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Andrei Tarkovsky - Blog Posts
Stalker (1979)
Andriej Tarkowski
Andriej Tarkowski
Andriej Tarkowski
Andrei Tarkovsky and Natalya Bondarchuk on the set of Solaris, 1972
The function of the image, as Gogol said, is to express life itself, not ideas or arguments about life. It does not signify life or symbolise it, but embodies it, expressing its uniqueness.
Andrei Tarkovsky, from “The Film Image,” Sculpting in Time, trans. Kitty Hunter-Blair (University of Texas Press, 1987)
“ It seems to me that the purpose of art is to prepare the human soul for the perception of good. The soul opens up under the influence of an artistic image, and it is for this reason that we say it helps us to communicate—but it is communication in the highest sense of the word. I could not imagine a work of art that would prompt a person to do something bad…Perhaps you have noticed that the more pointless people’s tears during a film, the more profound the reason for these tears. I am not talking about sentimentality, but about how art can reach to the depths of the human soul and leave man defenseless against good.”
--- Andrei Tarkovsky
from Against interpretation: an interview with Andrei Tarkovsky / Spring 1981
”What matters to me is that the feeling excited by my films should be universal. An artistic image is capable of arousing identical feelings in viewers, while the thoughts that come later may be very different. If you start to search for a meaning during the film you will miss everything that happens. The ideal viewer is someone who watches a film like a traveler watching the country he is passing through: because the effect of an artistic image is an extra-mental type of communication. There are some artists who attach symbolic meaning to their images, but that is not possible for me. Zen poets have a good way of dealing with this: they work to eliminate any possibility of interpretation, an in the process a parallel arises between the real world and what the artist creates in his work.”
--- Andrei Tarkovsky
from Against interpretation: an interview with Andrei Tarkovsky / Spring 1981
When I speak of poetry I am not thinking of it as a genre. Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality.
Andrei Tarkovsky - Sculpting in Time
«Когда человек родится, он слаб и гибок, когда умирает, он крепок и черств. Когда дерево растет, оно нежно и гибко, а когда оно сухо и жестко, оно умирает. Черствость и сила - спутники смерти, гибкость и слабость выражают свежесть бытия. Поэтому что отвердело, то не победит.”
Stalker (1979) dir. Andrei Tarkovsky
Let them believe in themselves. Let them be helpless like children, because weakness is a great thing, and strength is nothing. When a man is just born, he is weak and fragile. When he dies, he is hard and insensitive. When a tree is growing, it’s tender and fragile, but when it’s dry and hard, it dies.
Hardness and strength are death’s companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being. Because what has hardened will never win.