Ten Things about Tarkovsky

Today would have been Tarkovsky's 80th birthday. This has prompted a lot of intense, often lovely and frequently laboured pieces of writing about the brilliance, austerity, singularity and poetry of his vision. I don't want to add too much to all those swirling words with no place to go. So, instead, here is a list of ten things that I love about the old dog.

1. I love that whenever I show 'Mirror' to first year film students, that there is always one or two of them that are profoundly angered.

2. I love each and every forest scene in 'Ivan's Childhood'. Tree trunks, leaves and the natural form of the forest floor as architecture, as screen division, as emotion, as staging, as beauty, as threat.

3. I love his love of faces, of the ways that he lingers on them in the deepest states of melancholy or revery.

4. I love that, in Tarkovsky, fire is not just a visual elemental motif. Fire is as elemental as it is in the real world. It is elemental!

5. I love that every film feels like an emotional biography, whatever the subject, story and setting.


6. I love that he would talk about his own ways of making film in ways such as this:

“We can express our feelings regarding the world around us either by poetic or by descriptive means. I prefer to express myself metaphorically. Let me stress: metaphorically, not symbolically. A symbol contains within itself a definite meaning, certain intellectual formula, while metaphor is an image. An image possessing the same distinguishing features as the world it represents. An image — as opposed to a symbol — is indefinite in meaning. One cannot speak of the infinite world by applying tools that are definite and finite. We can analyse the formula that constitutes a symbol, while metaphor is a being-within-itself, it's a monomial. It falls apart at any attempt of touching it. ”

and this:

“When less than everything has been said about a subject, you can still think on further. The alternative is for the audience to be presented with a final deduction (...) no effort on their part.
What can it mean to them when they have not shared with the author the misery and joy of bringing an image into being?”

and this:

“I am only interested in the views of two people: one is called Bresson and one called Bergman.”

7. I love this polaroid in particular, among his many beautiful polaroids:

8. I love his films. I love everything about 'Mirror'. Everything. And I love that even though it is flawed, 'Ivan's Childhood' will always be one of my 'top' films because I cannot think of any film that when I first watched it, made me swoon, catch my breath and roll my eyes in disbelief. And I love that, while I might love other directors and other films more, that images from each and every one of his films, still chase me, still haunt me, years after first seeing them. I love that his films refuse to be forgotten or ignored.

9. I love the fact that he seems to me to be more truly audacious, more truly visionary, more truly and essentially of the properties and mysteries of cinema itself, than anyone else I can think of.

10. And, finally, I love that his top ten list of films was as follows:

1. Le Journal d'un curé de campagne
2. Winter Light
3. Nazarin
4. Wild Strawberries
5. City Lights
6. Ugetsu Monogatari
7. Seven Samurai
8. Persona
9. Mouchette
10. Woman of the Dunes