Andrei Tarkovsky: Interviews (Conversations With Filmmakers Series)

115 Pages·2006·17.23 MB·English

by  John Gianvito

ANDREI TARKOVSKY
INTERV!EWS
CONVERSATIONS WITH FILMMAKERS SERIES
PETER BRUNETTE, GENERAL EDITOR
ANDREI
TARKOVSKY
INTERVIEWS
EDITED BY JOHN GIANVITO
UNIVI lt.,l I Y l,ltl ss ()F M I S S I S S I P P I / J A C K S O N
CONTENTS
www.upress. state.ms.us
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American University Presses.
Introduction ix
Copyright @ zoo6 by University Press of Mississippi
Chronology xxiii
All rights reserved Irilmography xxvii
Manufactured in the United States of America Andrei Thrkovsky: I Am for a Poetic Cinema
PATRICK BUREAU
@
lincounter with Andrei Tarkovsky 6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
GIDEON BACHMANN
Andrei Tarkovsky : interviews / edited by John Gianvito.
'l'!rc Burning
p. cm. - (Conversations with fllmmakers series) 12
EKRA/V
Includes index.
ISBN-I3: 978-r-578o6-z19-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 'l'lrc
ISBN-ro: v578o6-zr9-5 (cloth: alk. paper) Artist in Ancient Russia and in the New USSR 16
MICHEL CIMENT, LUDA SCHNITZER, AND
ISBN-I3: 978-r-578o6-zzo-t (pbk. : alk. paper)
.JEAN SCHNITZER
ISBN-ro: 1578o6-zzo-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) r. Tarkovskii, Andrei Arsen'evich,
r93z-r986-Interviews. 2. Motion picture producers and directors-Soviet
l)irrlogue with Andrei Tarkovsky about Science-Fiction on
Union-Interviews. I. Tarkovskii, Andrei Arsen'evich, r93z-t986
lltt' Scrcen lz
II. Gianvito, John. III. Series.
NN UM ABRAMOV
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79t.43o2'33o92-dczz
I l ,ovt, l )ovzlrclr ko 3ti
(,tlNllt( Ntt/t ttANt)
Ilritislr Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
CONTENTS CONTENTS
The Artist Lives Off His Childhood like a Parasite: An Interview with Portrait of a Filmmaker as a Monk-Poet 163
the Author of The Mirror 44 LAURENCT cossE
CLAIRE DEVARRIEUX
A Glimmer at the Bottom of the Well? r7z
Interview with Andrei Tarkovsky 46 THOMAS JOHNSON
TONINO GUERRA
Faith Is the Only Thing That Can Save Man r7B
Stalker, Smuggler of Happiness 50 CHARLES H. DE BRANTES
TONINO GUERRA
lndex r89
Interview with Andrei Tarkovsky (on Stalker) 55
ALDO TASSONE
Against Interpretation: An Interview with Andrei Tarkovsky 6Z
IAN CHRISTIE
Tarkovsky's Translations 70
PHILIP STRICK
Tarkovsky in Italy
73
TONY MITCHELL
Nostalgia's Black Tone Bo
HERVE cutBERT
Between Two Worlds 88
J. HOBERMAN AND GIDEON BACHMANN
My Cinema in a Time of Television 97
VELIA IACOVINO
An Enemy of Symbolism ro4
IRENA BREZNA
The Twentieth Century and the Artist r24
V. ISHIMOV AND R. SHEJKO
Red Thpe r55
ANGUS MNCKINNON
INTRODUCTION
Frw AMoNG coNTEMpoRARY FtLM ARTtsrs inspire
the degree of ardor and zeal that Andrei Thrkovsky does. In the eyes
of the faithful, an encounter with virtually any of Tarkovsky's fllms holds
the promise of awe-inspiring aesthetic transport liable to stir the inner-
most reaches of the spirit. To his detractors, the same films can provoke
iust as fervent feelings of consternation, boredom, and outright antipathy.
lf, however, one were to be judged by the company of one's admirers,
'larkovsky's place in the pantheon of film history would alone be secured,
having earned during his career the esteem of many of the cinema's
preeminent directors-Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Michelangelo
Antonioni, Sergei Paradjanoy among a host of maior artists, inside and
outside the world of film.
Writing about Tarkovsky in his rgBT autobiography, The Magic
I trntcrn, Bergman proclaimed that his discovery of Tarkovsky's work
w:rs akin to "a miracle. Suddenly, I found myself standing at the door
ol' a room the keys of which had, until then, never been given to me. It
wirs a room I had always wanted to enter and where he was moving
Irt,cly and fully at ease. I felt encouraged and stimulated: someone was
t'xprcssing what I had always wanted to say without knowing how.
lirrl<ovsky is for me the greatest, the one who invented a new language,
lrrrt'to thc natttre of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a
rllt,irnr." lrot' l(urosawa, speaking in rg87 a few months after Tarkovsky's
lrrssirrg, lrc lourttl 'lhrkovsky's "urtusual sensitivity . . . both overwhelm-
irrg iurrl irstotnrtlirrg. lt allrrosl rcitcltcs a llitlltol<tgical intensity. Probably
INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION
there is no equal among fllm directors alive now."'During the same It is a text I have returned to over and over again for its richness of
period, an international questionnaire conducted by the French reflection upon not only the nature and character of cinema, and
newspap er Lib eration asked Armenian director Serge i P arudianog the purpose of art, but for its speculations on the very meaning of life
"Why do you make films?" His sole reply was "To sanctify the tomb itself, Tf,rkovsky never being one to shy away from confronting the big
of Tarkovsky." Having years earlier declared that his own masterpiece questions head on. And while none of these reflections communicate
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors would never have existed had he not as keenly or indelibly as do repeated encounters with the films them-
Seen Thrkovsky's flrst feature, IvAn's Childhood, Paradianov would go selves (the real lesson perhaps), the impulse to discover more about the
on to dedicate his flnal completed film, Ashik Kerib, to his friend and artist remained.
colleague. Such veneration is scarcely limited to high art European Having appreciated the few English language interviews with
directors. 'farkovsky I'd come upon, I became curious to know what else might
When Steven Soderbergh deigned to remake Solaris, in addition to be going on in the interviews in all the languages I didn't know. The
clarifying to all the disparagers that it was Stanislaw Lem's book he was result of much of what I discovered is before you. While this com-
remaking into a fllm and not Tarkovsky's fllm itself, his praise for the ltendium is not exhaustive of the breadth of interviews Tarkovsky gave
latter was unhesitating, describing Tarkovsky's version aS " a sequoia" throughout his lifetime, the attempt was to afford the reader a wide-
compaled to his "little bonsai."' For the late American experimental ranging selection across the arc of Tarkovsky's career, from the flrst
director Stan Brakhage, whose enthusiasm for Tarkovsky's work was res- irrterviews following the meteoric debut of lvan's Childhood at the
olutely unrequited (a wincing, near-comical account exists by Brakhage Vcnice Film Festival rn t96z to the flnal interviews Tarkovsky granted
of his attempts to screen his own fllms for Tarkovsky on a hotel room lrcfore his untimely death in December 1986.
wall during the Telluride Film Festival), Tarkovsky was "the greatest liv- As a rule, Tarkovsky was wary of interviewers, telling Irena Brezna
ing narrative fllmmaker." Eloquently elaborating on this declaration, in 1984, "I have not yet been satisfled by an article that has come out
Brakhage stated that "the three greatest tasks for film in the twentieth itl'tcr a conversation with a iournalist. . . . When the iournalist poses
century are r) To make the epic, that is, to tell the tales of the tribes of ltis question he is not interested in the answer, but in his notes." His
the worl d. z) To keep it personal, because only in the eccentricities of irpprrehensions certainly had their legitimacy as the queries often put
our personal lives do we have any chance at the truth. S) To do the Irt,l<lre Tarkovsky are remarkable in similitude and impoverishment.
dream work, that is, to illuminate the borders of the unconscious. The Again and again the same questions crop up-Why does he mix black
only filmmaker I know that does all these three things equally in every Irrrtl white and color? What is the difference between working in the
film he makes is Andrei Tarkovsky."3 ltrst and the West? Who are his favorite fllmmakers (a short near-
That such accolades could be bestowed to a fllmmaker whose entire unwavering list)? No doubt most frustratingly, despite continuous
feature fllm output consists of seven feature films over twenty years is lt,rrrorrstrations against over-interpreting the meaning of his images-
testimony to the remarkable degree of their achievement. Indeed it " ll yotr look for a meaning, you will miss everything that happens . . .
was from comparable sentiments of high regard for the work, both in tlrt,l'c's tro way [a work of art] can be analyzed without destroying it"-
terms of its thematic reach and sheer "carnal impact," to borrow a llrt, tptrcstions persist: What is the symbolism of water in his films? Why
phrase of Jonathan Rosenbaum's, alongside a fascination with the is llrc worllan f.loating in mid-air in The Mirror? What is the signiflcance
person responsible that the idea of putting this book together was born. r rl tlrt' Zonc in Stolkcr? While Tarkovsky himself employs the word
Of course for anyone interested in penetrating the thought and work- "\ynrlxrl" in lris lcngthy u)69 interview with Positif, he would soon flnd
ing methods of Tarkovsky, there remains no better source than his own llrt, l(,r'nr ricv('rt'ly lirnitiltg in cltaractclriz,ing the suggestive richness of a
collection of writings on cinema and aesthetic theory, Sculpting in Timc. ;lot'lit' itttitgr'.
Xii INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION XIII
It's not hard to detect Thrkovsky's restlessness with the interview for- forms, is its literal ability to capture and pleserve the flow of time.
mat when early in his conversation with Brezna he cites Goethe's In Positif's 1969 interview on Andrei Roublev, the first Western interview
adage, "If you want an intelligent answer, ask an intelligent question." Tarkovsky gave on the film, it is evident that Tarkovsky is not so much
While this confrontational joust likely had as much to do with Brezna formulating stylistic preferences as he is searching out the quintessential
being female (and ironically, and in my view, tellingly, Brezna's identity of the medium itself to which he or anyone else can then put
interview in Tip exemplifles more than any other interview in the an individual stamp. It will no doubt strike some readers strange to
book a genuine effort at authentic communication), Tarkovsky was not hear Tarkovsky, within the same interview, describe himself as "a
unaware of the merits of having his notions tested. "To be honest, I put traditional directof' arrd speaking out against experimentation in fllm.
myself in the category of people who are best able to give form to their "Eisenstein felt comfortable experimenting because, at the time, cinema
ideas by arguing. I entirely subscribe to the view that truth is reached was at its beginning, and experimentation was the only possible path.
through dispute," he states in Sculpting in Time, a book whose working Nowadays, given the established cinematic traditions, one shouldn't
title, luxtapositions, was due in its author's words to its "open-ended experiment anymore." While one might take this as evidence of a
structure and its avoidance of precise formulations: conclusions are to formative stage in the evolution of Tarkovsky's thinking, the question
be drawn from the juxtaposition of different theses." Nonetheless one of experimentation comes up again in a 1984 audience dialogue in
of the more striking aspects of the early interviews is to see so many London (included in the book as one example of several such audience
of the tenets of Thrkovsky's cinematic and artistic philosophy already "encounters" Tarkovsky held) in relation to the editing-room wrestling
taking root. Tarkovsky undertook with The Mirror, attempting to determine its
Asked by Gideon Bachmann during the 196z Venice Film Festival form. Echoing Rodin, Tarkovsky insists that " a true artist does not
to describe his theoretical principles, Thrkovsky responds that he experiment or search-he finds," distinguishing the formal innovation
does "not believe in the literary-theatrical principle of dramatic of his work from experimentation by dint of his assuredness in the
development. In my opinion, this has nothing in common with the internal and external harmoniousness of its construction. Tarkovsky's
speciflc nature of cinema . . . one doesn't need to explain in fllm, but conception of himself as a traditionalist is perhaps only in the sense
rather to directly affect the feelings of the audience. It is this awakened ttrat the real-life Andrei Roublev could be regarded so, forging innovation
emotion that drives the thoughts forward." Already presaging the within the strictures of flfteenth-century iconic painting. Alternatively
formal complexity of such fllms as his autobiographical masterpiece, it is conceivable that Tarkovsky was being careful not to proiect himself
The Mirror, he tells Bachmann, "I am seeking a principle of montage rrr his work as in afiy way revolutionary. It is important to realize that
that will allow me to expose the subjective logic-the thought, the l'ositif's 1969 interview was three years into the film's flve-year
dream, the memory-instead of the logic of the subiect." While shelving within the Soviet Union, a situation noticeably uncommented
applicable to any one of Tarkovsky's works, one can again detect the ulx)n in the article. Tarkovsky's diaries are full of mentions of bureau-
seeds of The Mirror germinating wher, tn rgTr Tarkovsky tells Naum t'ratic intrigue and interference, suspicions of the KGB's tampering
Abramog "I've noticed, from my experience, if the external, emotional with his mail, monitoring his public lectures, etc., and certainly in the
construction of images in a film are based on the filmmaker's own prc-(ilasnost USSR, any Russian artist traveling abroad could assume
memory, on the kinship of one's personal experience with the fabric :i()tne tneasure of surveillance. Sensitivity to these circumstances makes
of the film, then the film will have the power to affect those who lrrr tlrc occasional falsehood or "shaded" truth, as when he tells Sight
see it." ttntl Sounrl itt tgUr that The Mirror "was in no way suppressed by the
Central to Thrkovsky's formal principles is the conviction that cin- irrrtlroritics." 'larkovsky's cliaries refute this, describing how the head of
ema's most distinguishing characteristic, in comparison to all other art llrt, slirlt' lilrrr rtrgiurizatiolt ( ioskitttt hacl llcrsottally prcvcnted Thc Mirror
XIV INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION XV
from going to Cannes, as do the remarks Tarkovsky made three years of faith, what's important to the Stalker is to light a spark, a belief in
later rn Time Out, following his painful decision to defect to the West, the heart of peop1e." For art to fulflll its function Tarkovsky maintained
opening up in great detail to Angus MacKinnon about the extent of his that it must be put in the service of establishing a link between the
difficulties working in the Soviet Union and the less-than-supportive individual and the Divine. Such art could be born only from the suffer-
domestic distribution of The Mirror. ing and moral evolution of the artist. Tarkovsky believed, or at least
Unreliability can spring from other motives altogether as when, wanted to believe, in the redemptive and transformative power of art.
following years of resistance to the endorsement of any singular While observing, accurately I think, that, "The soul opens up under
interpretation of the many ambiguous elements in his fllms, Tarkovsky the influence of an artistic image and it is for this reason that we say
declares to Laurence Coss6 in 1986 with regard to his film Stalker that it hetps us to communicate, but it is communication in the highest
"The Zone doesn't exist. It's Stalker himself who invented the Zone," an sense of the word" (Framework), tn a rare admission of doubt Thrkovsky
interpretation that seems to belie the many mysterious events that tells Brezna, "sometimes my field of work Seems ridiculous to me.
transpire in the fllm. There are things more important. How to approach these things,
Most pronounced of the recurring refrains in the interviews, as how to f,nd yourself in them, if there is a positive way in art at all,
dominates the corpus of Tarkovsky's work, is the near-messianic pursuit that is the question." Despite the occasional wrestling with such
of nothing less than the redemption of the soul of man. "I believe . . . scruples, Tarkovsky was unable to adopt a different cast to his creations
that an enormous task has been entrusted to art. This is the task of capable of rendering them more tangibly utilitarian. Nor could he
resurrecting spirituality." "To me, man, in his substance, is essentially a cnvision the pursuit of a different profession, for to relinquish one's
spiritual being and the meaning of his life consists in developing this artistic calling would be a profanation of the self. ". . . [W]e should
spirituality. If he fails to do so, society deteriorates." "Art should be not squander our talent, for we do not have the right to consider it our
there to remind man that he is a spiritual being, that he is part of an own property."a
inf,nitely larger spirit to which he will return in the end." Nowhere in Not unlike Leonard Cohen's remark that being an artist isn't a
the literature of film has one director so incessantly and insistently tlecision but rathet a "verdict," Tarkovsky viewed his profession as a
deployed the words "spiritual" and "spiritualrty" as does Tarkovsky "cluty" fraught with attendant responsibility. In line with nineteenth-
throughout these interviews. How best to remedy mankind's "spiritual t'cntury Russian traditions, Thrkovsky espoused an aristocratic and dis-
impotence" is a question that gets repeatedly prodded, poked, and t'r'irninatory view of the artist's role as the voice and conscience of "the
examined, the discourse around which provides much of the richest pcople," in his case speciflcally the Russian people, a position clearly
and thorniest material within the book. cvinced in the portrait he paints of Andrei Roublev, and one he would
In his conversations about Andrei Roublev, Tarkovsky emphasizes the tuplrold through most of his career. However, whether it was the conse-
value he perceives Roublev's art having in restoring people's "faith in (lucnce of the repercussions of exile or evidence of his lifelong quest of
the future" amid a time of severe suffering and infustice. "In spite of st'tl'-growth, Tarkovsky Seems to renounce this view when, in January
seeing and perceiving this universe with great pain," Tarkovsky explains stltl(r, he tells Laurence Coss6, "It's no longer my wish to say anything
to Positif, Andrei Roublev refrains from expressing "the unbearable Io l(ussians. I am no longer interested in the virtues of such prophetic
weight of his life, of the world around him." Instead, he "looks for the slultc'cs as, 'l want to tell my people,' 'I want to tell the world.' I'm not
grain of hope, of love, of faith among the people of his time. He ir lrrolrhct. l'm a Inan to whom God gave the possibitity of being a poet,
expresses it, through his own conflict with reality, not in a direct, but in nr(,lulilrg, of praying in another manner than the one used by the faith-
an allusive manner, and therein lies his genius." Similarly, in relation to Itrl ilr l cutlrctlrirl." n l'cw rrrontl-rs latcr in late April, in a posthumously
Stalker, Tarkovsky tells Aldo Tassone, "in this period of the destruction ;rrrlrlislrt,tl irrlt'l'vicw witlr 'l'lrorttits.f oluts<ltt, 'litrkovsky rcvcrts back tcl
XVi INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION XVII
characteizing the artist aS one who "collects and concentrates the is regularly made to the poetic legacy of Tarkovsky's father, Arseni, it
ideas of the people. He is the people's voice," having said elsewhere, should be noted that his own mother, Maria Ivanovna, was said to have
"even when the artist vociferously denies this." had a great literary gift, talents that could not have been helped by
Of the disclosures apt to prove most disturbing to the reader are such prevailing attitudes, nor by having to raise two children alone
Tarkovsky's regressive pronouncements on women and their role in when she and her husband divorced early in their marriage.
society. Sensitive viewers have over the years remarked on the limited To his credit however, Tarkovsky did profess skepticism throughout
pofirayals of women in the films of Tarkovsky, limited not only in his life of belief systems held too fast, and the interviews reveal a
number and in screen time but in dimension, precisely the circumstance capacity for continuous self-examination. While acknowledging to an
that led Swiss psychologist IrenaBrezna, otherwise enamored of the audience member, "You said that I am egocentric in my work: I not
work, to track Tarkovsky down with the speciflc aim of addressing this only don't deny this, I even admit that this is my credo," Tarkovsky,
lacuna. What emerges clearly takes even Brezna by surprise as it did again speaking to Brezna, concedes that there could be more to this
this reader when I first was made aware of the article. "It seems to me than the value of drawing from the well-springs of autobiography.
that woman's meaning, the meaning of female love, is self-sacriflce. "Egotism is a symptom of the fact that Man doesn't love himself, that
That is the woman's greatness." Though Tarkovsky would explore his he has an incorrect understanding of the notion of love. This is the
own capacity for sacriflce in the intervening years before his death, source of the deformation of everything." Later in the same interview
speaking to Brezna in 1984 Tarkovsky conflates the altruistic core of sac- he confesses, "I am also my most terrifying enemy and I keep asking
rifice with self-abnegation. Accordingly, for a woman to find fulfillment rnyself if I will besiege myself or not. This is the meaning of my life."
in life, he argues that she must be prepared to dissolve her ego into that Speaking to Hervd Guibert in Le Monde, Thrkovsky faults himself for his
of her beloved. Speaking at length about the "abnormality" "impatience and intolerance" and again emphasizes the necessity of
of a single woman, Tarkovsky declares that, "Women don't understand changing oneself before trying to change the world. "If every man
that they only flnd their dignity in a male-female relationship in total was able to save himself, there wouldn't be any need to save others. We
devotion to the man." What's more, no allowing for or even mention Iove to give advice, to instruct, while, as far as we ourselves are
is made of same-sex relationships between women, and while one concerned, we overlook our gravest sins."
might assume Thrkovsky's disapproval, this omission, along with his Despite the evident value of such soul-work, the other side of the
forcible statements on the "ideal" comportment of male-female rela- t'oin for Tarkovsky is what he refers to as "the Tolstoy comp1ex," the
tions, takes on a further aspect in light of surfacing reports within the "irmbiguous position," as he tells Gideon Bachmann, that we each frnd
Thrkovsky literature of a rumored bisexuality. That aside, though the otrrselves in "between some kind of spiritual ideal and the necessity
blatant chauvinism of the remarks is hardly uncommon within Soviet ol'cxisting in this material world." This dilemma and the particular
society as elsewhere, one is still struck by the disconnect between t)rcssures it places upon the artist with regard to the social function
Tarkovsky's perspicacity as an artist and his naivet6 as a man. Scant ol'one's work undergoes some evolution in Tarkovsky's thinking. Far
evidence of the sage or the prophet when Tarkovsky tells Brezna that Irorrr the ringing endorsement he gives rn rg73 to the East German
"women's social situation today is not dramatic in the way it used to rrrirg:rzine Film und Fernsehen for Bertolt Brecht's belief in "art as a
be, and in a few years the balance will be reached," or during the same w(,irl)on," indicating as well his support for Bertolucci's early, more
year when he tells an audience in London, " . . . if I were asked about politit'ally cngagecl trlms, in his final years Tarkovsky's views resemble
my attitude toward female directors, I would not respond, for you nr()r'(' tlrosc of Atrgustine of Hippo, his eyes cast ever more in the
simply need to turn your attention to the history of art." Thlents are rlilt,t'tiolt ol'tlrt'Oity ol'(iorl thutt tltc Oity of Man. As a consequence,
not to be scluandered, that is unless you are a woman. While referertcc llrls slril'l lt'rrtls llr('work incrt'irsingly, or aI lcast lnorc transJlarently, an