Obra sobre Andréi Tarkovski
Peter Green, arquitecto y escritor nacido en Londres, trabaja en la actualidad en Munich (Alemania). Ha publicado libros de poemas y narrativa, y varios ensayos sobre el cine de Styajit Ray, Joris Ivens, el Nuevo Cine Alemán y Peter Greenaway, entre otros.
Dos largos ensayos de Green sobre Tarkovski aparecieron en Sight and Sound: "The Notalghia of the Stalker" (Winter 1984/84) y "Apocalypse and Sacrifice" (Spring 1987). Ambos sirvieron de base a la monografía posterior: Andrei Tarkovski: The Winding Quest (Macmillan, Londres, 1993; edición agotada).
La amplia formación y la diversidad de los intereses de Green le han permitido aproximarse al cine de Tarkovski desde una perspectiva poliédrica, muy sugerente. Sirva como ejemplo el siguiente texto, que corresponde a su intervención en el Congreso de diciembre de 2003, en el Museo de Arte Bizantino y Cristiano, de Atenas. Insertamos aquí la versión íntegra que, por razones de tiempo, no pudo leer en su totalidad en aquella ocasión.
Tarkovsky's Poetic Cinema
By Peter Green
Tarkovsky's cinema is popularly regarded as "poetic", a concept that may be attributed in large part to Maya Turovskaya's book Tarkovsky: Cinema as Poetry. But what are the distinguishing features of this poetry in film? Does the word express more than just an ill-defined sense of something beautiful and enigmatic? Quoting Viktor Shklovsky, Maja Turovskaya essays a definition by saying that "in poetic cinema, elements of form prevail over elements of meaning and... determine the composition".1 A definitive discussion of the semantic content of the word would obviously exceed the scope of this paper, but perhaps one might take a short cut by referring to the German word for poetry, "Dichtung", which also has connotations of compression or density.(1)
Throughout Tarkovsky's work, one can observe a process of reduction, a concentration on essentials. This manifests itself in many forms: in fewer cuts, in the epigrammatic use of symbols, emblems and metaphors as a means of condensing expression, and in the elimination of music, to mention but a few. In other words, there is a compression of ideas into multivalent forms and images.
On the other hand, Tarkovsky himself claimed that in none of his films is anything symbolized. The Zone in Stalker is simply a zone, he wrote in Sculpting in Time,(2) only to describe the Zone as life itself through which man has to pass. Later in the same work, though, he says that "art symbolizes the meaning of our existence". There are evident contradictions involved here, but then, no artist would wish to see the synthesis of his work dissected into its constituent parts.
Questioned about the abundant images of rain and water in his films, Tarkovsky remarked that they were a direct representation of nature and the heavy rains to which he was accustomed at home - used to create an atmospheric and aesthetic setting. "There is always water in my films. I like water, especially brooks. The sea is too vast. I don't fear it; it is just monotonous. In nature I like smaller things. Microcosm, not macrocosm; limited surfaces. I love the Japanese attitude to nature. They concentrate on a confined space reflecting the infinite. Water is a mysterious element... because of its structure. And it is very cinegenic; it transmits movement, depth, changes. Nothing is more beautiful than water."(3)
This is only part of the picture, though. The images Tarkovsky used are not just an evocation of atmosphere. In their painterly quality, they are part of a well-considered process of composition, something that is paralleled in the construction of whole episodes which have the structure of scenes in a play. Tarkovsky's early art studies, his later drawings and sketches and his preoccupation with the paintings of the Bruegels, the Renaissance artists, the German Romantics and, of course, Andrei Rublyov all play a role in this respect. Tarkovsky remarked that his work as a film director would not have been conceivable without the basic education he had received in art and music.(4) But he also said: "I have never understood ... attempts to construct mise en scène from a painting."(5)
Not only are paintings directly and allusively quoted in the films (one thinks of the portrait of Ginevra de' Benci before a juniper bush attributed to Leonardo in The Mirror, or the fresco of the Madonna del Parto by della Francesca in Nostalgia); Tarkovsky also composed scenes that resemble or evoke historical works, such as the Bruegel-like panoramas in Solarisand The Mirror. He drew on the conventions and iconographic codes of painting as well, making consistent use of the attributes and symbolism employed by the old masters. The mirrors and other tokens of transience found in nearly all his films may be compared to the vanitas motifs of still-life painting. In the scenes in Domenico's house in Nostalgia, the discussion of belief is set against a composition of objects in various stages of decay. This aesthetic of decay is a particular feature of Tarkovsky's cinema, in which conventional, everyday objects form part of a striking visual composition and acquire their own distinct fascination. Stalker abounds in them. Or there are scenes (in Solaris and The Mirror, for example) that are composed in the manner of a breakfast still life, where the guests have suddenly departed in the midst of their repast, leaving the table in disarray. Behind this world of decaying objects, of worm-eaten fruit, mirrors, overturned drinking vessels and burnt-down candles, is the idea of vanitas, the transience of all earthly things. In this, one finds a reflection of Tarkovsky's lifelong preoccupation with related themes from the Bible, and in particular the Apocalypse and Ecclesiastes.(6)
Another aspect of Tarkovsky's aesthetic of reduction or concentration may be found in his attitude towards music and sound, through which he created an inner stylistic consistency in his films akin to the classical unities in drama. Parallel to the gradual reduction of the musical content, one finds the recurring theme of muteness and silence. In the later films, music is largely replaced by a complex layer of sounds that have an aural significance comparable to that of the visual codes. Remarking that music came into the cinema as an illustrative medium in the days of silent film, Tarkovsky argued that it should not be a mere appendage to the visual images.(7) Ultimately, he pleaded for the replacement of music with the "sounds of the world". In his final film, The Sacrifice, the only music extraneous to the action is a passage from Bach's St Matthew Passion, which accompanies the credits at beginning and end. The other brief moments of music are integral to the action: both the Japanese flute music, which Alexander plays on his stereo set, and the organ prelude he plays in Maria's house are "live", in the sense that they occur within the events of the film. On another level, there is a collage of sounds near and far that counterpoints the visual content: the sea and gulls, the fog horn in the night, the rumble of thunder, the sounds of trembling glasses and the roar of planes overhead that herald the approaching cataclysm.
*
Poetry, then, as the concentration of ideas. In his poem "Life, Life", Arseniy Tarkovsky, Andrei's father, wrote:
"Live in the house - and the house will stand.
I will call up any century,
Go into it and build myself a house.
That is why your children are beside me
And your wives all seated at one table,
One table for great-grandfather and grandson."
and later:
"I only need my immortality
For my blood to go on flowing from age to age."(8)
The ideas of immortality expressed in the father's poem -as a continuation of life from generation to generation- are also a recurring theme in the son's films, in particular The Mirror. The film spans three generations, telescoping them into each other and merging identities in its dense imagery. The Mirror is labyrinthine, full of disjunctions and breaks, yet it is perhaps Tarkovsky's most fluid and cinematic work, in which he demonstrates his theory that time is the essence of film; that film possesses a unique ability to capture and reproduce time, raising "a vast edifice of memories", in a Proustian sense. In condensing various layers of meaning into single images, Andrei Tarkovsky distilled his own poetic expression, at the same time extending the vocabulary of cinema.
In the work of both father and son, there is a metaphysical dimension based on personal belief. Nevertheless, despite the dream-like passages and the allusions to myth and parapsychology in his films, Andrei Tarkovsky sought to observe the laws of the physical world. During the expedition into the Zone in Stalker, for example, the writer hears a voice warning him not to proceed further. At first, it seems to be the voice of some invisible presence - of God Himself perhaps. The Stalker, however, provides an explanation by suggesting that his companion is inwardly afraid to go further and has voiced the injunction himself as a way out of his dilemma.
The entire structure of The Sacrifice is built on this concept. The cataclysm that sets the machinery of sacrifice in motion is a product of man's plight: the triumph of materialism over spiritual values. Tarkovsky said: "I wanted to show that man can renew his ties to life by renewing his covenant with himself and with the source of his soul."(9) In that sense, Alexander sees himself as an instrument of human redemption. When the world is threatened with obliteration by a nuclear catastrophe -the outbreak of a third world war- Alexander makes a gesture of faith on behalf of mankind and promises to sacrifice all he possesses if God will spare the world. He makes a vow of silence and promises to give up all that binds him to life if God will let everything be as it was the day before. When Alexander wakes the following morning, all tokens of the impending war have vanished. God has apparently answered his prayers, and in a way that is reconcilable with the natural laws of the world: the outbreak of war one believed to be "real" has taken place in a dream - Alexander's dream or the dream of mankind. He thereupon sets about fulfilling his vow and making his terrible sacrifice.
The film opens with a detail from Leonardo's magical unfinished painting The Adoration of the Magi (1481-82). The head of one of the kings can be seen. He is proffering a cup, and the hand of the Infant Jesus reaches out towards it. After the credits, the camera moves slowly up the picture, revealing Christ and the Virgin and the foot of a tree held by the hands of angels. At its simplest level, Leonardo's painting is a depiction of a present-giving in celebration of a birthday, and it is for this reason that Alexander's guests gather around him at the opening. Through the sacrifice of Christ, the world is redeemed, which is also Alexander's aim in the film. Beyond the tree, the sketched forms of horses, associated at an earlier time with chthonic forces, are a familiar motif from many of Tarkovsky's works; and the portrayal of the ruined architecture is a theme commonly used in Renaissance painting to convey the idea of the decay of the old order, the Old Temple, while Christ represents the new Jerusalem.
All this finds its counterpart in the waste landscapes of Alexander's visions of destruction -the destruction of war- and his own sacrifice. The Magi painting reappears on a number of occasions in the film. A print of it hangs in Alexander's house, the glass reflecting his features in a double image, as if he were about to enter the picture. Finally, the tree itself finds its counterpart in the film. In the opening scene, after the credits, one sees Alexander planting a tall, dry stem. He tells his young son the legend of the old Orthodox monk Pamve who had planted a dead tree on a mountain and who had instructed a novice to water it every day until it wakened to life. Every day, the novice would fill a bucket and climb the mountain to water the tree, returning in the evening after dark. After three years, he climbed the mountain and found the tree in full bloom.
The parable sounds a series of resonances in the film. At the end, after Alexander has been taken away in an ambulance, Little Man, his son, is seen bearing two buckets to water the dry stem his father has planted. Recovering his voice, the little boy speaks for the first time in the film, repeating the words of his father earlier: "In the beginning was the word"; and he adds, "Why, Papa?" Again, the camera rises to the crown of the tree, where there is neither blossom nor leaf; but as if in answer to the question, the dedication of the film to Tarkovsky's own son is faded on.
The poetry of the film lies not in establishing parallels with the iconography of the painting, but in the density of meaning within the images and in the creation of a fabric in which the complex fictional action is interwoven with real life. Childhood and war, the quest for belief, nostalgia as a yearning for home, as a sickness unto death, sacrifice and hope for the future are not only the epic themes of Tarkovsky's films; they were stations in his own life, and they have a universal validity for their audience.
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The subtitle for my monograph on Andrei Tarkovsky and his films bore the subtitle "The Winding Quest"(10). The words are taken from Henry Vaughan's poem "Man":
"Man is the shuttle, to whose winding quest
and passage through these looms
God ordered motion, but ordain'd no rest."
It seemed an appropriate description of Tarkovsky's own life and the way he saw the work of the artist - as a "winding quest". At that time, one spoke of his "slender oeuvre" of only eight films made over a period of 25 years - including his 46-minute diploma submission The Steamroller and the Violin. It is a small, but timeless body of work.
One knows the difficulties Tarkovsky encountered in realizing his projects in the Soviet Union. A few films made by other directors in the years following his death seemed to emulate certain stylistic elements of his work and were associated with his name, but ultimately, there was nothing in the nature of a Tarkovsky school, as might have been hoped and which would have been a fruitful extension of his cinema. Today, under quite different cultural, social and above all commercial circumstances, one wonders whether Tarkovsky would have been able to realize even the eight films he created during his lifetime. In that sense, too, his ouevre makes an eloquent comment on our times.
NOTES
1 Maya Turovskaya, Tarkovsky: Cinema as Poetry, London, 1989, p. 101.
2 Andrey Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema, London, 1986, pp.36f.
3 Andrei Tarkovsky, from English press brochure to The Sacrifice, 1986.
4 Filmed interview with Andrei Tarkovsky by Donatella Baglio, 1983.
5 Andrey Tarkovsky, ibid, p. 78.
6 "Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth for ever" (Ecclesiastes 1:2-4). Tarkovsky's preoccupation with this and other passages from Ecclesiastes is described in the article "A Year with Andrei" by Michal Leszczylowski, covering the last year of the director's life (Sight and Sound, autumn 1987, pp. 282 ff.)
7 Andrey Tarkovsky, ibid, pp. 155 ff.
8 Andrey Tarkovsky, ibid, p. 144.
9 Andrei Tarkovsky interviewed by Annie Epelboin in Paris, 15 March 1986.
10 Peter Green, Andrei Tarkovsky: The Winding Quest, London, 1993.
© Peter Green, 2003
© International Relations for Culture, 2002
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