Andrey Tarkovsky

Son of the poet Arséni Tarkovski, he had a difficult childhood that would leave a deep mark on him. After studying Music and spending three years painting, he studied Arabic at the Institute of Oriental Languages, and also Geology –which would lead him to work in Siberia (1956-1960)– and finally Cinema at the famous VGIK, where he trained at Mikhail Romm’s side. He would debut as a director in 1961, with the medium-length film The Steamroller and the Violin .

His style is linked to the lyrical and patriotic tradition of Soviet cinema, closer to Aleksandr Dovjenko than to Sergei M. Eisenstein. . In this regard, he said about this teacher: “It seems to me that his aesthetics are alien to me and frankly contraindicated.” Humanist and mystic, defender of the individual creation of the artist, in his cinematographic narrative he rejected the traditional dramatic unity. Controversial and somewhat sophisticated as a filmmaker, his ambitious films – structured like chapters in a novel or songs from an epic – required large budgets.

He became known to the world with his first feature film, Iván’s childhood , about the life of a partisan and made within the so-called post-Stalinist “Thaw cinema”, obtaining the Golden Lion at the Venice Festival in 1962. Later, His memorable Andrei Rublev (1966) would arrive, which tells the story of a famous fifteenth-century icon painter, and defends the “creative fever” of artistic genius and reflects on the freedom of the artist in the face of various powers. This is a film lesson somewhat related to the films of Ingmar Bergman, which has been described as a poetic-plastic meditation and which was prohibited in the USSR until 1971. Likewise, Tarkovski would make two apparently science-fiction films: Solaris(1972), critical-surrealist parable; and Stalker (1979), about the tragedy of a world without faith or hope, with which he would have serious conflicts with the Soviet system.

Considered the heir of the old Russian culture and the last dissident before Gorbachev’s “perestroika”, in 1979 he would go into exile in Italy and Sweden to continue his unique and admired work, developing his particular style within a difficult metaphysical-existential line. intellection, as can be seen in El espejo (1975), where he offered a self-analysis in the form of a monologue of a patient (who was himself) and, above all, in Nostalgia (1983) -a feeling that also overwhelmed him for his country- and the testamental sacrifice (1986). He had stated: “The film should be for the author and for the spectator a purifying moral act.”

Andrei Tarkovski was dreamy and cerebral, cold and passionate at the same time, deliberately irrational in his aesthetic approaches – “creation does not depend at all on rational analysis”, he said – and somewhat obsessed with the future of Humanity. The most complete study of his cinema is due to the Spanish philosopher Rafael Llano (Andrei Tarkovski. His life and his work. Valencia: Filmoteca de la Generalitat Valenciana, 2003, 2 vols.).

With only seven feature films in 25 years, today it is recognized as one of the great “classics” of contemporary cinema. He stood out for his use of the shot-sequence and the slow narrative to reflect on the image and actively participate in the creation of the work of art. Shortly after dying of cancer at the age of 52, in full capacity as a creator, his work diary and his theories appeared in the form of a book: “Sculpting in time”, where he dialogues with the real problems that were presented to him in his artistic task. The current generations have shown a growing interest in this genius of the screen.