Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Tarkovsky is the most spiritual and poetic director of all time. For him, cinematography was not entertainment, but art in the best meaning of this word.
Born into the family of a famous poet, he studied music and painting seriously, making him one of the most educated directors. As a versatile artist, Tarkovsky was able to synthesise and combine the various arts in his movies. For him, film was not just a reflection of reality, but more like a poem or a dream.
"For me, film - is a way to reach the truth and I am trying to do it to the fullest extent of what I am capable of. I am deeply convinced that the process of creating a film does not end when it is finally ready for the movie theatre. The act of creation takes place in the auditorium at the time of watching the film. Therefore, the viewer for me is neither my consumer, nor a judge, but a co-creator, a co-author".
From my point of view, Tarkovsky is one of the most underrated directors, although he was a unique genius who created his own language, his own world. His films are unknown to the majority of cinema-goers - although there has never been a director in the history of cinema who has made such a dramatic stand for the human spirit as Andrei Tarkovsky. Today, when cinema seems to be reduced to banality, Tarkovsky's films are almost forgotten.
He wrote, "It is so much easier to slide down than to rise one iota above one's own narrow, selfish motives. It is extraordinarily difficult to achieve a true spiritual birth." "...no one wants to or can bring himself to take a sober look at himself and accept that he is responsible for his own life and for his own soul". "The connection between man's behaviour and his destiny has been destroyed; and this tragic breach is the cause of his sense of instability in the modern world. ...[man] has arrived at the false and fatal assumption that he has no part to play in the shaping of his own destiny". "I am convinced that any attempt to re-establish harmony in the world can only be based on a renewal of personal responsibility".
And there are other unique qualities that make Tarkovsky not only a great director, but also a great human being. He strongly believed that conscience is the most important thing and wanted to make other filmmakers aware that the most persuasive of arts demands a special responsibility from those who work in it.
"Art is born and takes root wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual, for the ideal, that longing which attracts people to art". "Modern art took a wrong turn when it abandoned the search for the meaning of existence in order to affirm the value of the individual for its own sake. What purports to be art begins to look like an eccentric occupation for suspicious characters who claim that any personalised action has intrinsic value only as a display of self-will. But in an artistic creation the personality does not assert itself. It serves another, higher and communal idea. The artist is always the servant, always trying to repay the gift given to him as if by a miracle. Modern man, however, does not want to make any sacrifice, even though true self-affirmation can only be expressed through sacrifice. We are gradually forgetting this and, at the same time, inevitably losing any sense of human vocation".
Tarkovsky was a deep thinker who rejected commercialised society and the coca-cola culture. He, regardless of how one sees his personal beliefs, tries to show us a world that is magical, supernatural, and ultimately beyond human comprehension.
"Juxtaposing a person with a boundless environment, bringing him together with an infinite number of people, both near and far, and relating a person to the whole world is what cinema is all about." -
- Andrei Tarkovsky
