Andrei Tarkovsky Movies

Alexander Sokurov made this biography of filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky during the final years of the Russian master's life, when he was living in exile in Western Europe. Completed shortly after Tarkovsky's death in 1986, the movie eschews by-the-numbers portraiture, opting for a more ruminative approach that evinces its subject's influence. Sokurov flits back and forth between scenes of contemporary Moscow and of Tarkovsky directing his last two pictures, Nostalghia and The Sacrifice. Using footage of Tarkovsky at work and play, Sokurov assembles a touching scrapbook of a stateless artist, forced to live in exile to continue working. (After leaving the U.S.S.R. to film Nostalghia in 1982, Tarkovsky was soon told by Soviet officials that he would no longer be allowed to make movies if he returned home.) Moscow Elegy also features generous excerpts from both Nostalghia and The Sacrifice, and priceless clips of Tarkosky's turn in front of the camera in the 1963 film The Gates of Ilyich. Infused with personal feeling, Sokurov's paean to his mentor is a heartfelt document that devotees of both filmmakers will not want to miss. ~ Elbert Ventura, All Movie Guide

The film style of Robert Bresson is the subject of this documentary tribute to the French director and screenwriter, and to his minimalist auteur films about sensitive individuals (or even animals) trying unsuccessfully to survive in a cruel world. Weg Naar Bresson is divided into several segments with specific themes, such as "camera" or "theory," that are illustrated by film clips, and interviews with Bresson himself (a coup), and also with acclaimed directors Andrei Tarkovsky, Louis Malle, and Paul Schrader (who also wrote a book on three directors, including Bresson). The knowledge and experience revealed in each interview, and the examples of the film clips are clear indicators that the 54-minute running time of this documentary is too short, and should have been extended to do full justice to Bresson and his films. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Nostalghia is Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky's enigmatic work about a writer (Oleg Yankovsky) who, trapped by his fame and an unhappy marriage, seeks out his cultural past in Italy. Here he meets Erland Josephson, a local pariah who declares that the world is coming to an end. The writer finds this prophecy curiously more alluring than the possibility of a dead-end future. Nostalghia won the Grand Prix de Creation and the International Critics Prize at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker, an allegorical science fiction film like his earlier Solaris, was adapted from the novel Picnic by the Roadside by brothers Boris Strugatsky and Arkady Strugatsky. The film follows three men -- the Scientist (Nikolai Grinko), the Writer (Anatoliy Solonitsyn), and the Stalker (Alexander Kaidanovsky) -- as they travel through a mysterious and forbidden territory in the Russian wilderness called the "Zone." In the Zone, nothing is what it seems. Objects change places, the landscape shifts and rearranges itself. It seems as if an unknown intelligence is actively thwarting any attempt to penetrate its borders. In the Zone, there is said to be a bunker, and in the bunker: a magical room which has the power to make wishes come true. The Stalker is the hired guide for the journey who has, through repeated visits to the Zone, become accustomed to its complex traps, pitfalls, and subtle distortions. Only by following his lead (which often involves taking the longest, most frustrating route) can the Writer and the Scientist make it alive to the bunker and the room. As the men travel farther into the Zone, they realize it may take something more than just determination to succeed: it may actually take faith. Increasingly unsure of their deepest desires, they confront the room wondering if they can, in the end, take responsibility for the fulfillment of their own wishes. ~ Anthony Reed, All Movie Guide

Based on a novel by Stanislaw Lem, Solaris centers on widowed psychologist Kris Kelvin (Donata Banionis), who is sent to a space station orbiting a water-dominated planet called Solaris to investigate the mysterious death of a doctor, as well as the mental problems plaguing the dwindling number of cosmonauts on the station. Finding the remaining crew to be behaving oddly and aloof, Kelvin is more than surprised when he meets his seven-years-dead wife Khari (Natalya Bondarchuk) on the station. It quickly becomes apparent that Solaris possesses something that brings out repressed memories and obsessions within the cosmonauts on the space station, leaving Kelvin to question his perception of reality. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival, Solaris was remade by Steven Soderbergh in 2002. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide

Widely recognized as a masterpiece, Andrei Tarkovsky's 205-minute medieval epic, based on the life of the Russian monk and icon painter, was not seen as the director intended it until its re-release over twenty years after its completion. The film was not screened publicly in its own country (and then only in an abridged form) until 1972, three years after winning the International Critics Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Calling the film frightening, obscure, and unhistorical, Soviet authorities edited the picture on several occasions, removing as much as an entire hour from the original. Presented as a tableaux of seven sections in black and white, with a final montage of Rublev's painted icons in color, the film takes an unflinching gaze at medieval Russia during the first quarter of the 15th century, a period of Mongol-Tartar invasion and growing Christian influence. Commissioned to paint the interior of the Vladimir cathedral, Andrei Rublev (Anatoli Solonitsyn) leaves the Andronnikov monastery with an entourage of monks and assistants, witnessing in his travels the degradations befalling his fellow Russians, including pillage, oppression from tyrants and Mongols, torture, rape, and plague. Faced with the brutalities of the world outside the religious enclave, Rublev's faith is shaken, prompting him to question the uses or even possibility of art in a degraded world. After Mongols sack the city of Vladimir, burning the very cathedral that he has been commissioned to paint, Rublev takes a vow of silence and withdraws completely, removing himself to the hermetic confines of the monastery. Rising quickly out of this mire, the film's final section (a short story in its own right) concerns a boy named Boriska (Nikolai Burlyayev) who convinces a group of travelling bell-makers that his father passed on to him the secret of bell-making. The men take Boriska along, mostly because they pity and are amused by him, but they are quickly enthralled by the boy's ambition, determination, and confidence that he alone knows how to build the perfect bell. Boriska is soon commanding an army of assistants and peasant workers, and, indeed, his fierce temperament and refusal to accept anything but the best possible work and materials from the men fools the viewer -- possibly Boriska himself is fooled -- into thinking that he does in fact possess the secret, and that on the appointed day when the silver bell is lifted from the ground and its mallet set in place, it will ring. Amid this maelstrom of activity and confusion, Rublev appears; at first standoffish and mistrustful of the boy, he finds himself drawn to Boriska's courage and unselfconscious desire to create. Moved to put aside his vow of silence, Rublev serves finally as the boy's confessor, and he finds that, through Boriska, his faith, and art, have been renewed. ~ Anthony Reed, All Movie Guide

Katok i Skripka (The Steamroller and the Violin) was the last short Andrei Tarkovsky directed before moving on to his first feature. The film tells a very simply story of friendship between an artistic, sensitive seven-year-old violinist named Sasha and a physical, blue-collar steamroller operator. They befriend each other after Sasha is threatened by some ruffians, spend the day together, and alter each other's perceptions of life. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide