All Tarkovsky enthusiasts
will want to watch, if not to own, this double-DVD consisting of three
documentaries about the Russian master, with a total running time of 205
minutes.
The first film is Moscow
Elegy, by another great Russian director, Alexander Sokurov, to whom Tarkovsky
was a mentor. This is a very personal tribute, consisting of footage and
photographs of Tarkovsky’s life and clips from his films. Unfortunately,
for no reason that I can see, Sokurov appears to have taped much of it
from TV, because the visual quality is poor and much that should be in
colour, including ironically some clips from Tempo di Viaggio in this same
DVD set, is in black-and-white. I admire most of Sokurov’s films that I
have seen, but cannot understand why Moscow Elegy is put together the way
it is. The material itself is of course interesting, but the presentation
is most odd.
The second film is Chris
Marker’s One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevitch. Marker is an acclaimed
French documentary maker (I particularly recall his remarkable Sans Soleil
from the 1980s) and this film consists largely of Tarkovsky directing The
Sacrifice, particularly the famous penultimate shot, lasting several minutes,
of the burning house, the shot where the camera jammed at the first attempt
so that the house had to be rebuilt. The babel of languages (Russian, English,
Swedish, etc.) merely added to the confusion, but the director knew exactly
what he wanted and through sheer single-minded intensity achieved what
for me is one of the greatest masterpieces of cinema. Tarkovsky was already
ill with lung cancer, and Marker’s film also shows him doing the final
edit of The Sacrifice from his hospital bed in Paris.
Finally, as mentioned
above, there is Tempo di Viaggio, directed by Tarkovsky himself along with
his Italian screenwriter (on Nostalghia) Tonino Guerra. This is clearly
a carefully-worked-out production, in which Tarkovsky is seen visiting
various possible locations in Italy for the filming of Nostalghia and being
unimpressed by all of them, except for a particular room in a rundown hotel
in a small village. Guerra asks Tarkovsky various questions (clearly pre-planned)
ostensibly from students about his views on cinema, so that the Russian
can hold forth about how the aspiring film-maker must allow him/herself
to be controlled by his/her vocation.
Overall, some great material
for the Tarkovsky buff, but it’s a pity about the presentation of Moscow
Elegy.
Alan
Pavelin