I want to watch Andrei Tarkovsky’s films

I first encountered the work of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky via the video game The Witness. There’s an easter egg in the game where you unlock a number of video clips. One of them is a ten-minute clip from the Tarkovsky film Nostalghia.*

There’s no dialogue in the clip. The first part is a long shot of a man trying to carry a candle across a courtyard. The second long shot is of a man and a dog sitting next to a pond, with a house in the background. As the shot slowly zooms out, you can see that the whole scene is within the ruins of a large, roofless church.

I sat through the entire clip when I encountered it in-game, and I thought it was cool. I’m not into cinema, so I hadn’t seen much like it. I was fascinated that such long shots where so little happened could hit you so hard. It made me want to see the rest of the film.

I don’t watch movies very often, so I haven’t actually gotten around to watching any of his films. But I did read about another film of his that I’d like to see. It’s called Solaris and it’s an adaptation of a science fiction story of the same name by Stanisław Lem.

A little while ago, I found Andrei Tarkovsky’s Wikiquote page. I really liked his perspective on art, especially a lot of the things he said in his book Sculpting in Time, so now I want to read that too. To finish this post off, I’ll include a few of my favorites:

Never try to convey your idea to the audience — it is a thankless and senseless task. Show them life, and they'll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it.

If you try to please audiences, uncritically accepting their tastes, it can only mean that you have no respect for them: that you simply want to collect their money.

The more hopeless the world in the artist's version, the more clearly perhaps must we see the ideal that stands in opposition — otherwise life becomes impossible! Art symbolises the meaning of our existence.

Have you seen any Andrei Tarkovsky films? Do you have any suggestions for other ones I should check out? Are there any movies you’re interested in but haven’t gotten around to? Let me know your thoughts at my Ctrl-C email: gome ​@ ​ctrl-c.club.

* I’ve read articles that said The Witness was pretentious for including stuff like this, but I personally thought it was a cool thing to do in a puzzle game.