6 ms·

The Drenching Richness of Andrei Tarkovsky

77 points by benbreen 6y ago

legerdemain 6y ago
An extremely distracting aspect of Tarkovsky's cinema is something he shares with most Soviet cinema, which is that all sound is recorded and mixed in during post-production. All environmental sound is accomplished through foley work. All lines are dubbed in, sometimes by completely different actors. There are no mics on set whatsoever. It makes his movies (as great as they are) feel like Looney Tunes cartoons. Amazingly, this approach to cinema did not end with the fall of the USSR, and most Russian movies continue being recorded the same way. Tangentially, neither did the tradition of dubbing foreign films by just having a single guy read every character's lines without even removing the original audio track, but just trying to talk louder than the actors' original audio.
- gerikson 6y ago
  I can’t say I’ve noticed that - I saw most Tarkovsky movies in the late 80s before I knew about these details. When it comes to Stalker (which I recently rewatched) I’d imagine the sound would add to the strangeness.
- Arech 6y ago
  > Tangentially, neither did the tradition of dubbing foreign films by just having a single guy read every character's lines without even removing the original audio track, but just trying to talk louder than the actors' original audio. There's another reason for that I think. The first movies pirated to USSR were dubbed in "underground" conditions by enthusiasts (and their translations were in many cases more exact, closer to the original than "official" ones made later). Some people get used to that style and really prefer a single voice, but proper translation with much of an original sound, intonations to a hollow "official" "professional" dubs.
- hardwaregeek 6y ago
  Italian films recorded dialogue after as well, no? I'm not sure whether it's all sound, but you can clearly tell that the dialogue is dubbed. In Truffaut's Day for Night, the Italian actress Valentina Cortese mentions that with Fellini, the actors would recite numbers instead of lines. The most egregious instance is Antonioni's Red Desert, which stars Richard Harris, who I'm pretty sure did not speak fluent Italian with a perfect accent.
  - maest 6y ago
    > did not speak fluent Italian with a perfect accent Speaking of which, here's an American production where Schwarzenegger's voice was dubbed over, for what I assume are similar reasons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p3nmyTICo0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p3nmyTICo0 The IMDB plot synopsis is pretty great: Hercules is sent to Earth where he finds true love and starts a promising career in the bodybuilder business.
- Blackthorn 6y ago
  I suppose this is the benefit of not knowing Russian and having to watch it subbed. It ends up being hard to notice (I certainly didn't).
nathias 6y ago
I will never forgive him for butchering Solaris, he changed the ending from one of the most beautiful, tragic and haunting in all sci-fi to a simple and idiotic twist. Lem, who wanted to make sci-fi into serious literature was a harsh critic of american pop sci-fi and especially such twist endings.
- Arech 6y ago
  BTW, if you are ok to listen in Russian, I'd recommend to try to listen 2007 radio-version with Armen Dzhigarkhanyan as Snout. It's just awesome. Listened it at least 4 times over a years and always found something new in it.
- UncleOxidant 6y ago
  I had the opposite reaction. I read Lem's Solaris and was underwhelmed. But seeing Tarkovsky's Solaris seemed like a big improvement over the book.
  - nathias 6y ago
    I like Lem and think he succeeded in his mission, I see Tarkovsky as intellectually inferior (he is a mere intellectual, while Lem is a philosopher and it shows in the depth of concepts).
raptorraver 6y ago
This brings back memories from the early 2000s. I was in high school and got very interested about Andrei Tarkovsky but it was very hard to get copies of his works anywhere. Finally I was able to order couple of VHS's to my local library from some library quite far away. Watching The Sacrifice after school alone in our house was more frightening than any scary movies I saw afterwards (not too many tbh...). Also I grew deep respect to Andrei Rublev. Still have a copy of his Holy Trinity on my wall.
hardwaregeek 6y ago
I have mixed feelings about Tarkovsky. He is certainly profoundly important. His sensuality is unmatched. Whether it's the perfect use of sound (endless dripping water, the ringing of a fallen cup), the incredible imagery or the beautiful stories (I think about the bell story in Andrei Rublev a lot), Tarkovsky is the king of making you feel the movie. That said, I don't worship at the altar of Tarkovsky. I don't love that his movies have this impenetrable length. I don't love that his movies inevitably have some long philosophical lecture by a male character while the women stay to the sides, often silent. I will sound like a petulant digital native, but I have been bored by a Tarkovsky. Too often Tarkovsky is used as this unquestionably brilliant artist. To appreciate him is to be a true cinemaphile, while to hate him is to indicate your pedestrian tastes. I don't agree. There should be no shame in being bored by Stalker, in not getting Andrei Rublev, in finding The Sacrifice a little too navel gazing. If I had to explain Tarkovsky to someone who doesn't watch art movies, I'd say that he's like the Velvet Underground. Unless you have a particular taste, you probably won't enjoy songs like Heroin or Venus in Furs. But you'll definitely enjoy the music made by people who did like Heroin or Venus in Furs. You don't have to enjoy Tarkovsky. But watch some of his movies, and you'll start to have flashes of recognition in movies like Arrival, La Cienaga, The New World, etc.
- QuesnayJr 6y ago
  Tarkovsky movies are boring, so I would ask someone if they minded boring movies before recommending him. It's just that lack-of-boringness is not the only axis by which to judge or enjoy a movie. I can put up with being bored for 2 hours if I get something else out of it. I don't think you need to like Tarkovsky -- I don't think you need to like anything -- but Tarkovsky is a good examples for the pleasures of cinema orthogonal to the boring-not-boring axis. I like the way you put it about feeling the movie. When I try to picture what it was like to live in the Middle Ages, I usually end up picturing something like Andrei Rublev.
  - pera 6y ago
    To me a boring movie is one that is mostly a constant flux of extremely predictable events with near zero content to analyze (e.g. a Marvel superhero movie). Tarkovsky is nothing like that, in fact I think his movies are the exact opposite of that.
1234throwaway 6y ago
he is not a nice person. apart from the horses killed filming rublev, look at how many people died so he could entertain his narcissistic fantasies
- artem247 6y ago
  Not sure I've ever had heard this, ehh, how many people died?
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    He is probably referring to the death of several people from cancer after the filming of Stalker, because some scenes were filmed at an industrial facility in Estonia where actors and crew were exposed to pollution. But to blame Tarkovsky personally for this is a bit of a stretch.
    - yesenadam 6y ago
      Gee, I hadn't heard that. The sound designer said: "We were shooting near Tallinn in the area around the small river Jägala with a half-functioning hydroelectric station. Up the river was a chemical plant and it poured out poisonous liquids downstream. There is even this shot in Stalker: snow falling in the summer and white foam floating down the river. In fact it was some horrible poison. Many women in our crew got allergic reactions on their faces. Tarkovsky died from cancer of the right bronchial tube. And Tolya Solonitsyn ["the Writer"] too. That it was all connected to the location shooting for Stalker became clear to me when [Tarkovsky's wife] Larisa Tarkovskaya died from the same illness in Paris." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film)#Production_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film)#Production...
    - UncleOxidant 6y ago
      And Tarkovsky himself died of cancer likely from that exposure.
marosgrego 6y ago
Ah, Stalker and Adrei Rublev are among my favourite movies. Contrary to what some may feel, I find their pacing to be a nice, almost meditative experience. The others of his movies came to me as more pretentious, although also nice in their way (maybe I need to give them another watch). For a similar kind of experience, but more down to earth, I would recommend the movies of Béla Tarr.
- b3kart 6y ago
  “Meditative” is exactly the word I’d use as well. Which also brings up parallels with meditation itself: meditating might seem boring, but when fully engaged in (and with some practice) can be a transformative experience.
- crispyambulance 6y ago
  In undergrad, I went to the library once and watched Andrei Rublev on laserdisc. I had been "into" films before, but this was quite unlike anything I had seen up to that point. Anyways, there's a scene in the film with a pagan ritual that is shot with such dreamlike perfection. I remember seeing something from the corner of my eye and noticed there were three other film-obsessed laserdisc enthusiasts standing behind me mesmerized. Andrei Rublev is on Criterion blu-ray now as a flawless restoration. Watching it recently, it's a bit heavy-handed, but still magnificent if you watch the film on it's own terms. I think many of the visual techniques pioneered by Tarkovsky are now commonplace, but the meandering dreamlike pace and tone is still rare. Apichatpong Weerasethakul comes to mind as a director who can pull-off the dreamike stuff as well as Tarkovsky. See Uncle Boonmee Who can Recall his Past Lives (https://youtu.be/gqlD_VnsM-k https://youtu.be/gqlD_VnsM-k).
goofballlogic 6y ago
As a human being he wasn't perfect, but I come back to images from his film in my head time and time again and they help me look up from my work and consider bigger things on an ongoing basis. His films create space in my head which I go to for help when I need it most.
- UncleOxidant 6y ago
  Scenes from his films stick in my head much more than scenes from other directors except maybe Malick.
krrrh 6y ago
The article mentions Chris Marker’s film on Tarkovsky, “One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich” which I very much recommend, especially if you are a fan of both filmmakers. It contains a lot of behind the scenes footage from the filming of The Sacrifice, and is a deep and insightful appreciation of Tarkovsky’s contribution to cinema from an artist of comparable impact. There’s a copy on YouTube here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=35lETmPDypI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=35lETmPDypI

77 points by benbreen 6y ago

An extremely distracting aspect of Tarkovsky's cinema is something he shares with most Soviet cinema, which is that all sound is recorded and mixed in during post-production. All environmental sound is accomplished through foley work. All lines are dubbed in, sometimes by completely different actors. There are no mics on set whatsoever. It makes his movies (as great as they are) feel like Looney Tunes cartoons. Amazingly, this approach to cinema did not end with the fall of the USSR, and most Russian movies continue being recorded the same way. Tangentially, neither did the tradition of dubbing foreign films by just having a single guy read every character's lines without even removing the original audio track, but just trying to talk louder than the actors' original audio.

gerikson 6y ago
I can’t say I’ve noticed that - I saw most Tarkovsky movies in the late 80s before I knew about these details. When it comes to Stalker (which I recently rewatched) I’d imagine the sound would add to the strangeness.
Arech 6y ago
> Tangentially, neither did the tradition of dubbing foreign films by just having a single guy read every character's lines without even removing the original audio track, but just trying to talk louder than the actors' original audio. There's another reason for that I think. The first movies pirated to USSR were dubbed in "underground" conditions by enthusiasts (and their translations were in many cases more exact, closer to the original than "official" ones made later). Some people get used to that style and really prefer a single voice, but proper translation with much of an original sound, intonations to a hollow "official" "professional" dubs.
hardwaregeek 6y ago
Italian films recorded dialogue after as well, no? I'm not sure whether it's all sound, but you can clearly tell that the dialogue is dubbed. In Truffaut's Day for Night, the Italian actress Valentina Cortese mentions that with Fellini, the actors would recite numbers instead of lines. The most egregious instance is Antonioni's Red Desert, which stars Richard Harris, who I'm pretty sure did not speak fluent Italian with a perfect accent.
- maest 6y ago
  > did not speak fluent Italian with a perfect accent Speaking of which, here's an American production where Schwarzenegger's voice was dubbed over, for what I assume are similar reasons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p3nmyTICo0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p3nmyTICo0 The IMDB plot synopsis is pretty great: Hercules is sent to Earth where he finds true love and starts a promising career in the bodybuilder business.
Blackthorn 6y ago
I suppose this is the benefit of not knowing Russian and having to watch it subbed. It ends up being hard to notice (I certainly didn't).

nathias 6y ago

I will never forgive him for butchering Solaris, he changed the ending from one of the most beautiful, tragic and haunting in all sci-fi to a simple and idiotic twist. Lem, who wanted to make sci-fi into serious literature was a harsh critic of american pop sci-fi and especially such twist endings.

Arech 6y ago
BTW, if you are ok to listen in Russian, I'd recommend to try to listen 2007 radio-version with Armen Dzhigarkhanyan as Snout. It's just awesome. Listened it at least 4 times over a years and always found something new in it.
UncleOxidant 6y ago
I had the opposite reaction. I read Lem's Solaris and was underwhelmed. But seeing Tarkovsky's Solaris seemed like a big improvement over the book.
- nathias 6y ago
  I like Lem and think he succeeded in his mission, I see Tarkovsky as intellectually inferior (he is a mere intellectual, while Lem is a philosopher and it shows in the depth of concepts).

raptorraver 6y ago

This brings back memories from the early 2000s. I was in high school and got very interested about Andrei Tarkovsky but it was very hard to get copies of his works anywhere. Finally I was able to order couple of VHS's to my local library from some library quite far away. Watching The Sacrifice after school alone in our house was more frightening than any scary movies I saw afterwards (not too many tbh...). Also I grew deep respect to Andrei Rublev. Still have a copy of his Holy Trinity on my wall.

hardwaregeek 6y ago

I have mixed feelings about Tarkovsky. He is certainly profoundly important. His sensuality is unmatched. Whether it's the perfect use of sound (endless dripping water, the ringing of a fallen cup), the incredible imagery or the beautiful stories (I think about the bell story in Andrei Rublev a lot), Tarkovsky is the king of making you feel the movie. That said, I don't worship at the altar of Tarkovsky. I don't love that his movies have this impenetrable length. I don't love that his movies inevitably have some long philosophical lecture by a male character while the women stay to the sides, often silent. I will sound like a petulant digital native, but I have been bored by a Tarkovsky. Too often Tarkovsky is used as this unquestionably brilliant artist. To appreciate him is to be a true cinemaphile, while to hate him is to indicate your pedestrian tastes. I don't agree. There should be no shame in being bored by Stalker, in not getting Andrei Rublev, in finding The Sacrifice a little too navel gazing. If I had to explain Tarkovsky to someone who doesn't watch art movies, I'd say that he's like the Velvet Underground. Unless you have a particular taste, you probably won't enjoy songs like Heroin or Venus in Furs. But you'll definitely enjoy the music made by people who did like Heroin or Venus in Furs. You don't have to enjoy Tarkovsky. But watch some of his movies, and you'll start to have flashes of recognition in movies like Arrival, La Cienaga, The New World, etc.

QuesnayJr 6y ago
Tarkovsky movies are boring, so I would ask someone if they minded boring movies before recommending him. It's just that lack-of-boringness is not the only axis by which to judge or enjoy a movie. I can put up with being bored for 2 hours if I get something else out of it. I don't think you need to like Tarkovsky -- I don't think you need to like anything -- but Tarkovsky is a good examples for the pleasures of cinema orthogonal to the boring-not-boring axis. I like the way you put it about feeling the movie. When I try to picture what it was like to live in the Middle Ages, I usually end up picturing something like Andrei Rublev.
- pera 6y ago
  To me a boring movie is one that is mostly a constant flux of extremely predictable events with near zero content to analyze (e.g. a Marvel superhero movie). Tarkovsky is nothing like that, in fact I think his movies are the exact opposite of that.

1234throwaway 6y ago

he is not a nice person. apart from the horses killed filming rublev, look at how many people died so he could entertain his narcissistic fantasies

artem247 6y ago
Not sure I've ever had heard this, ehh, how many people died?
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  He is probably referring to the death of several people from cancer after the filming of Stalker, because some scenes were filmed at an industrial facility in Estonia where actors and crew were exposed to pollution. But to blame Tarkovsky personally for this is a bit of a stretch.
  - yesenadam 6y ago
    Gee, I hadn't heard that. The sound designer said: "We were shooting near Tallinn in the area around the small river Jägala with a half-functioning hydroelectric station. Up the river was a chemical plant and it poured out poisonous liquids downstream. There is even this shot in Stalker: snow falling in the summer and white foam floating down the river. In fact it was some horrible poison. Many women in our crew got allergic reactions on their faces. Tarkovsky died from cancer of the right bronchial tube. And Tolya Solonitsyn ["the Writer"] too. That it was all connected to the location shooting for Stalker became clear to me when [Tarkovsky's wife] Larisa Tarkovskaya died from the same illness in Paris." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film)#Production_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film)#Production...
  - UncleOxidant 6y ago
    And Tarkovsky himself died of cancer likely from that exposure.

marosgrego 6y ago

Ah, Stalker and Adrei Rublev are among my favourite movies. Contrary to what some may feel, I find their pacing to be a nice, almost meditative experience. The others of his movies came to me as more pretentious, although also nice in their way (maybe I need to give them another watch). For a similar kind of experience, but more down to earth, I would recommend the movies of Béla Tarr.

b3kart 6y ago
“Meditative” is exactly the word I’d use as well. Which also brings up parallels with meditation itself: meditating might seem boring, but when fully engaged in (and with some practice) can be a transformative experience.
crispyambulance 6y ago
In undergrad, I went to the library once and watched Andrei Rublev on laserdisc. I had been "into" films before, but this was quite unlike anything I had seen up to that point. Anyways, there's a scene in the film with a pagan ritual that is shot with such dreamlike perfection. I remember seeing something from the corner of my eye and noticed there were three other film-obsessed laserdisc enthusiasts standing behind me mesmerized. Andrei Rublev is on Criterion blu-ray now as a flawless restoration. Watching it recently, it's a bit heavy-handed, but still magnificent if you watch the film on it's own terms. I think many of the visual techniques pioneered by Tarkovsky are now commonplace, but the meandering dreamlike pace and tone is still rare. Apichatpong Weerasethakul comes to mind as a director who can pull-off the dreamike stuff as well as Tarkovsky. See Uncle Boonmee Who can Recall his Past Lives (https://youtu.be/gqlD_VnsM-k https://youtu.be/gqlD_VnsM-k).

goofballlogic 6y ago

As a human being he wasn't perfect, but I come back to images from his film in my head time and time again and they help me look up from my work and consider bigger things on an ongoing basis. His films create space in my head which I go to for help when I need it most.

UncleOxidant 6y ago
Scenes from his films stick in my head much more than scenes from other directors except maybe Malick.

krrrh 6y ago

The article mentions Chris Marker’s film on Tarkovsky, “One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich” which I very much recommend, especially if you are a fan of both filmmakers. It contains a lot of behind the scenes footage from the filming of The Sacrifice, and is a deep and insightful appreciation of Tarkovsky’s contribution to cinema from an artist of comparable impact. There’s a copy on YouTube here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=35lETmPDypI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=35lETmPDypI