The Sacrifice (1986), directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. This is Tarkovsky’s final film. It is also his most Bergmanesque film. The action takes place in the bleak environment of the Island of Faro, Bergman’s place of residence and location for many of his films. Two of the lead actors, Erland Josephson as Alexander and Allan Edwall as Otto, are members of Bergman’s stock company. The cinematographer is Sven Nykvist who also photographed many of Bergman’s films. The narrative, such as it is, also has the spiritual probing we often have in Bergman’s films. While watching, I thought of both Shame (1968) and Persona (1966). Having made this connection between Tarkovsky and Bergman, I should add that Tarkovsky’s film is clearly of his own making. His use of hallucinatory images, especially nearer the end, and art work and colour are distinctively his own. The story here involves a fifty-year-old former actor celebrating his birthday. Early in the film we hear the unsettling sounds of low-flying jets (I thought of Antonioni), and this sound is a premonition of what transpires later in the film when a television announcer give news of World War 111 beginning. This news, not surprisingly, shatters the birthday pleasantness, and leads to Alexander’s descent into madness. The film gives us a clash of silence and verbiage. Most of the characters are willing to speak at length about such weighty themes as spirituality, performance, mortality, relationships, art, history, and so on, but one character, the young boy referred to as Little Man, does not speak, or speaks very little and hoarsely because of an operation on his neck and (I presume) vocal cords. This young boy’s silence speaks as forcefully as the other characters’ volubility. Finally, what do I think? This is not as impressive a film for me as Tarkovsky’s Stalker, but I do admire the look of this film, a look largely accomplished by Nykvist’s cinematography. The beauty in such minimalist places, outside and inside, I find compelling. And then we have that final image of the burning house, an image, alas, for our times.

 

Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky (1988), directed by Michal Leszczylowski. There are two kinds of film makers, Tarkovsky asserts, the ones who reproduce the world that surrounds them, and the ones who create their own worlds. Tarkovsky mentions Bergman, Bunuel, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Dovzhenko as examples of the latter. You can guess in which category Tarkovsky fits. This is ostensibly a “Making of…” film, but it is so much more.  Anyone interested in just how films come into being or in the auteur theory or in the cinema and art of Tarkovsky would do well to seek out this film. We see the collaborative nature of film making in action. We also see just how a film can be the result of one person’s vision. The focus here is the making of Tarkovsky’s final film, The Sacrifice. Much of what we see is the work on set, the preparing of scenes and rehearsing of actors, but we also have footage of Tarkovsky speaking to film students and responding to interviews, and an interview with his wife. The footage from the set of The Sacrifice shows just how meticulous Tarkovsky was. He oversees the choice of colours, shapes of furniture, placement of objects such as mirrors or side tables, lighting, and so on. He demonstrates movement for the actors. In short, we see demonstrated Tarkovsky’s idea that cinema consists of bits of time taken from the flow of time and sculpted into an emotional experience for the viewer. This is the best chronicle of how film making works that I have seen.

Mirror (1975), directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. Poetry in motion. This film is about family, about history, about time, about war, about mothers and sons, about earth, air, fire, and water, about birds, about mirrors, about dreams, about relationships, about children, about adults, about nature, about the mystery and beauty of things. The narrator is a dying middle-aged man contemplating his past in its personal and more widely historical contexts. What we see is both close to incomprehensible and intensely compelling. As we would expect with Tarkovsky, the film gives us a series of dreams, a series of marvellously resonant and beautiful images. This is film making that aspires to the condition of poetry, and – eureka – achieves this condition. The voice over also delivers a poetic effusion to tickle the fancy. This is filmic poetry, as for example in the shots of the wind in the grass or in the trees or in the bushes, or shots of rain falling heavily, or in a bird taking flight, or in objects slowly rolling from a table because of the wind. The simple act of washing one’s hair is poetic, strange, mysterious, and powerful. Then we have small details such as the quickly caught picture of a poster for Andrei Rublev. The final tracking shot is haunting.

Earth (1930), directed by Alexander Dovzhenko. I am sure Tarkovsky watched this film over and over. It has the pace and solemnity of Tarkovsky’s films. It offers both similarity and contrast to Eisenstein’s great work. Similarity in its focus on people and contrast in its slow burn. The plot is slim, having to do with the coming of collective farming and the class struggle. It chronicles the change from one way of life with landowners and priests to another of collective ownership and a new way of doing without clergy. Forms of ritual are changing. Some accept this gratefully and others resist. The scene of Basil’s girlfriend grieving is remarkable. The central action involves, first the coming of a tractor to the land, and second, a night time dance and then murder of a local supporter of change. But plot is less important here than image. This is a film of images, of faces, of fruits, of fields, of rain and wind, and the making of bread. The film, silent though it is, aspires to the condition of music. Slow and poetic, Earth is essential cinema.