Yet, both overcome past obstacles and engage in producing their own artistic versions of Resources of Hope, the title of one of Raymond Williams’ collection of essays. Boriska is the victim of a neglectful and spiteful parent who dies without passing on his own creative talents to his son. Andrei temporarily betrays his creative gifts due to despair and pessimism later in the film. One may either sell out to the system, as the unfortunate apprentice Foma does, or struggle daily against adverse and grim circumstances. Creation is now a life or death struggle, whatever the circumstances. As the presence of a female leading the February 1917 Revolution in October (1927) acquits Eisenstein from any accusations of total misogyny, so the reappearance of a smiling Duroshka (Irma Rausch who also played Ivan’s mother) accompanied by a child (presumably her own) leading a horse (Tarkovsky’s favorite symbol) suggests that this formerly tragic “holy fool” may have achieved her own form of “blessing” that Charlie Castle in Robert Aldrich’s The Big Knife (1955) never received.Īndrei Rublev belongs to a past era of cinema but one having resonances for our own bleak times. Both Andrei Rublev and King Hu’s other masterpiece, Raining in the Mountain (1979), show otherwise. However, earlier scenes depict problems existing in environments that are supposedly different from the world outside. Leavis’s dream of the university as a “creative center of civilization,” institutions representing ideals rather than everyday, brutal realities. James version of “Works,” the film envisages their retreat to the security of a monastery to continue their different creative endeavors. Paul’s “Faith” as opposed to a traditional St. Concluding with Andrei speaking for the first time after a vow of silence and refusal to create, comforting young Boriska (played by the same actor who portrayed the young tragic hero of Tarkovsky’s 1962 first feature film, Ivan’s Childhood) who is intuitively employed an artistic version of St. How can any sincere artist continue to be creative in an alienating and inhumane era along with struggling with personal problems, untrustworthy colleagues, and the pressure to conform to any society’s institutional dominant ideological norms? The film explores the role of a little-known artist in a particular historical area whose circumstances may reproduce quite easily those of a different era, such as a conformist-ridden capitalism forming a stark mirror image to that cultural Stalinism within which Tarkovsky grew and developed in his own struggle against its stubborn resonances. Subject of many fine critical books and articles, the film’s importance lies in its relevance to a significant context that refuses to go away, despite our changed historical situation. After reviewing the disappointing Criterion Von Sternberg/Dietrich DVD Collection and noting the company’s inexplicable emphasis on popular films available elsewhere, it is a pleasure to see Criterion return to form with this three-disc version of Tarkovsky’s masterpiece.
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