...And speaking of torment, I really don't enjoy starting off a review of a film as heroic, sublime and brilliantly crafted as Andrei Rublev with a barrage of negativity, but since it has to come out at some point, I'd rather get it out of the way now than wind up my essay here on a sour, bitter note. The Criterion DVD presentation of this masterful epic is the most egregious disservice to a film of its caliber currently to be found among all 700+ in-print titles in the Collection. And it's been that way for a long time. With a non-anamorphic transfer that reduces director Andrei Tarkovsky's magnificent widescreen compositions to a puny facsimile of their original scale, a flat, bland and compressed mono sound mix and much less in the way of supplements than a film of this significance deserves, there's no reason for anyone but the most die-hard Tarkovsky and/or Criterion completist to bother purchasing this edition in 2015. I've owned my copy of this DVD for years, and I definitely understand the value that this disc once delivered, in making the full extended 205 minute director's cut available for the first time and for providing some helpful interviews with Tarkovsky that explain his artistic ambitions, along with a spotty commentary track and video essay by a Harvard-based Russian film critic who succinctly articulates his scholarly perspective on this film. Something, after all, is better than nothing.
But at this particular point in the evolution of home-based cinema, that advantage is continually narrowing. The obstacles that confront a viewer seeking to understand and appreciate Andrei Rublev in the comfort of his or her domestic theater are significantly distracting, even discouraging. Hitting the "Zoom" or "Wide" options on one's monitor display settings offers less than optimal solutions - either an exaggerated degree of pixelation, or a cutoff of the subtitles, or both. And I'm only watching on a 46" plasma TV myself - I shudder to think about how bad the image must look for those who have access to larger screen resolutions. I've even tried sitting up close to the TV just to allow the picture to overwhelm (as Tarkovsky surely intended) my field of vision. But that just triggered a wave of discomforting self-consciousness. I found myself resenting the fact that I had to make unusual accommodations to get into a film that was originally conceived as an all-absorbing transport into an archaic cultural milieu, and it made me sad that I couldn't just sit back and allow the spectacle to engulf me like it was supposed to.
I'm confident that the long-delayed, inexcusably overdue (and tantalizingly hinted at) upgrade of Andrei Rublev to a state of the art HD Blu-ray presentation will accomplish much to cover up this multitude of sins, but since that particular product is not yet available to me at the moment I'm due to make this entry to my blog, I'll just have to wait for the happy day to eventually arrive so that I can properly repent for any slights that you, my dear reader, might read into the disparaging comments I've registered in these opening paragraphs.
But now that I've cleared that slime off my palate, let's get into the good stuff.
Once I managed to tame my resentment and recalibrate my focus, I found Andrei Rublev to be every bit as admirable and thought-provoking as its most ardent champions make it out to be. The film is a historically-based but imaginatively-inspired saga of a Russian painter, called out of obscurity to become among that nation's most celebrated cultural figures due to the influence of his (literally) iconic artistic style and enigmatic nobility. My hunch here is that in today's symbolic economy, especially among anyone likely to read this blog, Tarkovsky's movie is a more powerful and evocative cultural touchstone than the original paintings left behind by the film's namesake. But be that as it may, it's quite striking that Tarkovsky chose this presumptively "important" bio-pic as a follow-up to his debut feature Ivan's Childhood (a poignant tale about a young boy's premature demise as he's consumed by the ravages of war). There's probably a very fascinating story to be told about how he was able to finagle both the financing and the permission to make this film on his own terms, during a rare and (in hindsight) well-timed "thaw" in the usual repressive, censorious oversight exercised by Soviet censorship boards. I don't have access to that information, and it's the kind of material that would be a great subject for more extended treatment in that eventual upgrade that I mentioned previously. As it turns out, by the time that Tarkovsky gave his first screening of the film, on Christmas Day 1966, the thaw was expiring as a new season of winter chill descended upon the artistic expressive Soviet frontier. Other than a few highly contentious film festival showings (most notably at Cannes in 1969), Andrei Rublev went into a deep freeze until the early 1970s, but only after undergoing a series of extensive cuts that reduced the presentation from nearly 3 1/2 hours down to as low as a scandalous 81 minutes in commercially distributed prints in the USA. Several of those edits were almost certainly due to political pressures, though others, less severe, also carried the benefit of removing some of the bloat that had accrued on account of Tarkovsky's grandiose and unwieldy ambitions to encompass a universe of meaning in his illuminated manuscript of the life of a struggling artist. Tarkovsky himself is on record endorsing a 186 minute version. One of my most persistent hopes for a new edition would be to have several of the most widely circulated versions of the film available for a viewer to choose from, along the lines of what Criterion did with On the Waterfront and Mr. Arkadin in years past.
Regardless of the version we watch, the film is laid out in a series of episodic chapters of various lengths, each of which could be (and I'm sure have been) the subject of extended reflection and literary exposition. I did consider composing a review that treats each of the major portions of the film in at least a dedicated paragraph or two, but I'm going to forego that approach for now, just for the sake of time and because I lack the confidence that such labors on my part are a worthwhile investment of time. Instead, I'll just offer a few observations on the journey we see Andrei embark upon over the course of Tarkovsky's narrative.
Each of the chapters offers up a visually detailed, dramatically engrossing and metaphorically abundant depiction of medieval life in Russia. The prologue starts us off on a note of mystery and liberation, as an unidentified figure, apparently pursued by a hostile mob that would kill him if they caught him, makes a frantic escape by paddling his kayak across a river, landing on the opposite shore, then hastily climbing the staircase to a bell tower and attaching himself to a crude hot-air balloon patched together from leatherized animal skins. He (and the camera) temporarily break free from the bonds of gravity, and we hear his exhilarated chuckle as he relishes the unprecedented lightness of being. Even though his escape is short-lived and ends badly, there's no sense of regret or futility. He had already placed his wager - the mob would have torn him to pieces if he didn't achieve his goal - so even though his trip came to a crashing halt, that moment of exaltation provided the fulfillment and validation of his existence that he sought.
The figure of Andrei was not apparent in that opening sequence, but from the start of the second scene on, his presence is tangible, though not always visible. We see him called into a vocation to become a painter of icons under the tutelage of Theophanes the Greek, a revered master who legitimized the sacred traditions of Orthodox iconography to Russia that Andrei Rublev went on to transform in a distinctly Russian way later on in his career. Throughout what in essence amounts to an unintentional pilgrimage through the various strata of medieval Russian society, we see Andrei, as a representative of ascetically driven, relentlessly ethical and aesthetic Christendom, interacting with common vulgar peasants, pious ecclesiastics, earthy voluptuous pagans, barbarian invaders, cruel merciless royalty and finally, other tormented artistic figures such as himself. In nearly all of his encounters, the attentive viewer notes the painful breach that exists between Andrei, a sensitively perceptive creative figure who lives his life one step removed from the passions and lusts that seem to drive almost everyone else he meets, without any apparent disturbance to their conscience. Rublev himself spends most of his time on screen in varying degrees of guilt-wracked bondage, obsessively pondering his choices, his ethical failures and the inadequacy of his penance for the wrongs that he knows that he has committed. It's not until the film's conclusion, well past the third hour of exposition in this long version of his story, that Andrei Rublev finally summons the courage to break out of his creative torpor and unleash the divinely inspired charisma of his artistry once again. He does so only after sensing a gracious lifting of the conscientious burden that led to his vow of silence and renunciation of his monkish calling, after he witnessed a young boy's courageous and desperate bluff in which he gambles his very life for the sake of casting a bell. In bringing his stupendous sophomore project to a close, Tarkovsky rang his own bell, and quite loudly, signifying an ambition of lofty, practically boundless proportion as he sought to exercise his devout faith in the transformative power of cinema as relentlessly and without compromise as the worldly principalities and powers would tolerate. Even though I have yet to follow the director into any of his later works beyond Solaris, which even now will require a closer and more attentive study for me to truly acknowledge that I've "seen" it, it's quite obvious to me that choosing a character of larger-than-life spiritual significance as the subject of his second film was Tarkovsky's way of creating a cult not so much around himself, but instead focused on his art. It's a cult that I've just now felt initiated into.
There's no shortage of other resonant scenes, images, compositions and themes that I could expound on here. Andrei Rublev is the kind of film that deserves and rewards book-length treatment and analysis. But this is a blog after all, and I know attention spans are limited in this hyperconnected postmodern era, in distinct contrast to the plodding deliberate pace that Tarkovsky insists upon his his craft. Unless readers want to engage in conversation in the comments section below, or elsewhere on social media, I'll save a more expansive commentary for a podcast someday, when the new and improved home video disc rests safely and comfortably in my hands.
Next: Here Is Your Life