For decades, there has been a global consensus on the brilliant cinematic experiences of the famous soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. He produced seven feature films in his 25-year career in cinemas, each exhibiting flawless cinematic brilliance. His focus is on the science fiction films such as Solaris expounding the human conditions while at the same time incorporating perfect filmography to bring out the most entertaining cinematographic techniques to its audiences.
Born in a rural home in Kostroma oblast in Russia, he developed a passion for arts derived from the influence of his father Areseny; the great poet .with the enormous training in music and art in his childhood, Tarkovsky emerged as a troubled kid in school, always engaging in the impossible brilliance in all sectors. After studying Arabic for a year, he enrolled in the state cinematography institute, being exposed to Italian neorealism and the concept of the French new wave. The early education and experience shaped the years to come in exploring the film industry.
Beginning with his debut film Ivan’s Childhood, cast in 1962 to The Sacrifice, exhibited in 1986, he depicted to the entire world how it was possible to turn the visual narration into a musical form of true poetry. Throughout the entire life of his film production, Tarkovsky tried as much as possible to come into terms with the notion of space, time, humankind’s existence, and the idea of metaphysical paradox. Most of his films are based on his ideology of manifesting his anxiety swirled in colorful patterns over the screen display and overwhelming his audiences with his outmost brilliant mastery.
One of his films, Stalker, displays a magnum opus, showing the acute hypocrisy of human kinds’ empty dialects and their arrogance through a flowing simple allegorical narrative. The filming of this film brought many controversies due to the nature of the poetic display of underground institutions such as the KGB. He succumbed to acute illness in 1986, something that most critics attribute to poisoning using chemicals while filming the Stalker. The controversies surrounding the film’s production, such as the Russians soviets feeling that the film left them naked exposed through poetry, left a standstill and a landmark in his career development.
The filmmaker’s impact came to be pervasive in incorporating the long single–camera shots, differentiating between the real-time dream, action, and other cinematic experiences. The cinematic poetic nature in which he captures the landscapes brings out an excellent use of camera techniques. The nature of art with the grassland rotating while the foggy mist obscured in the dark green valley with tracking shots over several objects underneath water displays his integration of visuals with the poetic display. The nature in which he connects the aesthetic terrain with spiritual resonance in his films greatly influences the cinema.
Concerning poetry in the film Mirror, his imagination applying imagery in autobiographical memoir brings out a recollection of poetry and logical dreams. Within the film’s scenes, pathetic fallacy comes into play where he uses the weather to represent human emotions. Most of the imagery in his films relies on his poetic books, capturing the intensity of human emotions through fallacies. Weather changes such as mist, rain, and fire represent the symbolic nature embedded in human emotions.
Moreover, the important influence of Tarkovsky in his career is through the classical pre-modern paintings of his arts. The true nature of displaying the religious arts suppressed in the Soviet Union brings out the artistic nature of his films. Images are drawn from the Hunters in the Snow feature in the Solaris and the Mirror films. Incorporating history and poetry in his films through paintings displays the important influence on cinema .
The paintings influence his work in integrating space and time within a frame. His ability to flatten out and spread the images in a single frame across landscapes inspires his art in applying astonishing imagery in his films.
The notion of time gives Tarkovsky an important influence on cinema. He depicts dreams as concrete versions of reality, as seen in Ivan’s Childhood. The nature in which he produces the recordings of every movement and turns them to realities within a specific time frame brings out distinct cinematic experiences in his films. The visualizations of poetry with extreme events and characters combined with reality and intuitions of dreams underline the essence of time frames in most of his films. Such techniques make him the most prolific influencer in the cinema industry.
Tarkovsky cinema encompassed the four elements of wind, water, fire, and earth in its imagery over time. Animals such as dogs often appeared in his films to represent the omnipresent forces of the existing world. Most buildings are portrayed as ruined and decaying to signify nature’s reclamation. The rural settings in Mirror and The Sacrifice seem isolated, with a clear sense of vulnerability to the omnipresent elements. The vulnerabilities are expressed in snow-floating images of paintings over the roof in Andrei Rublev and rain falling through the leaky roof of the end of Solaris. The connection of imagery, paintings, time, and space bring compelling cinematic experiences to his films.
Another important feature that makes Tarkovsky influential in cinema is choosing locations. The locations land the ideology of timelessness. Just three films portray an urbanized and modernized environment; Mirror portrays the city by visualizing apartments and courtyards . Solaris and the Sacrifice depict brief urban setting scenes; the iconography in his locations makes him one of the most influential filmmakers due to the essence to connect to the immediate environment withy time.
The other milestone achievement in his films is the portrayal of human facials. How the camera shots linger on characters’ faces, probing into the anguish of male actors while taking his female characters with a distance of enigma brings out quality cinematics. Accompanying these portraits with the incorporation of actual paintings such as Nostalgia film influenced his early works. The facial capturing of characters’ faces emotionally reveals their expressions, forming the connection with its audiences.
The juxtaposing of black and white colors refines his work. Andrei Rublev‘s colors appear with a final montage of its paintings. The coloring portrays the medieval lives in most of his films, incorporated with paintings that portray the struggle of character roles. He brings out the coloring combined with paintings displays brilliance in the cinematic experience. In addition, he uses color to structure the frames, making the audiences aware of the entanglement of both elements in a scene. The black and white coloring brings the advantage of expressiveness to its audiences.
His style characterized by metaphysical and spiritual themes combined with longer takes excites the audiences with poetry full of e emotions, dialogue, and serene visuals. The soul-searching themes have a greater influence on modern films. Having many of his characters expound on the themes of religion marked his literal signature style brought out the emotional aspects of his major films. He uses these scenes to depict its audiences’ magical and photogenic ability. The integration of objects to have a symbolic meaning in the scenes of his films, such as Solaris, portrays the theme of self-reflection.
Tarkovsky incorporated the theory of early cinema referred to as ‘sculpting in time’ by offering a unique medium with the experience of altering time. Most of his films contain unedited footage to show the essence of real-time. By categorization, most of his films contained few cuts with long takes to enable the audiences to witness the realism of time passing. The style gives the audience the feeling of acknowledging the passing and loss, thereby bringing the relationship between one moment in time to the next.
Ranging from the Mirror to Nostalgia, most of his films integrate the narration of scenes through a stream of consciousness, parallel to the normal films that the plot lines narrations. His films’ frequent jumps and flashbacks are the norms, with audiences appearing disconnected from his style. Another notable feature is the reappearance of themes, merging the metaphysical themes with reality. Most things do not seem to be what they are, such as in Mirror, where the glass becomes a dark hole passage to another time or world. The confrontation with other themes also comes into play, with the artistic incorporation of character scenes and locations that seem ever-changing to its audiences.
Many filmmakers and scholars can acknowledge Tarkovsky’s influence on world cinema. The incorporation of several artistic styles from imagery, artistic visions, symbolism, and thematic expressions shows his brilliance. The self-actualization and realization of his themes in exploring the human conditions and connecting them with reality bring out the outstanding art of his work.
Phoenix Melville is a British-French director, writer and artist.