. Art must strive to achieve these characteristics. And trust.

The prerequisite for a creative idea to reach the consciousness of the viewer is that that creator harbors a confidence in the viewer. They must be able to communicate with each other at some common level. There is no other way.

Is is completely worthless to try to violently force onto the viewer some understanding even when it concerns

like this because she has lost faith in the significance of her own personal actions.

Contemporary man is without faith, completely without hope that he might be able to influence the society he or she lives in through his or her own behavior.

What is the point of making a film in such a world?

The only meaning of life lies in the effort that is demanded in growing spiritually, to change and develop into something different than what we were at birth. If we during the span of time between birth and death can achieve this, in spite of the fact that it is difficult and that progress may seem slow at times, then we have indeed served humanity.

I am increasingly becoming interested in Eastern philosophy wherein the meaning of life lies in contemplation and Man's being an inseparable part of the Universe. The Western world is far too rational and the Western idea of life appears rooted in a more pragmatic principle: a little bit of everything in a perfect balance, so as to keep the body alive and merely "exist" for as long as possible.

Do you not believe in the concept of time as a gauge for the purpose of depicting the experience of existence?

I am convinced that "time" in itself is no objective category, as "time" cannot exist apart from man's perception of it. Certain scientific discoveries tend to draw the same con-

clusion. We do not live in the "now."

The "now" is so transient, as close to zero as you can get without it being zero, that we simply have no way of grasping it. The moment in time we call "now" immediately becomes the "past," and what we call the "future" becomes the "now" and then it immediately becomes "past." The only way to experience the now is if we let ourselves fall into the abyss which exists between the now and the future.

And this is the reason "nostalghia" is not the same as mere sorrow over past time.

Nostalghia is a feeling of intense sadness over the period that went missing at a time when we forsook counting on our internal gifts, to properly arrange and utilize them,... and thus neglected to do our duty.

O 62

Bita Moghisi Painter/Iran

www.brucenew.com

Bruce New

Painter/America

homage to the sun

shapeshifter

the moon totem

tribe of the dark star

waiting for the last star to fall

O

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