Andrei Rublev (1966)

Film: Andrei Rublev

Director: Andrei Tarkovsky

Country: Russia

Released: December 1966

Runtime: 183 minutes

Genre: Historical Drama

Studio: Mosfilm

Influenced: Terrence Malick, Lars von Trier, Béla Tarr, Lucrecia Martel, Beniof & Weiss

A film by an Andrei about another Andrei (a Russian icon painter born in the 14th century), and originally entitled The Passion According To Andrei, this was Tarkovsky's second feature length movie after Ivan's Childhood (1962). Released in the Soviet Union in 1966, the film was heavily censored and edited due to its graphic content and implicit criticism of the government, and the original version of Andrei Rublev was not released in its entirety until 1971, after it won the International Critics Prize at Cannes. As well as an introduction and prologue, the film is divided into eight chapters, telling the story of pacifist monk and icon painter Andrei Rublev (played by Tarkovsky favourite Anatoly Solonitsyn) forced to scrape a living in an extremely violent world, beset by plague and constant Tatar invasions.

Tarkovsky shot the movie in black & white, but the powerful epilogue is filmed in colour for dramatic effect. After seeing how dark and dim Andrei Rublev's medieval world was, Tarkovsky then shows us the contrast of the beauty of his art. Another innovative technique used in Andrei Rublev was the director's use of different lenses. Tarkovsky worked closely with cinematographer Vadim Yusov to create a visual style that was both naturalistic and poetic. They used a variety of lenses, such as a wide-angle lens to create a sense of space and depth, and a telephoto lens to compress the image and create a sense of intimacy. They also used a special mirror lens to create a distorted, dreamlike effect in some scenes, while the wide lens was occasionally used for close-ups, creating a fish eye, anamorphic effect.

One of the most memorable scenes in the film is the opening sequence, depicting a medieval hot air balloon in flight. Astounding aerial point-of-view shots are interspersed with the odd moment of a horse rolling back and forth, while the goofy sound design is out of step with the serious tone of much of the film. Does it allude to Icarus and one of the film's main themes, i.e. an artist reaching for the stars? Hard to say, just like it's hard to explain the shot of the horse rolling on its back, but these images stick with us. Horses are a recurring motif in the film, transporting monks across a river, shown being tortured and killed during the Tatar raid and also featuring in the final shot of the film. Undirectable creatures often animate Tarkovsky’s compositions – Andrei Rublev features strange animal shots of ants, snakes, cats and horses – emphasising the director's deep love of nature, an aesthetic he would refine in later films.

Also memorable are the jester scene, in which Tarkovsky employs the Dreyer circular shot on all the faces of the people in the barn, and the passion of Andrei scene, featuring incredible dialogue between Rublev (played by the legendary Anatoly Solonitsyn) and Theophanes the Greek as they discuss morality, faith, vanity, etc. The final episode, The Bell (set in 1423), is arguably the finest of all the film's chapters and stands alone as a powerful narrative about faith and the artistic process. Tarkovsky shows us the creation of a giant bell in great detail using a long, unbroken take that lasts over 20 minutes, a feat of technical virtuosity. Nikolai Burlyayev, who played the main character in Ivan's Childhood, also stars in this episode as Boriska, a brave young man willing to die in pursuit of his art. It's notable that Rublev hardly features in this episode, in the same way that it's notable we don't ever see Rublev painting. One of Tarkovsky's great achievement in this film is his power to withhold and leave space for our imagination.