Bloody Tarkovsky

Nu mai ţin minte dacă am mai citit cândva sau nu acest comentariu la Andrei Rubliov – oricum, mi-a mers la suflet. E intitulat „Bloody Tarkovsky” şi l-a postat pe imdb un anume Gary, bănuiesc că e un cinemagoer cu un background impregnat de filme americane. Care iată ce scrie (pe 1 februarie 2000), referitor la filmul lui Tarkovski: "That's the best picture ever made!" Which can't be true as that was the last Tarkovsky film you saw. I've seen this one many times at the cinema and is the best three hours of celluloid you're likely to see apart from Solaris, which is Tarkovsky anyway. Tarkovsky wanted to make art that would change people's lives and in this he succeeded. Although his life was troubled and his projects clawed into life randomly from the grip of his film studio bosses, when viewed as a whole they seem to be all part of some great plan that was meant to reach fruition right from the start. … He believed that ultimately it is best to do things that deepen one's inner life rather than impoverish it. That may explain why you leave most Hollywood films feeling soiled. There are too many great scenes and moments in this astonishing and monumental work to mention so I won't. Suffice it to say it would have been fascinating to have seen what Tarkovsky would have made had he lived and returned from exile to his homeland. Recent events in Russia and the Balkans make this film even more vital and pertinent today. … The trouble is Tarkovsky's films have such extraordinary purity and spiritual depth that no other films seem able to satisfy one in the same way. They seem flat, lifeless and unable to compete. Why watch the let's-pretend-grown ups like Tarantino when you can watch a real grown up? So like I said, Bloody Tarkovsky. He has ruined cinema for me.”
Ei bine, acest Gary mă face gelos pe dexteritatea cu care îşi alege cuvintele şi cuprinde esenţa a ceea ce şi pentru mine reprezintă filmele lui Tarkovski. În numele acelei „extraordinare purităţi” şi a „profunzmii duhovniceşti” m-am apropiat, în timp, de filmele lui Griffith, Chaplin, Murnau, Vidor, Eric von Stroheim, Dreyer, Dovjenko, Mizoguchi, Kurosawa, Ozu, Paradjanov, Abuladze, Ray, Majidi, Bergman, Bresson, Fellini, Săucan, Menzel, Forman, Wajda, Zanussi, Piţa. Şi da, filmele lui Tarkovski, privite într-un anume fel, îţi schimbă viaţa. Sunt cruciale. Prin comparaţie, filmele aşa-zişilor mari regizori contemporani (dintre care simpaticul comentator îl pomeneşte doar pe Tarantino), sunt – cu foarte puţine excepţii – aşa cum spune Gary: „flat, lifeless and unable to compete”. De aceea, cu fină autoironie, şi sentimentul său de falsă revoltă pe opera unică a acestui regizor unic: „Bloody Tarkovsky. He has ruined cinema for me”. Pentru că, după vizionarea oricăruia dintre cele 7 ½ filme ale sale, pur şi simplu nu mai doreşti să vezi cinema. Te simţi nu fed up, ci genuinely fulfilled, like never before. Sentimentul acesta l-am avut şi eu tot cu vreo zece ani în urmă, când am lăsat următorul comment pe site-ul dedicat marelui regizor: Beyond all their magic of their images and sound, Tarkovsky’s films seem to be a sort of moving Byzantine Orthodox icons. Their ultimate purpose is to question our values, our (lack of) faith, to provide us with hope in order to be able to fight the just (and unseen) war until the very end, when the dry branches of our soul’s rotten tree (as in Offret) give green leaves again. As it happens with the Byzantine icons, perhaps we should not speak endlessly about their evident aesthetic value, but concentrate instead on their transfigurative nature. It is not mere art and beauty we can find in all Tarkovky's films. It is art and beauty endowed with a sort of sacrament and mystery. They all try to somehow enrich us with a sense of communion and brotherly love. And often we realize we need years and years before we come to fully understand this, and even more years to prepare our souls for this communion. The impact is tough: Tarkovsky’s films throw the seed of truth in us and we, if we are honest to ourselves, feel like confessing and humbly revealing all our misery rather than going to see another movie.