Den yderste dom
It is my
understanding that icons are a big thing in the Eastern Orthodox church. Icons are
special pictures of religious significance and one of the great painters of
these was a man called Andrei Rublev who lived in Russia in the 15th
century. This is supposedly a movie about this Andrei Rublev.
Andrei
Tarkovsky is a legendary Russian director of whom I have watched… absolutely none
of his movies. “Andrei Rublev” is the first. But his reputation precedes him,
and I expected a movie that would be different and very philosophical. In that
respect I was not disappointed. “Andrei Rublev” is not a biopic. In some,
probably many, ways it is not even historically correct. Instead the character
of Andrei Rublev is used as the focal point for a metaphysical and moral journey
where Andrei meets with betrayal, ambition, doubt, despair, penance and
restoration.
This sounds
very good, but as it turned out, the movie has one fatal flaw: It was very
difficult for it to hold my attention and help me understand what was going on.
I would watch one of the many chapters in the movie, seemingly disconnected
from the others, and have not idea what this was about. Often, I would even be
in doubt which of the characters I was watching. I admit I am partly to blame,
I should have approached this movie with more focus, but something about it
seemed to repel my focus and draw it elsewhere. Instead I turned to Wikipedia
which has an excellent synopsis of the movie and through that learned what I
was actually watching.
One of the
things I learned was that this movie was in fact rebelling against the Soviet
system, or at least at odds with the ruling dogmas of the communists. There is
the distaste for the informer who are betraying the dissidents to the police
and the heavy-handed oppression of the population whenever the population does
not follow the party line, but most of all the freedom of thought. Andrei
Rublev cannot work in a system where the system tells him what to do. Painting
is not a job, it is an art and art requires free thought.
These
themes go a long way to explain why “Andrei Rublev” only achieved one screening
in Russia in 1966 before it was shut down until it was rediscovered in Cannes
in 1969 and only later, in a presumably edited version, released for the Russian
public.
Yet, the
communists must have liked the last chapter about the bell. This is a story
about redemption where a young man, Boriska (Nikolai Burlyayev) claims to have
inherited the secret of casting bronze bells and gets hired to manage the
casting of a monstrous bell for the Grand Prince since there are nobody else
around with that skill. The boy tries his hardest to be strong enough to lead
this work, especially when he learns that all will be beheaded if it fails to
ring. This project is a giant endeavor involving hundreds of people and
coordination, one of those community achievements the communists were so fond
of. Only when he, beyond all odds, succeeds does he collapse in the arms of
Andrei Rublev (Anatoly Solonitsyn) and admits that he did not know the secret,
that he was winging it all along. Andrei, who had been convinced that he is
unworthy to paint and indeed to talk, takes heart from the example of Boriska
and starts painting again and it is understood that he goes on to paint his
best pieces.
I like the
idea of what Tarkovsky was doing more than I like the result itself. The stories
in the various chapter are worth less for their apparent narrative that their moral
and symbolic meaning. Everything is drenched in symbolism, but unless you know
what you are looking for it is difficult to see. It is a clever movie, but also
a movie for making me feel stupid. I cannot parse this without help and the
apparent stories are not interesting enough that I feel like watching it
repeatedly to glean understanding from it. I am certain it would be rewarding,
but I doubt I could do it.
As such, “Andrei
Rublev” is a scholar’s movie and a valuable one at that. I am just not scholar
enough to appreciate it.
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