Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986)

Un libro que es varios al mismo tiempo: es un diario de trabajo, un ensayo introspectivo, un manifiesto del cine/arte, un manual de lenguaje cinematográfico y una retrospectiva a una de las filmografías más líricas, enigmáticas y trascendentales: la obra del cineasta soviético Andréi Tarkovski. Escrito en colaboración con Olga Surkova, Esculpir el tiempo es probablemente el ensayo más apasionante y reflexivo sobre el cine como arte total; Tarkovski no sólo habla del séptimo arte, su tremenda cultura le da para hacer un profundo estudio sobre otras disciplinas artísticas que, inevitablemente, se funden con el cine en algún momento. Mientras un escultor ordinario toma bloques de mármol o metal al crear una obra, para Andréi Tarkovski el cineasta arranca y corta trozos de tiempo, hasta llegar a las 2 o 3 horas que dura una película, haciendo arte con la realidad misma. Las tribulaciones del cineasta, para entonces ya retirado y decepcionado de la industria del cine, explotan en tremendas líneas que desnudan su estado emocional: “¿Cómo iba a imaginar durante el rodaje de Nostalghia que aquel estado de tristeza aplastante y sin salida, que marca toda la película, podría alguna vez ser el destino de mi propia vida? ¿Cómo iba a imaginar que yo mismo, hasta el final de mis días, tendría que sufrir esa misma grave enfermedad?”… (mere)

First, a warning. This is heady. It's tough to get through. Id sit and read a paragraph three times before I got it. It's a long 250 pages. And yet, I wish I could underline this entire book. It's so great. Think of the title alone: Sculpting in Time. What a great way to describe filmic art. Traditional sculptors work in clay or marble, but the director of film works in the medium of time. Andrey Tarkovsky dips into this idea of time in the chapter on the film image, as he describes the responsibility of the director to match a rhythm that can be seen only through feel. Seen by feel? Such is the attitude of this director, where all senses blend.

But first, Tarkovsky begins by considering what art is, and throughout the book constantly returns to his reflections of what art means to a society. From his dismissal of the modern art movement (how can something be avant-garde when it's by definition impossible to progress in art? All art is experimentation. If you're not experimenting it's not art.) to his thoughts on the artist's attitude to society, it's clear the director *ruminates*. Such a mind doesn't settle on an idea without turning it over, having it over for a tête–à–tête and seeking an understanding with it.

Do I agree with everything Tarkovsky puts forth? No. Though he's been dead 30 years, I don't think Tarkovsky wanted blind agreement. Ultimately, as he says, the audience agrees with you, or they don't. And no matter of shifting to please the audience will be worth it. Be true to yourself, as an artist, and your audience will do what they will. His quote from Pushkin will serve to close:

You are a king. Live alone. Take a free road and follow where your free mind leads you, bring to perfection the fruits of well-loved thoughts. Ask no reward for noble deeds accomplished. Rewards are within you. Your supreme judge is yourself. None will ever judge your work more sternly. Discriminating artist, does it please you?

Like I said, there's a bunch of things I liked, this doesn't even scrape the surface:
- I entirely subscribe to the view that truth is reached though dispute.
- Modern art has taken a wrong turn in abandoning the search for the meaning of existence in order to affirm the value of the individual for its own sake.
- Works of art, unlike those of science, have no practical goals in any material sense. Art is meta-language, with the help of which people try to communicate with one another....
- ...After [reading War and Peace] it was no longer possible to read trash; it would give me an acute feeling of distaste.
- Every moment that we were together was a celebration, like Epiphany.
- You long to be able to achieve great things while economizing the means.
- Faced with a really great figure, you accept him with all his 'weaknesses', which become the distinguishing marks of his aesthetic.
- … I found myself reflecting more and more that if you were serious about your work, then a film is not merely the next item in your career, it is an action which will affect the whole of your life.
- Art affects a person's emotions, not his reason.
- It takes little enough to appreciate art: a sensitive, subtle, suggestible soul, open to beauty and good, capable of spontaneous aesthetic experience.
- A book read by a thousand different people is a thousand different books.
- … Art must carry man's craving for the ideal, must be an expression of his reaching out toward it… art must give man hope in faith. And the more hopeless the world in the artist's version, the more clearly perhaps we must see the ideal that stands in opposition to it – otherwise life becomes impossible!
- ...what nobody seems to understand is that love can only be one-sided, that no other love exists, that in any other form it is not love. If it involves led than total giving, it is not love.
- Moreover I am convinced that we now find ourselves on the point of destroying another civilization entirely as a result of failing to take account of the spiritual side of the historical process. We don't want to admit to ourselves that many of the misfortunes besetting humanity are the results of our having become unforgivably, culpably, hopelessly materialistic.
- Perhaps our capacity to create is evidence that we ourselves were created in the image and likeness of God?
… (mere)

...Έργο του σκηνοθέτη είναι να αναδημιουργεί τη ζωή: την κίνησή της, τις αντιφάσεις της, τη δυναμική και τις συγκρούσεις της. Καθήκον του είναι να αποκαλύπτει κάθε ιώτα της αλήθειας που είδε, ακόμα και αν δεν την αποδέχονται όλοι. Φυσικά, ένας καλλιτέχνης μπορεί να χάσει το δρόμο του ωστόσο ακόμα και τα λάθη του μπορεί να έχουν ενδιαφέρον, αρκεί να είναι ειλικρινή, γιατί αντιπροσωπεύουν την πραγματικότητα της εσωτερικής του ζωής, των περιπλανήσεων και του αγώνα στον οποίο τον εξώθησε ο εξωτερικός κόσμος. (Άλλωστε κατέχει κανείς ποτέ όλη την αλήθεια;) Κάθε συζήτηση για το τι μπορούμε να δείξουμε στην οθόνη και τι όχι είναι απλώς πεζή και αήθης απόπειρα διαστροφής της αλήθειας...… (mere)