Andrei Tarkovsky. A Cinema Prayer

When it comes to insight into Tarkovsky's work and beliefs, the film is unable to offer more than what he had already expressed -more extensively and clearly- in his own book, Sculpting in Time. The interviews accompanied with old photographs and footage and poetry, never get to be more than the mere sum of the parts. All the insight comes from Tarkovsky's words, while his son (the director of the documentary) only adorns them without giving his own perspective or communicating any unique emotion. Nevertheless, the film manages to cover all the key points of Tarkovsky's ideas and the essence of each one of his movies, in a quiet and pleasant meditative style, so that by the end you are left with the feeling of having glimpsed the core of his life.

Rather than a biopic, Tarkovsky's son compiles a documentary that draws from his father's statements to narrate his artistic life. Little is shown about his private life (except his formative years), and the focus is on him as an auteur/director. Unlike most documentaries, there are no interviews or voice-over narrations. The only voice we hear (together with Arseniy Tarkovsky's poetries read by him) is Tarkovsky, as he explains his experience and his artistic concepts and his cinematographic evolution. I would say that the main focus of the documentary is Tarkovsky's spiritualism, his concept of how poetry requires spirituality, and art is a form of prayer. While most of the material is drawn from pre-existing media, I still found a few very interesting elements: I didn't know that Tarkovsky directed Hamlet on stage with Anatoliy Solonitsin, and found it very delighting to see colour backstage recordings of the making of Andrei Rublev. The other element that Andrei A. Added, is the new recordings of some of the places where Tarkovsky lived: his Russian house, the house in Florence, etc., paired with recordings of the locations of Tarkovsky's films (the city used in Andrej Rublev, the unfinished church from Nostalghia), as well as additional frames of natural scapes shot in tarkovskian taste, such as the opening shot, used for the poster. If you like Tarkovsky, make sure you see this!

If you are interested in the life and films of Tarkovsky, this tribute film from his son would be a great place to begin. The soundtrack is taken mostly from interviews with the great Russian director, and it is illustrated with scenes from his films and shots of him going about his life, which was far too short. He was a serious man, very devoted to his work and family, and had some odd ideas about things - odd to a Western ear, at least. But the results on the screen were magnificent, a successful introduction of avant-garde ideas into widely released films. The story of how he made his first film (which he tells here) belongs in every cinema history book.