My Left Foot

My Left Foot

There are many excuses to start drinking, most of which are stretched as an attempt to justify the self-imposed intoxication, but some are hard to imagine surviving completely sober. “My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown” is one of these heartbreakers. The versatile Daniel Day-Lewis stars in his breakout performance as the Irish Christy […]

Andrei Tarkovsky Calls Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey a “Phony” Film “With Only Pretensions to Truth”

Andrei Tarkovsky Calls Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey a “Phony” Film “With Only Pretensions to Truth”

Yesterday we ran a list of 93 films beloved by Stanley Kubrick, which includes two by Andrei Tarkovsky: 1972’s Solaris and 1986’s The Sacrifice. You expect one auteur to appreciate the work of another — “game recognize game,” to use the modern parlance — but the selection of Solaris makes special sense. Just four years before it, Kubrick had, […]

The Poetic Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky

The Poetic Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky

“It is obvious that art cannot teach anyone anything, since in four thousand years humanity has learnt nothing at all. We should long ago have become angels had we been capable of paying attention to the experience of art, and allowing ourselves to be changed in accordance with the ideals it expresses. Art only has […]

Connection between Different Realities through Video Screens

Connection between Different Realities through Video Screens

Analysis of the “Berton’s Report” film sequence from “Solaris” directed by Andrei Tarkovsky (1972) “I want to emphasize yet again that, […], cinema is an art which operates with reality…” (A. Tarkovsky 1989: 177) [1] I. Introduction Andrei Tarkovsky is one of my favorite directors. I admire his films. However, to interpret and analyze the […]

Temporal Defamiliarization and Mise-en-Scène in Tarkovsky’s Stalker

Temporal Defamiliarization and Mise-en-Scène in Tarkovsky’s Stalker

Introduction In her article “The Concept of Cinematic Excess,” Kristin Thompson speaks of a dual tendency in film criticism: we could see films as a “struggle of opposing forces,” some of which “strive to unify the work, to hold it together sufficiently that we may perceive and ‘follow’ its structures.” Outside of these structures “lie […]

Andrei Tarkovsky: Truth Endorsed by Life

Andrei Tarkovsky: Truth Endorsed by Life

The Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset has referred to man as a “conscious cosmic phenomenon”. What he meant by this has everything to do with the fact that there is at least one cosmic entity that is capable of self-awareness in the universe. Ironically though, Ortega recognized that this reality remains the most transparent […]

The Natural and Modern Worlds in Solaris

The Natural and Modern Worlds in Solaris

In Solaris (1972), Andrei Tarkovsky presents a vision of contemporary society as one that has become cut off from nature, and provides a narrative that illustrates the possibility of remaining human in the inhuman world that is the result. The film contrasts a life-affirming natural landscape to an urban, constructed landscape where the natural world […]

Ivan’s Childhood: The Tree of Life

Ivan’s Childhood: The Tree of Life

In the essay entitled “Nature as ‘Comfort Zone’ in the Films of Andrei Tarkovsky” in the last issue of Offscreen I discussed the unique manner in which Tarkovsky situates nature as an arena of respite from all forms of emotional and physical pain. One of the films I analyzed closely was Ivan’s Childhood, a film […]