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r/tarkovsky

▲ 128 r/tarkovsky+1 crossposts

Stalker with Mark Morgan's dark ambient track "Radiation Storm"

Playing around with the ambient tracks from Fallout. Hope I didn't butcher the film too much appropriating it for a 4 minute video! 

u/domesticatebearsnow — 5 days ago
▲ 13 r/tarkovsky

How dialogue-heavy is Mirror?

Hello all! There's a Tarkovsky retrospective on in the city I've recently moved to, and I'd love to go see Mirror tonight. The only problem is that I don't speak the local language well enough to really understand film dialogue, and I doubt the subtitles will be in English. Not having seen the film before, would it be worth it to go just for the images? I'd love to see something so gorgeous on the big screen, but don't want to rob myself of a satisfying first viewing

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u/Important_Cat_4487 — 7 days ago
▲ 85 r/tarkovsky+15 crossposts

[Soviet Cinema] The Sacrifice by Andrei Tarkovsky (trailer)

Famed Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky's final masterpiece, The Sacrifice is a haunting vision of a world threatened with nuclear annihilation that inspired Andrew Sarris (The Village Voice) to proclaim, "You may find yourself moved as you have never been moved before."

As a wealthy Swedish family celebrates the birthday of their patriarch Alexander (Erland Josephson, Cries and Whispers), news of the outbreak of World War III reaches their remote Baltic island — and the happy mood turns to horror. The family descends into a state of psychological devastation, brilliantly evoked by Tarkovsky's arresting palette of luminous greys washing over the bleak landscape around their home. (The film's masterful cinematography is by Sven Nykvist, Ingmar Bergman's longtime collaborator).

For Alexander, a philosopher troubled about man's lack of spirituality, the prospect of certain extinction compels the ultimate sacrifice, and he enters into a Faustian bargain with God to save his loved ones from the fear which grips them. The director's last film, made as he was dying of cancer, The Sacrifice is Tarkovsky's personal statement, a profoundly moving, redemptive tragedy steeped in unforgettable imagery and heart-wrenching emotion.

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u/GregGraffin23 — 8 days ago
▲ 0 r/tarkovsky

Tarkovsky's pacing

One of the main complaints viewers make about Andrei Tarkovsky's cinema is that his style is too slow and boring. Devotees of his films often dismiss such criticisms as shallow or necessary for his spiritual pondering.

I actually do think that Tarkovsky being slow is a fantastic criticism, but for completely different reasons. Taking a careful look at such a style reveals that it actually deeply undermines Tarkovsky's primary values.

I propose that Tarkovsky's artwork is not spiritual, and the "spiritual" feeling he seeks to evoke is merely a dulled nervous system. His style, despite the intentions, is a great argument that there is no such thing as a soul, for everything he claims impacts the soul in actuality only impacts the body of the viewer.

The multi-minute long shots in films like Stalker slow the viewer's nervous system. Their heart rate and breathing are decreased. This leads to a state that mimics sleep. It is necessary. Tarkovsky needs his audience to be numbed and physiologically exhausted. This allows him to claim his atmosphere is special, is religious, is sacred, and that viewers who criticize it simply lack understanding or depth. But in reality they just see his cinema as a machine of bodily exhaustion, exhaustion that hides behind a mask of "mysticism."

If you want an example of this, take a look at the trolley scene in Stalker. The harsh sepia color and repeated clanking sounds act as sensory deprivation. They create theta waves in the brain, mimicking the state before sleep. The revelation of the zone in color is the viewer's brain hungry for novelty finally seeing that novelty. Only it is disguised as a spiritual revelation when the "spirituality" is entirely physical.

If a viewer with a high heart rate were to watch the same scene, they wouldn't find it spiritual. As it isn't, it is only physiological.

This is perhaps the biggest contradiction in Tarkovsky's work, as he claimed to affect the spirit but in reality only affects the body.

Thoughts?

u/_Onion2103 — 8 days ago
▲ 35 r/tarkovsky

I went to Närsholmen and did something

You can even spot the huge silo that's on the other side of the coast

u/Julengb — 9 days ago