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Configurations of kinship in the work of Andrei Tarkovsky
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Content
CONFIGURATIONS OF KINSHIP IN THE
WORK OF ANDREI TARKOVSKY
by
Joti Shikandi Makaspak
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(SLAVIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES)
December 2023
Copyright 2023 Joti Shikandi Makaspak
ii
Acknowledgements
Just as it takes a village to raise a child, so too it takes the efforts of more than one
person to complete a dissertation. First and foremost, I would like to extend my gratitude to
my advisor, Colleen McQuillen, for seeing this dissertation through its various stages and
iterations. Her open-mindedness to my research as well as her meticulous attention to the
craft of academic writing were tremendously beneficial to my writing process. I would also
like to thank my other committee members from the USC Slavic department: Ellina Sattarova
for her enthusiasm towards my topic and her astute comments on film analysis that helped to
elevate my work; and Sally Pratt for always cheering for my success and offering her wideranging expertise to navigate the practical side of the dissertation writing. To contributing
faculty outside the department I offer my thanks to David Albertson from Religion and Tim
Biblarz from Sociology and Gender Studies for stepping in to look over my work and support
my progress at the beginning and end of the research, respectively.
I am ever grateful to Marina Tarkovskaya for providing anecdotes about her brother
Andrei Arsen’evich, and to Andrei Andreevich Tarkovsky for graciously taking time to meet
and tell me more about his father’s archival materials. Likewise, gratitude is due to Lada
Panova for introducing me to Marina Arsen’evna and to Alik Zholkovsky for his insights into
Russian poetry and Soviet culture. I also would like to thank the charming Natasha Synessios
for giving of her time to tell me more about her own scholarship on Tarkovsky and her
experiences as a graduate student. I am also grateful to Junichi Miyazawa of Aoyama Gakuin
University and his colleague Hironobu Baba for telling me about their work on Tarkovsky
materials as well as the untapped potential in Japanese Tarkovsky scholarship. And thank you
to Daisuke Adachi of Hokkaido University for getting me in contact with Dr. Miyazawa.
To Anna Krakus and Greta Matzner-Gore, thank you for inspiring my early ideas
even before I started the proposal. Plus, a hearty thanks to Peter Winsky for the relevant
iii
sources on Dostoevsky and the countless chats that helped my eclectic brain come up with
new ideas. For my contacts in Italy, Cristina dell’Orso at the Mediateca Toscana and
Tommaso Poggi of the University of Pisa, thank you for helping me get in touch with the
right people during my stay in Florence. Special thanks also go to Charles H. de Brantes of
the International Andrei Tarkovsky Society Paris archives for encouraging me to use my own
resources. Also, a thank you to Cristina Matteucci at the University of Urbino for sharing her
research experience of working in the Tarkovsky archives with me.
To my friends and colleagues Nikita Allgire (USC) and Richard Daily (Penn State): I
would not have written my chapters without your consistency and encouragement in hosting
our writing groups. I’m thankful to have both of you looking out for me. Likewise, I am
grateful to my editors: Chanel Mullins of Revised Ink; my close colleagues Joshua Allbright
(USC) and Michael Lavery (UCLA) who all contributed their various skills and expertise at a
moment’s notice to make my writing even better.
And most important of all, I wish to thank my sibling, Julie, for being an unwavering
source of love, support, encouragement, and help along the way. This work would not have
been made a reality without your affirmation in who I am.
To my kinship of chosen family, encouraging friends, and growing community:
this work is for all of us.
iv
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements.....................................................................................................................ii
Note on Transliteration.............................................................................................................vi
Abstract....................................................................................................................................vii
Introduction................................................................................................................................1
Background of Scholarship ....................................................................................................1
Research Objectives, Significance, and Parameters...............................................................6
Summary of Chapters...........................................................................................................10
Chapter 1: Queer Tarkovsky: Lifecycles of Male Communities..............................................13
What Is Queer About Tarkovsky?........................................................................................14
Sasha’s Hero: Subverting Soviet Conventions in The Steamroller and the Violin (1961) ..18
Ivan’s Kiss: Ambiguity of Kinship in Ivan’s Childhood (1962)..........................................28
Andrei’s Confession and Daniil’s Women: Desire in Andrei Rublev (1972) ......................34
Filipp’s Body: Control Over Choice in Light Wind (1972) .................................................42
Alexei’s Comrades: The Masculine Act of Memory in Mirror (1974) ...............................52
Kinship’s End: Failed Desire in Stalker (1979) ...................................................................56
Conclusion............................................................................................................................61
Chapter 2: “It Was Crime and Punishment!”: Dostoevsky and Family Dynamics in the
Screenplay Drafts to Solaris....................................................................................................63
Dostoevsky and the Tarkovskys...........................................................................................64
Embrace of the Prodigal Son: Kris’ Father and Paternal Touch..........................................72
Kissing the Earth Mother: Kris’ Dream Scene and Maternal Touch ...................................82
“I Bow to All Human Suffering”: Hari As Desired Spousal Touch ....................................87
Conclusion............................................................................................................................91
Chapter 3: Touched by Ghosts: Tarkovskian Gothic and Kinship with the Otherworldly......94
Tarkovskian Gothic ..............................................................................................................94
“The Silent, Secret Life”: Hoffmann’s Gothic Tale.............................................................97
The Elegiac Ghost: Photography as Memorial Space of Encounter..................................106
v
The Haunted Psyche: Gothic Relationships Through Poetry in Mirror.............................112
“First Meetings” ............................................................................................................119
“Since Morning I Waited for You Yesterday…” ...........................................................123
“Life, Life” .....................................................................................................................127
“Eurydice” ......................................................................................................................133
Conclusion..........................................................................................................................138
Chapter 4: Nostalghia, Female Kinship, and The Gaze........................................................141
Tarkovsky and Women ......................................................................................................142
Female-to-Female Intimacy and the Male Gaze ................................................................144
Female Community and the Madonna del Parto Scene .....................................................150
Female Desire and Eugenia’s Monologue .........................................................................152
Female Spectatorship and the Gaze Returned....................................................................161
Conclusion..........................................................................................................................163
Chapter 5: Face Touching Face: Kurosawa’s The Idiot and Tarkovsky’s Sacrifice in
Dialogue.................................................................................................................................165
Tarkovsky and Japan..........................................................................................................166
Tarkovsky and Kurosawa...................................................................................................169
Tarkovsky, Kurosawa, and Adapting Dostoevsky.............................................................173
Dostoevsky’s Rogozhin and Myshkin................................................................................179
Kurosawa’s Akama and Kameda .......................................................................................181
Tarkovsky’s “Prince Myshkin”..........................................................................................186
Conclusion..........................................................................................................................200
Conclusion .............................................................................................................................203
Bibliography ..........................................................................................................................207
vi
Note on Transliteration
This work uses Library of Congress transliteration for Russian quotes and places
while keeping the popular English spelling of certain Russian names (ex. Tarkovsky;
Dostoevsky, not Tarkovskii; Dostoevskii). The bibliography utilizes L.C. for all Russian
titles.
vii
Abstract
This dissertation examines the creative output of Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky
in light of how his characters interact and form kinship bonds. Scholarship on Tarkovsky has
mostly focused on the director’s visual language and spiritual aspirations. However, upon
closer examination, relationships have a centrality to the world Tarkovsky created alongside
these other scholarly concerns. More specifically, male-to-male relationships appear as the
corner stone and default of Tarkovsky’s kinship systems with all other relationships radiating
out from them. Tarkovskian scholarship has never analyzed the qualities of character
relationships in the director’s films or other works. This research aims to bring
intersectionality to Tarkovsky studies by including Tarkovsky in dialogue with such wideranging subjects as kinship theory, haptic cinema, genetic criticism, gender studies, queer
theory, and affect theory. Examining his completed films as well as scripts and personal
writings, I aim to show the ways in which Tarkovsky creates connection, intimacy, and
longing for ideal bonds amidst non-ideal circumstances. Also, I will highlight the inherently
disruptive nature of Tarkovsky’s character relationships; their bonds go against socially
normalized, clear-cut definitions of kinship and community by being intentionally
ambiguous. Placing these relationships outside societal norms and clear binaries opens
questions of how Tarkovsky chooses to interact with various forms of the Other (i.e.,
the gendered, spectral, and ethnic Other.)
1
Introduction
This dissertation examines the creative output of Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky
in light of how his characters interact and form kinship bonds. Scholarship on Tarkovsky has
mostly focused on the director’s visual language and spiritual aspirations. However, upon
closer examination, relationships have a centrality to the world Tarkovsky created alongside
these other scholarly concerns. More specifically, male-to-male relationships appear as the
corner stone and default of Tarkovsky’s kinship systems with all other relationships radiating
out from them. Tarkovskian scholarship has never analyzed the qualities of character
relationships in the director’s films or other works. This research aims to bring
intersectionality to Tarkovsky studies by including Tarkovsky in dialogue with such wideranging subjects as kinship theory, haptic cinema, genetic criticism, gender studies, queer
theory, and affect theory. By examining his completed films as well as scripts and personal
writings, I aim to show the ways in which Tarkovsky creates connection, intimacy, and
longing for ideal bonds amidst non-ideal circumstances. Also, I will highlight the inherently
disruptive nature of Tarkovsky’s character relationships; their bonds go against socially
normalized, clear-cut definitions of kinship and community by being intentionally
ambiguous. Placing these relationships outside societal norms and clear binaries opens
questions of how Tarkovsky chooses to interact with various forms of the Other (i.e., the
gendered, spectral, and ethnic Other.)
Background of Scholarship
Following his death in 1986, Tarkovsky quickly became a popular subject of study
thanks in large part to his family as well as scholars outside the Soviet Union championing
2
his life and work.
1 Though he produced a small amount of feature length films, Tarkovsky
has now become an international touchstone of film theory and cinematic composition.
Existing scholarship tends to discuss either Tarkovsky’s cinematic vision or the director’s
personal life. Leading and important scholars on Tarkovsky who have taken on some aspects
of these approaches include Vida Johnson and Graham Petrie, Robert Bird, Nariman Skakov,
Natasha Synessios, and Maya Turovskaya. Indeed, outside of discussing Tarkovsky’s
cinematic achievements and creative innovation, scholars gravitate to the persona of
Tarkovsky as the spiritual martyr-artist, such as in the interviews compiled by the director’s
sister, Marina Tarkovskaia. This trend may have been influenced by the reticence of
Tarkovsky to explain the meaning of the mysterious spiritual symbols or figures in his films
and his insistence on experiencing his work over analyzing it. Some scholars in recent years
have started to look at Tarkovsky’s work outside of the framework of his personal life or
beliefs through various systems of visual poetics.
2 Despite the growing amount of variety to
the approaches in Tarkovsky studies in the twenty first century, the progress toward such
variety remains slow and decentralized.3 American film scholars have little access or interest
in consulting Russian primary sources, and European scholars rarely collaborate with nonEuropean institutions or individuals.4
Tarkovksian scholarship that does include extended focus on relationships in his films
treats these relationships as supplemental or evidentiary to those in the director’s life. Helena
Goscilo, for instance, places the complicated father-son relationship between Andrei and his
1 Such early Tarkovsky scholars include Mark LeFanu, The Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky (BFI Pub, 1987); and
Peter Green, Andrei Tarkovsky: The Winding Road (Palgrave Macmillan, 1993). 2 See Thomas Redwood, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Poetics of Cinema (Cambridge Scholars, 2010); and Alexander
Kozin, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mythopoetics (Paideia, 2020). 3 The closest resource to a comprehensive, centralized source of Tarkovsky scholarship is the ‘unofficial’
materials website nostalghia.com as well as the Andrei Tarkovsky International Foundation. As of 2023 both
websites are under construction.
4 There are, of course, exceptions to the general trend. I attended an online conference in 2021 titled “Tarkovsky
Revisited” hosted by the University of Porto Portugal. The topics ranged from art history to architecture and
digital media. Most presenters were neither Slavists nor film scholars but academic and professional enthusiasts
who wanted to speak on Tarkovsky’s work.
3
father, the poet Arseny Tarkovsky, as the mold for his films’ father-son dynamics in the
framework of Trauma theory.5 Kitty Hunter-Blair, one of the early translators of Tarkovsky’s
theoretical writings and diaries, also discussed the father-son relationship in the context of
artistic creation (i.e. genetic criticism). Other translators and scholars who have worked
closely with Tarkovsky’s primary materials and have provided interesting insights into the
director’s vision. One example is the work of Natasha Synessios who began her writings on
Tarkovsky with her commentary to the first collected volume of translated screenplays with
William Powell.6 According to Synessios, Tarkovsky taught her a ‘way of looking’ which is
open to receiving something, receiving ‘the Other’.7 This notion of the Other in Tarkovsky
provided a good starting point for this dissertation’s focus on relationships.
Despite these hints of a rich topic of exploration, relationships and interpersonal ties
in Tarkovsky’s films have never been comprehensively studied. There appears a recurring
‘trope’ of Tarkovsky’s characters unable to interact with each other in a ‘normal’,
uncomplicated, peaceful way. There is always a character tension of a stance at the ready to
spring away or fight, or even a sense of fatigue after a confrontation or grave loss. While
characters may share their philosophical or psychological insights, and the protagonists often
do, characters in Tarkovsky’s films are quite reticent to talk about their relationships with one
another. Often meta-talk about relationships is either in critique (for example between Natalia
and Aleksei in Mirror or Eugenia and Gorchakov in Nostalghia) or as establishing statements
(i.e., this is my son, we live like this, etc.). The moments of affection or tenderness are few,
5 Helena Goscilo, "Fraught Filiation: Andrei Tarkovsky's Transformations of Personal Trauma,"
in Cinepaternity: Fathers and Sons in Soviet and Post-Soviet Film (Indiana University Press 2010), 247-81. 6 Andrei Tarkovsky, Natasha Synessios and William Powell, Andrei Tarkovsky: Collected Screenplays (Faber
and Faber, 1999). 7 I spoke with Natasha Synessios via Zoom in 2021. She had been a graduate student at the time of writing the
commentaries to the collected screenplays in the late 1990s. After writing a few more studies on Tarkovsky
Synessios ended up not completing her PhD and instead went into psychotherapy. During our interview she
mentioned that had she known about phenomenology she would have made that her thesis statement on
Tarkovsky’s work.
4
and rarely if ever discussed in the actual dialogue. Tarkovsky’s own thoughts on affectionate
actions between family members, let alone his own characters, are nowhere to be seen.
Some scholars have already made notes on depictions of love between heterosexual
couples in Tarkovsky. According to Synessios, the absence of amorous love is a notable
feature of Tarkovsky’s cinema. Love in Tarkovsky’s universe often expresses itself as
brotherly, both equally between men and women. Sexual love takes a subordinate place to
familial love.8 These heterosexual couples contrast quite starkly with the natural
homosociality fostered in Tarkovsky’s male characters. Tarkovsky’s protagonists show
almost an anxiety of being outside of these communities where affection and intimacy
between the same sex are decontextualized. Outside of war or religious formation or
professional closeness why would men seek each other’s company and physical proximity?
This anxiety carries into Tarkovsky’s later films such as Stalker and Sacrifice where the
theatricality and abstraction of chronology and mis-en-scene create a stage for the centrality
of male relationships found in his earlier cinema. In a parallel discussion Tarkovsky’s
heterosexual relationships are never fulfilled and act as fiats or placeholders for the intimacy
of say the battlefield or cadet school. The question of homoeroticism is however a tenuous
one in Tarkovsky as there are barely even any heterosexual sex scenes in the conventional
sense. All such scenes are shown in a symbolic sense of levitation and floating. This type of
8 Tarkovsky, Synessios et al, Andrei Tarkovsky: Collected Screenplays, 105.
Synessios also mentions in another work that some exceptions to this ‘brotherly’ male-female dynamic include:
Ivan’s Childhood and the erotic sadism in the scene between Kholin and Masha; Andrei Rublev which ponders
sexual versus spiritual love in the characters of Marfa the pagan witch and the holy fool (Durochka). Andrei
Konchalovsky as one of Tarkovsky’s co-writers to Rublev mentions how the two of them were interested in the
sensual aspects of film, an interest which Tarkovsky gradually replaced with spirituality (cf. relevant section in
O Tarkovskom). Furthermore, love between men and women becomes less corporeal over the course of
Tarkovsky’s career. For example: In Solaris Hari and Kris are “two spectres [sic], bound by a guilt-ridden,
captive love, which knows no pleasure, only suffering.” In Stalker the titular character exhausts himself in
service of exploring the Zone, neglecting his long-suffering wife who puts aside her needs and keeps herself
captive in love for him. In Nostalghia Gorchakov rejects Eugenia’s advances in exchange for the memory of his
wife back home. In Sacrifice Alexander struggles under the weight of a cold, orderly household with a vain wife
that competes with their daughter for the attention of the family friend, Victor. The postman, Otto, convinces
Alexander to sleep with the maid Maria to prevent the end of the world, and their meeting manifests as
incorporeal. Cf. Natasha Synessios, “From Wood to Marble: Tarkovsky’s Journey to Ithica,” in Tarkovsky, ed.
by Nathan Dunne (Black Dog Publishing, 2008), 314-17.
5
flight, however, appears more openly in Light Wind, one of Tarkovsky’s unfilmed scripts
which showcases more overt themes of male-to-male intimacy and queer social structures.
Since the scholarship involving Tarkovsky does not directly engage with these maleto-male relationships and their own intimacies, this research must consult related scholarship.
One such work, Men without Women by Eliot Borenstein, discusses the early Soviet period as
one of homosociality that coincided with the new societal conceptions of the home and the
roles of the sexes. Another relevant piece of Slavic scholarship is Emma Widdis’ Soviet
Senses which discusses the cumulative sensory effect of tactile aspects of Soviet cinema in
creating a physical connection between characters and the audience (i.e. haptic cinema). One
approach relevant to the overall discussion of relationships, however, is that of kinship
studies primarily used in anthropology. Though dependent on specific geography and time
period, kinship studies have developed to discuss various forms of family and relationships
not tied by marriage or blood (known as fictive kin), though the study in Russia proper has
slowed after the fall of the Soviet Union. In Vladimir Popov’s overview study of Russian
kinship studies, the scholar makes note that Russian study of interpersonal ties include more
categories of non-blood fictive ties such as blood-brotherhoods, godparents, shipmates, and
joking relationships.9 This notion contrasts to the foundational writings kinship studies in
American societies mostly from the work of David Schneider that almost solely focus on
blood/legal relatives. Adding this contextual weight of Russian-Soviet history can help with
understanding Tarkovsky’s own configurations of kinship.
One other topic not addressed by English language Tarkovsky scholarship is the
director’s strong ties to literature, more specifically, Russian literary figures. Dostoevsky, for
example, features prominently in Tarkovsky’s personal writing as a longed-for source of
9 Vladimir Popov and German Dziebel. “The Study of Kinship Systems and Terminologies in Russia and the
Soviet Union,” Structure and Dynamics 9(2) (2016): 214.
6
adaptation and philosophical thought. Some scholars in Russian have already commented on
this connection.
10 Such a topic requires some previous knowledge in Russian literary
criticism as well as the role of such writers as Dostoevsky in the Soviet intelligentsia, of
which Tarkovsky’s family was part of.
Another relevant topic is that of character ambiguity. There is already the established
trope of the elusive mother figure in Tarkovsky which couples with feelings of longing for
childhood and memories of home. This trope, however, does not take away the sense of
unease at confronting the image of a mother or other close family member in the present or in
one’s memories, signaling an ambivalent presence that is neither sinister or friendly. This
ambiguity of characters being neither all good or all evil coincides with the topic of queerness
as a decentering element, or at odds with the norm.11 Queerness itself has never been a topic
addressed in Tarkovsky’s work, given his focus on male-to-male relationships.
Research Objectives, Significance, and Parameters
The research aims of this dissertation all circulate around the notion of how
Tarkovsky forms these unusual patterns of kinship among his characters. Questions to be
answered in the subsequent chapters can be expressed as follows: What are the default
relational or communal ties found in Tarkovsky’s stories? Which relationships are more
prominent or deemphasized? What is the role of ambiguity in these relationships? Is the
notion of Queerness applicable? What is the role of physical proximity in Tarkovsky’s
kinship ties, if any? How does haptic touch coincide with intimacy and community? In what
ways does Dostoevsky inform the kinship bonds in Tarkovsky? How much does the available
10See R. Mazel’, Dostoevskii: bol’naia sovest’ nasha (M: Volshebnyi fonar’, 2012). 11 See David Halperin, “The Normalization of Queer Theory,” The Journal of Homosexuality 45:2-4 (2003):
339-343.
7
information on Tarkovsky’s own relationships inform what he said of his own characters’
relationships?
These questions aim to add dimension to the well-trod scholarship on Tarkovsky
pertaining to his protagonists who usually act as stand-ins for the director. The hermetic and
rich inner world of the artist comes across clearly and immediately to anyone interested in
Tarkovsky. Exploring how his characters relate to one another is more subtle and less
immediate. The topic of intimacy is already a difficult one to verbalize in everyday discourse,
as is connection through touch. Tarkovsky’s apparent willingness to allow his characters this
form of longing opens questions of masculinity and community. What, according to
Tarkovsky, does it mean to be a man? A Russian man? Why and how does a man find
connection with other men that does not compromise this rich inner world? In what ways do
women and femininity relate to these connections? Can this connection cross generational
and ethnic divisions? This research offers a significant contribution to the field in that it
attempts to answer these questions with the disciplines of kinship theory, film, literature,
genetic criticism, gender studies, and affect theory. Here is an opportunity to build a
vocabulary and iconography to discuss how Tarkovsky approached complex relationships. A
glaring need exists to add to a potentially wide-ranging field of Tarkovsky scholarship on
lesser explored topics, namely intimate bonds and why relational tension, strife, and pain
present themselves as the norm in his world.
A multidisciplinary artist like Tarkovsky benefits from a multidisciplinary approach.
His films contain entire ecosystems of cultural capital that reach outside of film into art
history, literary criticism, and metaphysical thought. Alongside this multiplicity of topics in
analyzing Tarkovsky is the challenge of language constrictions. There already is a substantial
amount of English language criticism, but that also can be said of the academic work in
Russian, French, Italian, and even Japanese. Thus, scholars with a knowledge of at least
8
Russian and English will have an advantage in consulting primary sources but said scholar
will still find worthwhile scholarship that remains inaccessible until translation work is
done.12
In analyzing the accessible materials, I aim to bring a balanced approach between
theory-based criticism and historical reports on material findings. Historical and biographical
context will be considered in as much as they support the theoretical findings around kinship
in Tarkovsky’s work. This study does not aim to make assumptions on either non-existent or
currently inaccessible evidence concerning Tarkovsky’s personal life or thoughts on his own
work. Primary terms to be used for the current study are ‘kinship’ and ‘community’13 from
Kinship studies,
14 such terms from gender and queer studies as ‘The Gaze’,
15 and the notion
of haptic cinema16 coupled with affect theory.
17 Genetic criticism, a newer term, is a literary
analytic methodology of tracing a work’s creative genesis through drafts and personal
12 In 2020, right before lockdown due to the Pandemic, I had the opportunity to speak to one of members of the
short-lived Andrei Tarkovsky Japan Society named Junichi Miyazawa who is now a scholar of literature, music
and media at Aoyama University. At that time, Dr. Miyazawa was a graduate student at Waseda University (he
later changed his major and earned a PhD on Canadian pianist Glenn Gould). Dr. Miyazawa was one of the two
translators of a publication called “The Book of Mirror”. The other (and the editor) was Hironobu Baba, a film
critic and scholar who later got PhD on filmmaker Atom Egoyan. Dr. Baba used to be the president of Japanese
Andrei Tarkovsky Society. He visited Tarkovsky’s widow, Larissa Tarkovskaya, in France and bought the
copyright of materials related to Mirror including a working diary, photographs, the kino-povest "Bely Den'"
and the later-revised novel, "Bely, Bely Den'". Dr. Baba translated the diary and Dr. Miyazawa did the
remaining work until it was published by Libro Port, Tokyo, in 1994. It was an original Japanese publication
project, and one of a kind. I only spoke very briefly with Junichi Miyazawa but he did confirm that there is a
considerable amount of good scholarship in Japan that deals with Tarkovsky but the problem is it has not been
translated yet. In terms of Hironobu Baba, he only has one publication on Tarkovsky Tarukofusuki eiga (The
films by Tarkovsky; Tokyo: Misuzu Shobo, 2002). Dr. Miyazawa praised Baba’s work highly, believing the
publication to be one of the best on the director in the world. It has yet to be translated into English or Russian. 13 Note that the terms kinship and community are used interchangeably in this dissertation. 14 Damien W. Riggs and Elizabeth Peel. Critical Kinship Studies: An Introduction to the Field (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2016). 15 For a sampling of primary works that use gender and queer theory within a Soviet historical or film context
see Marina Rojavin and Tim Harte (editors). Women in Soviet Film: The Thaw and Post-Thaw Periods
(Routledge, 2018); Daniel Humphrey. Queer Bergman: Sexuality Gender and the European Art Cinema
(University of Texas Press, 2013); Marko Dumančić. Men Out of Focus: The Soviet Masculinity Crisis in the
Long Sixties (University of Toronto Press, 2021); and Claire E. McCallum. The Fate of the New Man:
Representing and Reconstructing Masculinity in Soviet Visual Culture 1945-1965 (NIU Press, 2018). 16 Emma Widdis. Socialist Senses: Film Feeling and the Soviet Subject 1917-1940 (Indiana University Press,
2017). 17 Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (editors). The Affect Theory Reader (Duke University Press, 2010).
9
writings of its creator for further insights and a fuller analysis.18 This dissertation utilizes
such an approach in each chapter.
Tarkovsky primary materials used for this research all come from already published
translations and facsimiles of primary sources. These sources are not limited to only the
finished films and screenplays, but also include lesser-known early prose,
19 letters,
20 diaries,
21
and interviews.
22 For published sources of the screenplay translations and other writings23
this dissertation relies on the collected screenplays edited by Powell and Synessios,
24 with
script drafts found in the work of Dmitrii Salynski,
25 Cristina Matteucci26 and the translations
made by Hunter-Blair.27 One note should be made as to the reliability of the published
diaries. At first only printed in excerpts translated from the original, the diaries have not yet
been published in their full form. As indicated by the website nostalghia.com the relatives of
Tarkovsky have been understandably reluctant to broadcast his personal writings in their
unexpurgated original. Additionally, the originals may have not been entirely what
Tarkovsky would have said or felt, as indicated by an entry in 1982: Tarkovsky returned to
18 For more see Dirk van Hulle. Genetic Criticism: Tracing Creativity in Literature (Oxford University Press,
2022). 19 Andreï Tarkovski. Récits De Jeunesse (Nord Compo, 2004). This French edition is the only accessible version
of these early materials of journals, prose, and poetry.
20 See Viktor Filimonov. Zhizn’ zamechatel’nykh liudei: Andrei Tarkovskii. (Molodaia gvardiia, 2011); and
Viktor Filimonov, Zhizn’ zamechatel’nykh liudei: Arsenii Tarkovskii (Molodaia gvardiia, 2015). 21 For the current English translation see Tarkovsky, Andrei and Kitty Hunter-Blair (translator). Time within
Time: The Diaries, 1970-1986, 2018. For the collected diary entries in Russian see Andrei Arsen’evich
Tarkovskii. Martirolog: dnevniki 1970-1986 (Mezhdunarodnyi Institut imeni Andreia
Tarkovskogo, 2008). Note that an expanded version of the Russian diaries was recently Published
in 2023 by a Moscow press. Due to the ongoing war this version was not accessible for research. 22 Andrei Arsenʹevich Tarkovskii and John Gianvito. Andrei Tarkovsky: Interviews (University of Mississippi,
2006). 23 Marina Tarkovskaya et al. About Andrei Tarkovsky, Memoirs and Bigraphies (Progress Publishers, 1990). For
the Russian text see Marina Tarkovskaia et al. O Tarkovskom: vospominaniia v dvukh knigakh (Dedalus, 2002).
For the English translation see Andrei Tarkovsky. Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema (University of
Texas Press, 2017). 24 Tarkovsky, Synessios et al. Andrei Tarkovsky: Collected Screenplays (Faber and Faber, 1999).
Note that citations used with Synessios alone in this dissertation refer to the 1999 screenplay translations and
commentaries. Any other work by Synessios will be noted with the title and/or year of publication. 25 Dmitrii Salynskii. Filʹm Andreiia Tarkovskogo Soliaris: Materialy i dokumenty (Asteria, 2012). 26 Cristina Matteucci. "Lo jurodivyj in Nostalghia. Genesi ed evoluzione di Domenico nella sceneggiatura di
Tarkovskij e Guerra." (2020): 87-104. 27 Tarkovskii, Arsenii Aleksandrovich, et al. Poetry and Film: Artistic Kinship between Arsenii and Andrei
Tarkovsky (Tate Publishing, 2014).
10
Moscow by January of 1981, but back in Rome by March of 1982. On his trip back to Italy,
Soviet customs officers at Sheremetyevo airport looked through his diaries, stating that one
needed special permission to take manuscripts out of the country. They found a picture of
Solzhenitsyn in it, and asked Tarkovsky about icons. Tarkovsky replied that he knew nothing,
but the officers did not press the issue. This shows one possible reason as to why the diaries
are filled with theory and careful wording and at times not naming names. At any moment
someone could come across this personal writing. Perhaps the same reticence to be honest
came with Tarkovsky to Rome, as such ambivalent writing of open and closed writing
continued throughout the rest of the published entries.
Additionally, much of the written memorabilia left by Tarkovsky has been filtered by
translation or editing. This filtering includes his best-known written work, Sculpting in Time.
This also includes his diaries, his screenplays, and even other media. As of 2023 Tarkovsky’s
poetry, letters, and drawings have yet to be collected in print. Despite these constraints, this
research looks at what is currently available and consults these sources to the fullest it is able.
Summary of Chapters
The five chapters of this dissertation are divided by types of relationships. Each
chapter uses a different example film or work from Tarkovsky’s career, with the first chapter
being a chronological overview of Tarkovsky’s professional development. The remaining
chapters either focus on one work as analysis, or two for comparison. The final chapter
includes an extended comparative example from the work of Akira Kurosawa.
Chapter 1 outlines what kinship means for Tarkovsky in the context of male same-sex
relationships (the male self and the same-sex other). This examination of homosociality acts
as the lens through which all other relationships become measured, hence its place as the
starting point of this study. This role of male relationships, their aspects of queerness, and
11
their disruption by an outside element can be traced in the chronology of Tarkovsky’s career
through all his films. Films that have been omitted from this chapter’s chronology will be
explored in depth in the subsequent chapters.
The remaining chapters outline how Tarkovsky deals with ‘the Other’ in its various
forms: chapter 2 looks at the generational other in the dynamic between family members.
Though this dynamic exists in all Tarkovsky’s films, parent-child and intimate partner
relationships come to the forefront when examining the drafts to Solaris. Alongside this
analysis of family in this chapter comes the first direct thoughts on Tarkovsky’s relationship
to the work of Dostoevsky, specifically in how the author displays relationships and touch.
In chapter 3 these family ties extend beyond the realm of the living and into
encounters with the spectral Other. Here Tarkovsky’s Mirror, long seen as his most personal
film, acts as a space of encounter where the divide between the living and the dead is crossed
and blurred. In bringing together other lesser-known works to the discussion of ghosts and
haunting in Tarkovsky, this chapter presents the notion that Tarkovsky displays a type of
‘gothic’ to his otherworldly ties since the gothic comes most commonly as unresolved
psychological disturbances manifested in a symbolic manner.
From this central chapter comes chapter 4 which takes the director’s Italian film
Nostalghia as a direct encounter with the gendered other. Though the gender binary is never
questioned in Tarkovsky, excusive emphasis is placed on the men’s inner world from the
male protagonist’s perspective. This chapter then examines Nostalghia as a time in
Tarkovsky’s filmography when the disruptive force of the feminine looked back at the male
gaze and remained even more unknowable.
The study concludes with chapter 5 as a comparative study to analyze Tarkovsky’s
conceptions of the ethnic other. Though this theme of Russia’s encounters with Asia appears
more often in the director’s work than expected, this chapter presents an introduction to the
12
subject by way of Tarkovsky’s fascination with Japan. More specifically, Tarkovsky here is
compared to the cinema of Akira Kurosawa in their shared love for Dostoevsky, and their
own separated attempts to adapt The Idiot. The inclusion of Kurosawa is important to the
overall argument in that it allows for a strengthening the examples of paternity and
brotherhood in his work with a real-life example of transcultural kinship in Tarkovsky’s own
life.
As shown in this brief summary, each chapter aim to build on the previous chapter by
way of presenting various types of kinship ties and how they ebb and flow into each other.
Each film or screenplay or set of films will be analyzed through the perspective of what type
of relationships appear most prominently in them. Likewise, another revealing factor is which
relationships appear deemphasized or not addressed altogether. And because of Tarkovsky’s
unique approach to the sources he found inspiration in, one must consult both the historical
trends around such kinship topics as family and masculinity during the Stalinist, Thaw, and
Stagnation periods (the periods leading up to and during Tarkovsky’s professional working
years). That said, due to the scarcity of sources addressing the topic of kindship, queerness, or
touch in Slavic sources study on such Topics in Tarkovsky must consult other sources from
other fields in order to adequately express these phenomena. Keeping this in mind, this
research begins with a special awareness to connection and character types as envisioned by
Tarkovsky.
13
Chapter 1: Queer Tarkovsky: Lifecycles of Male Communities
Tarkovsky’s cinematic output is known for grappling with philosophical concepts
around such topics as mortality, pain, faith, and the role of science, much in line with the
tradition of Dostoevsky. A lesser known but equally central concern to Tarkovsky’s greater
output is how relationships, specifically male relationships, form in the presence of one
another alongside artistic and moralistic concerns. These bonds between men also hold the
possibility of becoming queered in opposition to the Other and the given societal norms. This
use of queer follows the idea of disruption of the norm28—more specifically, Tarkovsky’s
male relationships are queer in their ambiguity of one person playing multiple roles in a
relationship. This state of in-between, of indeterminate affiliation, much like the tension of
the long take, never resolves in the end. I argue that, rather than being a sign of carelessness
or indecision on Tarkovsky’s part, this ambiguity in male relationships is a prerequisite and
space of exploration for Tarkovsky’s characters to exist in and express desire and intimacy.
This trend shows a consistency of concern over the course of the director’s career.
However, this ambiguity also comes with a contrast to the formation of a bond or a
community alongside the presence of an outsider. This contrast includes such outsiders as
women and the ethnic outsider. Concerning women, they tend to disrupt the queerness of the
male relationships they come in contact with due to their function as a callback to convention
and societal expectations.29 A related question that arises from this observation is to ask, what
is a male-centric character: a misogynistic one? A self-centered one? A homoerotic one?
Over the course of Tarkovsky’s filmography and greater cinematic output, a change
takes place in the presentation of male communities and their relationship to and role of the
Other, which often can prevent a relationship from forming. This lifecycle of male intimacy
28 Halperin, “The Normalization of Queer Theory,” 339-43. 29 The presence of women in Tarkovsky is further explored in Chapter 4, but in this chapter, female characters
act as a reoccurring ‘other’ to define the male bonds of which they have no part.
14
best manifests in Tarkovsky’s central image of an older man cradling a younger man in his
hands, arms, and lap, which introduces the element of physical touch to these relationships.
Citing six key works in this chapter, I will show the progress of this formation of male
community and intimacy from the tender stages of Tarkovsky’s student years to the
apocalyptic desolation of his last film work before leaving the USSR.
What Is Queer About Tarkovsky?
Discussion of male-to-male relationships in topics of cinema and the Cold War have
only in recent years started to examine unexpected materials through the lens of queer and
gender studies writings. One such example is that of Tarkovsky’s films as noted in scholar
Daniel Humphrey’s work Queer Bergman (2013). In this study on Bergman and art house
cinema, Humphrey makes an aside to mention the American reception of Ivan’s Childhood.
This aside fits into the larger argument on Humphrey’s part in how there appears to be an
unconscious push in American press of the mid-century to connect foreignness with
queerness. The contemporary reviews of Ivan’s Childhood make room to focus on the male
characters in the film being more openly affectionate with each other than what audiences in
the West (i.e., the US) were used to at the time. Some critics, such as Edith Oliver in The New
Yorker, called the film “foreign and refreshing.”30 Continuing from this remark, Humphrey
posits that the non-combat setting of Ivan’s Childhood, when paired with the lighting used on
the male characters, gave said characters a sort of glow associated in classic Hollywood with
spirituality, ecstasy, or sensuality to outline the body, which was most often the female
30 Other American pieces of journalism on the USSR in the early 1960s seem just as eager to note titillating
anecdotes concerning Russian masculinity for a US reader. For instance, Aline Mosby, a foreign correspondent
in Moscow during the Khrushchev era, mentions some second-hand sightings of homosexuals holding hands on
the street, supposedly emboldened by the liberalizations of the regime. The aside is slight, as earlier Mosby
describes heterosexual Russian men as direct, emotional, mostly unattractive, and closer in spirit to “rough
Americans” than courteous Europeans (see Aline Mosby. The View from No. 13 People’s Street (Random
House, 1962), 89, 159-160.
15
body31. These journalistic and academic pieces of writing bring up questions concerning
Tarkovsky’s film and how it fits into the trend of othering via emotional freedom at best or
aberration at worst. This film’s military setting in particular creates environments for crosscultural same-sex intimacy. Even in other films, Tarkovsky’s men show their desire for maleto-male intimacy alongside an anxiety of expressing it out loud, which leads to the trappings
of showing certain communities where same sex intimacy is more commonly considered an
open secret, such as monasteries or the military.
From the observation by Humphrey, I shape my own use of queer theory looking at
Tarkovsky’s consistent backward glances to the historical past, most notably in his medieval
film Andrei Rublev. In their collection of essays on films depicting the Middle Ages, editors
Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Tison Pugh propose the medieval film as queering the sense of
past and present through questioning norms of gender and sexuality in their historical and
contemporary context: “queer is used most energetically as a disruptive mode of inquiry, one
that destabilizes expectations of normativity. Queer theory has the power to disrupt not only
the normativity of heterosexuality, but also the normativity of history, for it is how history is
written, received, and understood that establishes master narratives in the first place.”32 This
approach then looks at interpretations over a portrayed subject matter but does not make them
mutually exclusive. I take this use of queer in my analysis of Tarkovsky, who also collapsed
time and history in Andrei Rublev as well as his war films, such as Ivan’s Childhood.
Tarkovsky’s queering further comes in the blurring of interpersonal categories. Most
often in a professional, military, or even religious setting, all focus is on deemphasizing the
individual for the collective. But within this collective sense of community, the male
characters come to play various roles for each other, be they nurturing fathers, supportive
31 Humphrey, Queer Bergman, 44. 32 Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Tison Pugh, Queer Movie Medievalisms (Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2009), 3.
16
brothers, or even the possible stand-in for a wife or sweetheart. Thus the men become
simultaneously brothers, fathers, sons, and even more unspoken placeholders. They are queer
in the sense that they go against the categorization of formation and the norms of relational
ties. Often, this blurring of categories goes unnoticed since the emphasis is on the character’s
spiritual or artistic development and the unfolding of their dreams or memories. Additionally,
characters rarely mention who they are in relation to each other, or by extension, how they
feel about one another (though the rare exception will be examined later). This trait then is
taken as a given by the way characters are blocked in proximity to one another; if, when, and
how they touch; and what they do for one another.
Though there are subtle variations and further subsets to these categories, this chapter
will mainly focus on what Anna Berman calls “lateral, consanguineal ties,”33 a term used
within the context of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy’s conceptions of siblinghood. A recurring
image for Tarkovsky to express this relationship is that of two people—often two men—
sitting closely to each other, and how these two men interact tells of their bond, or lack of
one. Whether the two men are facing each other, facing away, touching, talking, or simply
sitting silently, it appears more and more choreographed the further Tarkovsky comes into his
career.
Additional cues come from looking at the context for how the men relate to the
women that appear in the narrative, if they appear at all. Some men find themselves in
heterosexual relationships, even reluctantly so, while others find themselves unable to
express their desire for women due to the available proximity of intimacy with men. These
men, however, are never given the signals Western film historians call queer coding, or
stereotypical markers which indicate a character is in the sexual minority. Queer coding as a
33 Anna Berman, Siblings in Tolstoy and Dostoevsky: The Path to Universal brotherhood (Northwestern
University Press, 2015), 4.
17
term comes from the context of Hollywood and cannot be easily applied to norms in Soviet
cinema. While there is a long history of artistic covert subversion to the regime,
34 there is a
noticeable gap in Soviet film criticism concerning the unwritten history of queer characters,
actors, and directors before perestroika, no doubt due in some part to the current policies of
the Russian Federation on the matter.
This silence on queer representation in Soviet cinema has not stopped some scholars
from taking leaps into speculation. Johnson and Petrie, for instance, in their omnibus
scholarship on Tarkovsky, made claims to the director’s bisexuality as evidenced from an
interview with his cinematographer, who said the director mentioned a “dark secret.”35 This
interview in full is not included in the volume and is taken solely on the word of the authors.
Some reviews of Johnson and Petrie have been critical of this approach.36 My study makes no
attempts to claim what cannot be claimed on speculation. There is currently no available
documentation to affirm or deny Tarkovsky’s thoughts on his own sexuality. As Susanne
Fusso writes in her study on Dostoevsky and homosexual desire: “…the focus of my research
is to explore not Dostoevsky’s personal sexuality but the meaning of his artistic texts.”37
What is available for study are the films and unfilmed screenplays as primary source
materials with examples of Tarkovsky’s almost obsessive focus on male communities and the
intimacy fostered in them.
Applicable terms for looking at Tarkovsky’s materials for these moments between
male characters include community, kinship, and, most importantly, intimacy. Christopher
Lauer describes intimacy as “closeness beyond closeness,” or when a sharing of things
34 See Vladimir Paperny, Kultura “Dva” (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1985). 35 Vida T. Johnson and Graham Petrie. The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual Fugue (Indiana University
Press, 2003), 248-49. 36 Cf. the review by David Pratt for the 1996 autumn edition of Film Quarterly. 37 Susanne Fusso, “Dostoevsky’s Comely Boy: Homoerotic Desire and Aesthetic Strategies in A Raw Youth.”
The Russian Review (2000): 582.
18
usually hidden within another becomes the bridge negating separation between two people.
38
Kelsey Rubin-Detlev writes on Dostoevsky’s characterization of intimacy in his fiction and
letters as a carefully crafted persona whose aberrations in language reveal the truth.
39 Other
more contemporary historical contexts, such as those of Stalinist and post-Stalinist norms of
masculinity, masculine behavior, and duties, may also apply to Tarkovsky’s conception of
masculine codes and communities. Amy Randall notes the emphasis on fatherhood in the
1950s and 60s.
40 Lilya Kaganovsky mentions Soviet homosociality in how early Soviet
narratives deemphasized romantic situations in favor of brotherhood and workers
accomplishing a goal.
41 Likewise, Alexei Yurchak discusses the development of “vnye”
spaces in the post-Khrushchev generation as a social space of quiet rebellion somewhere
between being outside society while also retaining things within it.
42
Concerning the chosen films and screenplays for tracing the development of
Tarkovsky’s formation of male relationships, I will examine five examples from his
filmography and one example of an unfilmed screenplay. All examples are presented in
chronological order to help emphasize the development of these ties, how they are queered,
and how they relate to the Other.
Sasha’s Hero: Subverting Soviet Conventions in The Steamroller and the Violin
Tarkovsky’s student diploma film, The Steamroller and the Violin (1961) shows the
director’s specific parameters for male community while working within and subverting
Soviet tropes. The “good” workers, the studious child, and unruly “bad” children all appear in
the film, but their motivations, interactions, and configurations have complex and perplexing
38 Christopher Lauer, Intimacy: A Dialectical Study (Bloomsbury, 2016), 4. 39 Kelsey Rubin-Detlev. “Dostoevsky and Epistolary Intimacy” SEEJ Journal (2023): 581. 40 Amy E Randall, “Soviet and Russian Masculinities.” Journal of Modern History (December 2020): 862. 41 Lilya Kaganovsky, How the Soviet Man was Unmade (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008), 69. 42 Alexei Yurchak, Everything was Forever until It was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton, 2006),
128.
19
appearances when comparing how the focus shifts from the script to the final film. As with
other projects, Tarkovsky’s vision of Steamroller became more tightly focused as
unnecessary materials were shortened or omitted. In this case, the overall focus in the final
film became about codes of masculinity, both in the Soviet setting as well as on Tarkovsky’s
own terms. He achieves this by focusing on the boy protagonist Sasha’s relationship to the
steamroller driver Sergei, particularly the military vein. In the shooting script, there were
originally more drawn-out moments involving side characters in addition to more of Sergei’s
backstory as a WWII veteran. These interactions by and large have to do with how men and
women in the film interact with one another and how various moments without dialogue are
interpreted in the written directions.
The character of Sergei in particular shows a nod to Soviet-era heroes. During the late
Khrushchev-Brezhnev era, two types of romanticizing wartime heroics emerged: one came
with vitality and heroism, and the other was expressive and lyrical.
43 Tarkovsky chooses the
latter type for this film, showing Sergei almost as a dreamy Hollywood-type star rather than a
stalwart Soviet worker. Several moments of Steamroller’s initial script became excluded
from the final shot version, such as a May Day parade and dream sequence near the end. The
May Day scene included a tank, which triggered Sergei’s memories of fighting in the war.
The dream depicted Sergei snubbing both Sasha and the woman coworker as he returned to
work.
44 This exclusion of overtly depicting Sergei as a veteran with PTSD creates mystique
around his scenes, especially in how he reacts differently to both Sasha and his female
coworker. There appears on the screen a character with hidden depth only hinted at in the
script. Sergei emerges as a complex, desired ideal for Sasha, while Sasha remains in an in43 McCallum, The Fate of the New Man, 42. 44 Synessios et al, Collected Screenplays, 4-5.
20
between state of being caught between childhood and adulthood and the world of the
feminine and masculine.
Sasha appears as different from the other boys in ways distinct but not dissimilar to
Sergei. At the beginning of the film (final shot version), Sergei saves Sasha from bullies as
Sasha tries to sneak out of the building to his music lesson. In retaliation, the bullies call
Sasha a “musician,” and the leader of the group has a cigarette in his mouth.
45 In the final
version, the leader no longer has a cigarette in his mouth but is taller and dresses noticeably
older and more monochrome than the other children. This depiction of the leader of the group
as a boy trying to be a man contrasts with both Sasha and Sergei, both of whom unwittingly
put him in his place later in the story.
The first major scene between Sergei and Sasha where they fix and operate the
steamroller together shows their ease and want for connection in the greater theme of forming
a male-to-male lateral bond. In looking more closely at this scene of tacet understanding and
pacts between men, one must again return to comparing the draft with the final cut. One
scene varies drastically in tone between the screenplay and the final edit. In the screenplay,
Sasha notices Sergei angrily shouting at him but can’t make out the words over the din of the
steamroller. Once he finally realizes Sergei wants Sasha to hand him the tools to fix the
machine, Sasha rushes around confused, then hands off what Sergei orders. Once the
steamroller runs smoothly again, they both smile at each other.
46 In the final edit, the dialogue
is heard clearly as Sergei calmly but firmly tells Sasha to hand him his tools. The perspective
seems to come from Sergei, who playfully taps Sasha on the nose once the engine runs
smoothly again. The struggle for communication between the two does not come across as
clearly or as severely as in the written edit.
45 Ibid, 14. 46 Ibid, 23.
21
Concerning masculine expectations, in another scene, we see manly defense of the
weak. Sasha defends a little boy from a bully but gets beat up and cries in the dark. The script
elaborates on Sasha’s expectation for Sergei to do it. “Let’s go then,” (nu poshli togda) Sergei
responds to Sasha’s crying,
47 saying he used to get beat up as a kid, a remark pointing to
Sergei’s implicit opinion that all men must experience this in order to be called a ‘real’ man.
Sasha shows a clear want for imitating Sergei’s moral as well as physical markers of
labor. After breaking for lunch, Sasha takes off the bow tied around his neck (a detail both in
the script and the final) and admires his now dirty hands and face (only in the script).
48 His
removal of the bowtie shows Sasha’s break of the expectation of such trappings as clothing
for a boy of his age and artistic inclinations, and his dirty hands mark him as one of the other
adult male workers.
Despite Sasha’s desire to fit in, even Sergei differs from his male coworkers, but he
also has different assumptions from Sasha. Sergei’s male coworkers call Sasha a real worker
(nostoiashchii rabotiaga). Sergei corrects his coworkers by calling Sasha a “musician,” which
causes Sasha to freeze. Sergei responds to Sasha’s indignation with a children’s rhyme: “nu
nu, tilibom, zagorelsia Koshkin dom,” a playful way of saying that someone has suddenly
gotten angry.
49 Here is a moment of several unspoken assumptions coming together at once.
Sasha associates being called a musician with the group of bullies, while Sergei, not knowing
this, sees it as a different, perhaps higher aspiration than that of a worker (a decidedly
different take from the usual Soviet stance of placing the worker above other professions).
Since Sasha has a growing affection for Sergei, this shift in aligning with the bullies comes as
an attack. When the two of them reconcile immediately afterwards, there is no audible
47 Ibid, 30-32. 48 Ibid, 27-28. 49 Ibid, 33.
22
dialogue since the moment belongs to the two of them, and Sasha is once again back in the
company of men.
The central emotional scene comes when Sasha plays the violin for Sergei, which
shows a great example of lighting playing on the characters’ faces in the final cut. This added
dimension of lighting from reflections in a puddle after the rain softens their overall mood,
making them as pensive as marble statues. The scene in question highlights the aim of male
intimacy from Tarkovsky’s point of view: to indulge in the physical, sensual world and thus
transcend it vis-à-vis the Other. According to the script directions, sunlight plays on Sergei’s
face and hands throughout the scene while Sasha plays the violin.
50 This play calls to mind
Humphrey’s notion of feminizing the subject by lighting their faces. He is “bewitched” and
“troubled” from the music51. He calls Sasha “brother” (brat). The script makes Sasha’s
feelings clear: “Sasha does not want to leave Sergei,” but Sergei says nothing in response to
Sasha’s unspoken longing.
52
The violin itself acts as a feminine artistic object, in contrast to the masculine
steamroller, thus turning the story of a boy and a man forming a friendship into how the
cinematic medium attempts to bridge oppositions of art vs. technology, materialism vs.
relationships, men vs. women, etc. The scene that shows this key difference of dynamic is
when the bullies find the abandoned violin on the steamroller’s toolbox. The description in
the script is very sensual as the boy takes the violin out of its case to turn it over in the
sunlight. The boy is “astounded.” The musical cue is marked as “alarm, growing terror,
horror—then calm.” The boy sets the violin back in its case, but before they can leave, the
woman coworker catches them near the steamroller. The boys then mock her before
leaving.
53 In the final shot version, however, it is implied that the beauty of the violin is
50 Ibid, 40-44. 51 Ibid, 45. 52 Ibid, 46. 53 Ibid, 29.
23
enough to make the leader of the gang of children close the lid again without even touching
the violin. The absence of the female coworker transfers the power to the violin and takes
away from the script’s pattern of female “interruption.” The violin itself becomes in the script
an object of the feminine, in the violating gaze and hands of the bully until its beauty
becomes known to him.
Sergei and the female co-worker form one consistent example of the feminine in a
male-dominated space which keeps reappearing in both the script and the final shot film.
Whenever they interact on the job, she constantly teases him. The first moment she appears
on a yellow steamroller in a worker’s unisex overalls and teases Sergei about buying an icecream for her. He pretends not to be affected but clenches his jaw.
54 Sergei’s reactions are not
even registered in the final cut, as the shot for this scene is too far away from either of their
faces and the camera immediately cuts to Sasha standing. The female coworker teases him
some more, which makes Sasha smile. Sasha rides on the steamroller with Sergei, then the
female coworker teases Sergei some more. In the script she speaks twice, the second time
more overtly flirtatious, “Why don’t you ever go to the club? A woman there keeps asking
after you!”55 The final edit omits his. When Sasha offers to say something in return, Sergei
angrily tells him to pay no attention to her.
This unease of being in a romantic relationship with a woman persists to the end of
the film. In the penultimate scene outside the movie theater Sergei agrees to go with the
woman coworker to the movies “despairingly” when Sasha does not appear.
56 The woman
coworker is now in a dress and heels to appear with more feminine markers of clothing,
timidly glancing at Sergei from afar before running into him ‘accidentally.’ She calls him
‘Seryozha’ instead of Seryoga, thus softening her language towards him as well as her image.
54 Ibid, 22. 55 Ibid, 26. 56 Ibid, 51.
24
Sergei keeps glancing behind him and does not even hold her hand as they go into the theater.
Here appears a different example of entrapment, this time as the final blow to growing male
community that becomes only reconciled in Sasha’s daydream.
Sergei and his relation to women are further complicated as reflected in how he
interacts with Sasha. When Sasha asks Sergei his name for the first time, Sergei responds
with “Seryoga…Sergei!” a response both in the script and in the final film. This selfcorrection calls to mind the nickname that Sergei’s female coworker calls him when she
teases him. Sergei makes a distinction between what he is called at work and what he wants
to be called, his official, masculine sounding name. The fact that he shares this with Sasha
shows how he takes the boy into his confidence, as if more able to express his preferred name
the way Sasha could not. Though not perfect, such an expression on Sergei’s part places him
as the mature ideal man in comparison to Sasha’s boyhood. This image of the ideal man
reflects heroic depictions of the times.
The female co-worker herself comes as an “interrupting” element into Sasha and
Sergei’s dynamic: when Sasha is about to play the violin for Sergei, they both stop and see
the female coworker waiting down the entrance way. The description reads as follows:
“Realizing that Sasha and Sergei are waiting for her to go, the woman smiles and disappears
down the far end of the courtyard.”57 In the script she interrupts both before and after this
moment: once to ask for her monkey wrench back, and again to tell Sergei to get back to
work.
Tarkovsky would continue to present the facets of male-male community through the
portrayal of a boy protagonist as well as how the feminine presence acts as a call to normalcy
to said community. In looking at these ambivalent male-female relations in this film, the
opening scene shows a subtle shift of focus from script to final film. In the shooting script the
57 Ibid, 45.
25
story begins in Sasha’s apartment building with another boy eating breakfast on a balcony
and acting as a voyeur, i.e., a surrogate to the audience, as he looks on the street outside. He
sees a young couple in love return from a night together. Soon after he sees the young woman
leaving for work in a hurry, and smiles. Then the boy calls out Sasha’s location to a group of
bullies and other children at play which Sasha is avoiding.
58 The exact order of events in this
beginning becomes omitted from the final shooting cut, which begins in fact with Sasha
sneaking out of the apartment building to avoid the gang of neighborhood children. Also, in
the final version the boy eating breakfast is no longer overweight but now has a crutch, and
his role is no more than another sinister presence for Sasha to creep past on his way out of the
apartment building. The screenplay’s couple returning early in the morning never made its
way into the final film, but their inclusion in the script sets it as an indicator of gender
relations as a recurring theme. The couple, presumably back from a night together, are at first
depicted as happy when in fact their amorous adventure causes the girl in the relationship to
be running late for work, much to the amusement of the boy staring at them. This boy signals
another theme in the film of tacet pacts or unspoken understanding between boys and men.
Sasha will find himself caught in this back and forth between uncomfortable male-female
dynamics and more comfortable manly kinship, while still being the outcast in either
circumstance. The couple taken out of the final film makes sense as their inclusion shifts
focus away from male codes, intimacy, and female interruptions.
Gazes on women appear in the original script as Sasha’s fantasies included the male
gaze aimed at women, drawing a parallel to the boy from the balcony watched the woman
leave. As Sasha dawdles on the street before his lesson a woman drops oranges and is
refracted in the mirror/glass from Sasha’s perspective as he sees and smiles, fascinated.
59 The
58 Ibid, 9, 10, 13. 59 Ibid, 16.
26
prolonged focus on the mirrored image of a woman comes from the boy’s perspective. This
becomes glossed over in the final edit, which appears more focused on the experience of the
moment than the image of the woman. This earlier depiction of the scene, though, is another
example of boys looking at women as a stand-in for the audience, much like the gaze as
described by Mulvey. This gaze becomes interesting in the final film due to its shift in the
gender of its object. Later the gaze will not include a woman, but a man, i.e., Sergei.
Another contrast that becomes sharper in the final film are the two women Sasha
encounters, namely his music teacher and the mother waiting outside the door. Once at the
music teacher’s waiting room, Sasha sits across from another student’s mother; it is strongly
implied from the script that she is Jewish given the description ‘dark-complexioned, middle
aged’, as well as the stereotype that Jewish families were those involved in the arts. She
frowns at Sasha but has a tender expression when listening to her son’s lesson from in the
other room. She looks disappointingly at the children when Sasha and a little girl make eyes
at each other. She comforts her boy when he comes out with a grade of ‘B’ or 4.
60 The
mother becomes more subdued and sympathetic in the final cut as she stares blankly at Sasha
and the girl, then wipes away her son’s tears while speaking gently to him. When she tries to
hold his hand, he breaks away from her and runs down the hall. The glances she gives the
children are not as directly hostile as in the screenplay.
During Sasha’s music lesson the teacher has many more dismissive remarks to Sasha
compared to the script. The screenplay describes the teacher as angry and smoking a cigarette
‘surrounded by clouds of smoke’ but while the script merely focused on technique “louder”
“count”, the film focuses on interpretation: “ne uvlekaisia” “Perestan’te oskachet’sia” “Chto s
toboi?” “Chto zh mne s toboi delat’, fantazer?” What changes when the mother is less hostile,
and the teacher more so becomes more apparent at the end of the film once Sasha’s mother
60 Ibid, 18-19.
27
appears on screen. Sasha’s mother is portrayed as cold and rigid, and ultimately what comes
between Sasha and his friendship with Sergei. By making the other student’s mother less
hostile the contrast with Sasha’s mother becomes clearer.
The Sasha-little girl dynamic via the apple becomes an example of the boy unable to
express desire: Before going into his lesson Sasha gives the little girl an apple, she keeps
pushing it away from her while still looking at it61. From the script’s description comes this
enigmatic line: “She could not have declined an apple offered with such candor.”62 Having a
gentler mother figure as well as the little girl both before and after adds tension and weight to
the music lesson, a space dominated by a female figure in Sasha’s child-sized world. This
dynamic becomes inverted directly in the next scene.
Sasha’s interaction with the mother brings the final say in the running theme of
female interruption in the company of men. The mother reprimands Sasha for playing the
violin with dirty hands. She also critiques his language, using “nu ka” like Sergei does. When
the mother asks why Sash did not invite the steamroller driver over, Sasha responds that
Sergei would not come, though he cannot answer why. She reminds him that a girl named
Natasha and her mother are coming over so he cannot go see the film Chapaev with Sergei.
63
Interestingly, the main shot of the scene shows the mother’s face in a mirror while Sasha’s
face is on screen, highlighting the distance and emotional divide between the mother and son.
The Mother’s hands appear from the left side of the screen as she constantly touches Sasha,
stroking his hair, pulling him by the collar, asserting physical as well as ‘moral’ control in
upbraiding him to keep his word to their guests. A shot of the mother closing the door and
turning the key ends the scene of her dominance.
61 Ibid, 19-20. 62 Ibid, 21. 63 Ibid, 48-49.
28
Ivan’s Kiss: Ambiguity of Kinship in Ivan’s Childhood
Ivan’s Childhood (1962) shows how male queerness manifests as relationship
ambiguity regardless of age difference. Community-wise, the film shows several characters
in the Red Army at the front from different parts of the USSR who must navigate their
differences in order to work effectively. Scholar Marko Dumančić in Men Out of Focus
briefly discusses the relationship Ivan has to these older men in his unit:
“As the Germans begin a deadly advance, the unit leaders, his surrogate fathers, sense
that they should send him to a military academy rather than risk his life. Nonetheless,
they gamble with his life, promising one another this will be the boy's final mission.
Ivan pays the ultimate price for his guardians' risk-taking, proving that he is but a
pawn in the deadly games adults play. In the final count, the boy is robbed twice of
his childhood: once by the Germans and then by the men who were supposed to be his
protectors.”64
Contrary to this summary the men all seem reluctant to have Ivan at the front, but
after Ivan runs off when they try to send him away the men inexplicably allow the boy to go
on their next mission, which turns out to be his last. It is true that the men in Ivan’s life did
deprive him of childhood by seeing him as a comrade as well as a little boy, but Ivan has
more agency than indicated.
Humphrey is not shy to elaborate on the reviews of Ivan’s Childhood from the
vantage point of queer theory, seeing Lieutenant Galtsev and Captain Kholin as two fathers to
Ivan the orphan, and perhaps the only happy ending would have included all three of them in
the same household. Humphrey contrasts this queer reading of the film to that of Mark
64 Dumančić, Men Out of Focus, 120.
29
LeFanu which insists that there is nothing homoerotic in how the men interact, and how the
female medical assistant Masha was introduced as a possible mother figure to the father-son
dynamic65. Humphrey’s argument goes on to imply that the film inhabits an ambiguous status
that allows for room to include a more homoerotic reading.
There is a moment near the beginning of Ivan’s Childhood where the boy Ivan and
Captain Kholin share a kiss. After being taken in my Lieutenant Galtsev’s men, Ivan refuses
to answer any questions until they contact HQ for him. Once all is done and Ivan begins
taking notes from his reconnaissance he’s fed and cleaned and put to bed by Galtsev who
carries him as he sleeps. Once Kholin arrives to retrieve Ivan the boy leaps up smiling into
the captain’s arms as they call each other’s names. Kholin cradles the boy then sits him on his
lap to talk. The corresponding passage from Bogomolov’s Ivan upon which the film is based
comes from the narrator Galtsev’s point of view as he sees Kholin and Ivan embrace and kiss
seeing each other:
“At the sight of Kholin, the boy instantly perked up and smiled. He smiled for the first
time, joyfully, quite like a child. It was a meeting of grown-up friends - no doubt, at
that moment I was superfluous. They embraced like adults; Kholin kissed the boy
several times, stepped back and, squeezing his narrow, thin shoulders, looked at him
with enthusiastic eyes ...”66
This passage emphasizes the ambiguity of Ivan with his smile “quite like a child” almost
immediately followed by an embrace “like adults.” Both the script and the original story
describe their embrace as an embrace between two adult men. This perhaps calls to mind
65 Humphrey, Queer Bergman, 46-47. 66 Bogomolov, “Ivan,” 8: “Pri vide Kholina malʹchik vmig ozhivilsia i ulybnulsia. Ulybnulsia vpervye,
obradovanno, sovsem po-detski. Eto byla vstrecha bolʹshikh druzei, - nesomnenno, v etu minutu ia byl zdesʹ
lishnim. Oni obnialisʹ, kak vzroslye; Kholin po͡tseloval malʹchika neskolʹko raz, otstupil na shag i, tiskaia ego
uzkie, khudenʹkie plechi, razgliadyval ego vostorzhennymi glazami…”
30
Soviet monuments with soldiers embracing or the kiss of brotherhood between national
leaders such as Stalin, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev.
67 The very paradox of a kiss of comrades
between a man and a boy child is what interests Tarkovsky.
Contrast this kiss with the kiss between Kholin and Masha in the birch tree forest, a
famous shot usually analyzed for its aesthetic symmetry. This kiss in fact comes across as
quite sinister in the context of the scene and the earlier instance between Kholin and Ivan.
Throughout the birch tree scene Kholin makes flirtatious advances to Masha, who responds
shyly and with some playful resistance. The script makes it clearer that when Kholin could
have seduced Masha to go further, he immediately tells her to go back to camp, to which she
runs away confused. “Because of these women […] commanding officers end up in the
cooler,” he tells Galtsev later.68 The scene acts as one of the culminating points in the sexual
rivalry between Galtsev and Kholin, both of whom have their eye on Masha for different
reasons.
While there is no known literature on soldiers in the USSR or Russia kissing, WWI
British literature and art contains many instances of male-to-male affection, and even the
phenomenon of ‘the dying kiss’. Men would give their dying comrades kisses ‘from mother’
or ‘from your sweetheart’, but they would also touch and hold each other in the trenches as
the fighting became more intense. Literature that came from this period showed a dual
response to this phenomenon, both an affection but also paranoia at being seen as queer.
Santanu Das elaborates that such literature was created naturally during a time in intensity to
help with processing the trauma of war as well as to try and explain why the men acted with
such affection: “the aestheticization of the male body and eroticization of the male experience
might result from the effort to find a suitable poetic language to articulate the specificity of
67 There appears to be no known scholarship on this Soviet kiss between men, though there are many examples
in art and literature. 68 Synessios et al, Collected Screenplays, 96.
31
the war experience.”69 There also appears to be a convergence of Victorian moors on manly
chivalric love, sentimentalism, and Judeo-Christian imagery of brotherhood. There flowered
a grasping at trying to express what had never been articulated, and such grasping went back
to classical or Christian models of male love. What made it different from these two
traditions was the focus on the body.
In the Soviet Union such literature has not been compiled so thoroughly, however
there is a growing body of scholarship on the interactions between men especially soldiers
and how it relates to the early concept of the new Soviet man. The image of soldierly
camaraderie shifted in focus throughout the decades of the twentieth century, especially after
the Khrushchev era post 1965. In the 1970s and 80s during the time of Brezhnev military
fraternity became about intimacy amidst death and survival.
70 The Brezhnev era also saw an
increased status of Great Patriotic War in society with monuments and Victory Day
reintegrated as a holiday, for example. The mythologizing around the narrative of ‘saviors of
Europe’ and silencing controversial aspects of the war as well as forcing memoirs to comply.
The cult of war was meant to reinforce political legitimacy of the regime.
71 However, the
period was also a time of emotional complexity and introspection in portraying the human
impact of war, especially in visual culture.
In the script Galtsev orders Ivan to take off his wet clothes, then notices a scar on
Ivan’s back.
72 When Galtsev offers to scrub his back, Ivan shouts “I can do it myself!”73 The
same response occurs when Galtsev tries to put Ivan to bed, but Ivan is too tired to resist as
Galtsev carries him. Later when talking other men in his troop, Galtsev keeps Ivan’s identity
69 Santanu Das.““Kiss me, Hardy”: The Dying Kiss in the First World War Trenches,” in The Kiss in History,
(Manchester University Press, 2005), 177. 70 McCallum, The Fate of the New Man, 60. 71 Ibid, 13. 72 Synessios et al. Collected Screenplays, 65-6. 73 Ibid, 70.
32
a secret as the others speculate on the boy and the ongoing war.
74 In the final cut none of this
dialogue is left in and is replaced Ivan bathing alone and falling asleep before he can object to
Galtsev putting him to bed. Such an omission becomes curious, especially given how it
appears to have several callbacks to Soviet war art at the time. Cleanliness and men bathing
together became somewhat commonplace in the peacetime war art genre. In addition to
bathing, soldiers were shown spending time together away from fighting.
75 Male hygiene and
homosocial intimate spaces was the trend for the time, thus it would make it more glaring of a
point to Ivan’s trauma that he would refuse Galtsev’s offer.
Images of military fraternity during the 1950s act as a way of contextualizing soldiers
during peacetime,
76 and the ambiguous position of wartime homosocial interaction came
during the Thaw, a time of both change and continuity with Stalinism.
77 The ‘return to
Leninist principles’ saw renewed and increased focus on fraternal bonds as a ‘syrupy and
heroic’ view of male comradeship of the Revolution and civil war years. Complimenting
these ambiguous images of homosocial military men, Ivan does not fit into the Stalinist
heroic paradigm due to his overlapping status between fraternal and filial bonds. As with the
character of Sasha in the previous film, Ivan flits uneasily between multiple states of being,
and never fully finds a place in any of the various modes he finds himself in. Once could
almost go as far to say that in the film there comes a conscious association of Ivan with
androgyny or the feminine amidst an environment of war often associated with a masculine
image. The figure of Masha comes as the mirrored feminine object of the men in how they
relate to Ivan. This mirroring would better explain her sudden appearance and purpose in the
greater film. During the birch tree scene, Masha saying “Ia sama” when Kholin offers to help
74 Ibid, 71-72. 75 McCallum, The Fate of the New Man, 34-35. 76 Ibid, 36. 77 Ibid, 37.
33
her cross the ravine contrasts to the written script scene where Ivan says “Ia sam” to Galtsev
offering to help him bathe.
Further comparing the visual images and pacing of Kholin embracing and kissing
Ivan with the image of Kholin embracing and kissing Masha, one sees the interplay of
characters placed in the background coming into the foreground. The camerawork throughout
the entire film is one of serpentine movements with quick mercurial steps and sidewinding
handheld shots. In the case of the kiss between Kholin and Ivan which takes place in an
underground bunker light of the fire illuminates the railing near the door as Kholin leaps over
it to embrace Ivan who clings to Kholin with extended legs. As he cradles the boy Kholin
approaches the camera, setting the two of them in the foreground once he sits down with the
boy in his lap. This makes the two figures the center of the scene amidst the darkened walls
as Galtsev stands to the side stiffly. The energy is markedly one of grasping. In stark contrast
the kiss between Kholin and Masha has an almost reversed contrast in lighting as the
background of white birch trees makes the figures of Kholin and Masha stand out as
shadowed figures. The camera is a low show from within a dug trench. Here while Kholin
straddles the two banks with his legs and holds Masha in his embrace Masha is limp with her
legs directed down. Once on the other side of the trench only she advances toward the roving
camera into the foreground as Kholin stays static and beaconing in the background. Once she
turns to be close to him as instructed, he tells her to leave quickly, as if the very proximity of
her lips to his neck recalls for Kholin the kisses of Ivan.
This juxtaposition makes Ivan act as even more of an undefined intermediary point
between Kholin and Galtsev (cf. their conversations). “Do women and children belong at the
front?” is a question the characters constantly ask. At one point when the two men argue
about whether Masha should stay at the front, Galtsev suddenly counters Kholin’s remarks by
34
implying he would make a poor surrogate parent for Ivan. Thus, even in the unconscious
utterances of the two men, Ivan and Masha become one and the same point of competition.
Helena Goscilo notes a WWII trend of depicting mothers as ‘desperate but resolute
girls’ of young children. This depiction had the dual purpose of creating hatred for the Nazis
and to create compassion for those forced into premature responsibilities by war. A most
poignant example of the trend for Goscilo is Ivan’s Childhood.
78 The appearance of Ivan’s
Childhood in a discussion of women’s portrayals in film at first does not feel intuitive since
only the medical assistant Masha appears in the film as a living woman, the other two
characters being Ivan’s dead mother and girl playmate in the dream sequences. As will be
shown further in chapter 1, the intrusion and inclusion of the Masha character acts as a point
of tension between a competition of manhood between two of the leading men, much like
how Ivan is placed in this position as well.
Andrei’s Confession and Daniil’s Women: Desire in Andrei Rublev
The ambiguous point of desire in a character ‘de-sexed’ in order to fit into the
community becomes more apparent in what would go on to be a cinematic hallmark of
Tarkovsky’s career. Tarkovsky himself made several written remarks on how Andrei Rublev
(1972) has lateral ties as one of its main concerns. Close to the end of one section in
Sculpting in Time, Tarkovsky speaks of an original aim in filming Andrei Rublev as one of
national brotherhood: “[Andrei Rublev] was to show how the national yearning for
brotherhood, at a time of vicious internecine fighting and the Tatar yoke, gave birth to
Rublyov’s [sic] inspired ‘Trinity’—epitomising [sic] the ideal of brotherhood, love and quiet
sanctity. Such was the artistic and philosophical basis of the screenplay.”79 Continuing in this
78 Helena Goscilo, “Graphic Womanhood under Fire,” in Embracing Arms (Central European University Press,
2012), 160. 79 Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema (Bodley Head, 1986), 34.
35
vein of brotherhood, Tarkovsky adds a personal hope to a kinship with any reader of his
compiled notes: “My hope is that those readers whom I manage to convince, if not entirely
then at least in part, may become my kindred spirits, if only in recognition of the fact that I
have no secrets from them.”80 This entreaty to the aims of the film as well as to the readership
recalls lines from say Dostoevsky when he created A Writer’s Diary or Brothers Karamazov.
Indeed, the film becomes one of community and artistic ambition on a national scale, as well
as the hardships and uncertainties in trying to attain it in a world that is harsh, beautiful, and
constantly changing.
In the introduction to the first published script for Andrei Rublev in English, Philip
Strick outlines key distinctions from the finished film: reordered scenes, more depth to the
characters in the descriptions, as well as certain scenes that were either left out altogether or
altered in the final filmed version. Strick also points to certain undercurrents in the film:
“compulsive paternalism” and characters mirroring each other.81 It was not until the final shot
film that Andrei and Danila (called Daniil in the script) shared more intimate dialogue in the
scene at Andrei’s parting. The script also is more explicit about how the character of the
pagan witch and the holy fool are linked in the mind of Andrei, further explaining his draw to
keeping her.
Throughout the course of Andrei Rublev, the complex web of communal relationships
between characters constantly shifts and changes. Alliances are formed and broken and
formed again, hierarchies of church and state vary depending on social strata, and the central
focus of Andrei himself becomes at times blurry depending on whom he interacts with. Even
the script co-authored with Konchalovsky underwent years of research and revisions all the
way up to shooting and editing, not to mention the censorship and various versions that have
80 Ibid, 35. 81 Philip Strick, “Introduction: The Reshaping of Rublёv,” in Andrei Rublev (Faber and Faber, 1991), xii-xiii.
36
come out even to this day. What remains constant throughout the idea of the script and film is
Andrei’s longing for artistic and spiritual expression in communion with his fellow Russians,
as well as a connection to the natural world of plants and animals.
There emerges no clear answer as to whether or not Andrei Rublev is a romantic hero
or not, i.e. the artist who separates from society with a dual longing for connection and
isolation. This ties into wider themes of opposition in other Tarkovsky films ad film scripts.
What arises from his position, however, is a dialogue of national identity and portrayals of
women. Within all the communities of men they act as a place of distinction away from
others, be they non-Russians, unbelievers, or women. Yet script-wise the idea of womanhood
itself as a vital element becomes the heart and soul of the narrative. One may even assert that
this subtle glorification of womanhood is focused more on ‘Russian’ womanhood than
anything else.
In showing tacet understanding and pacts between men. The relationship between
Andrei and Danila (Daniil) shows more richly and complexly in the script as opposed to the
film, however some things are left unspoken in written form that would eventually become
spoken. At the beginning of the story Daniil the dark (Daniil chernyi) is 40 and Andrei is 23.
They share similar sensibilities to painting and color linked to the spiritual or natural world,
such as in a scene where Andrei marvels ‘in awe’ at the ‘overpowering’ crimson color in a
burned icon, and Daniil responds that it is the color of raspberries.
82 Through Daniil’s words
the immaterial becomes linked to the natural, physical world, and in turn a source of artistic
inspiration.
The pivotal scene between the two men occurs when Andrei stops by Daniil’s cell
before he must leave to work with Theophan. In the script, Andrei is summoned to work in
Moscow while the monks are washing clothes. Naively optimistic, Andrei suggests to Daniil
82 Tarkovsky et al, Andrei Rublev, 86.
37
that the two of them should leave immediately to Moscow, to which Daniil chuckles and says
he was not invited and for the two of them to continue working. The script gives voice to
Andrei’s unvoiced thoughts and feelings: “Andrei is miserably ashamed. He feels he cannot
be silent, he has to say something, or do something, to dispel the painful tension, but he
cannot utter word.”83 As he and Daniil work to take the clothes to dry Andrei makes note of
Daniil’s appearance and the feelings it incites in him: “the bony back, the worn, faded
cassock, the hands, grey from the frost, quietly stretched out along the yoke, and [Andrei]
feels in his heart a yearning, frantic tenderness.” The image recalls a crucified Christ, as if
Andrei’s friend were an object of veneration, admiration, and even desire. After this
description they continue in silence. In the filmed version the dialogue takes place in the
presence of other monks, and Daniil, now Danila, is visibly annoyed that Andrei would
accept the position without consulting him. The scene between the two of them alone,
however, takes place in Danila’s cell.
This speech shows the deeper connection and intimacy between the two men,
presented in the form as a confession. The speech presents an ambiguous relationship
between the two men, whether or not Andrei’s fervent utterance of sharing a cell and seeing
the world through the other’s eyes involves a sexual component or not. Andrei stands in
Danila’s room to say goodbye, but Danila turns away from him and holds an enormous book
in his lap (presumably some form of sacred text). Andrei sits behind him, anxiously picking
and scratching at the table, then speaks as if at confession, forming his thoughts in more
explicitly affectionate and direct dialogue:
“...I couldn’t go without saying goodbye, since the devil came and put enmity
between us. I cannot go like this. I must confess, will you listen? It seems I can’t do
83 Ibid, 62-63.
38
anything, Daniil! All the years we lived in one cell, without you I have no one. I see
the world with your eyes, I listen with your ears, with your heart, Danila.”84
Triangular desire arises between Andrei, Danila, and the jealous Kiril at the end of
this farewell scene. As Danila and Andrei cry together, Andrei kneels and kisses him on the
hand. The sound the door creaking leads to a shot of Kiril standing at the entrance way to
Danila’s cell, staring at them. He leaves as Andrei says he will return. The two of them look
in the direction where Kirill had stood and dry their tears. Much in this small scene remains a
mystery, the dialogue somewhat vague as to the nature of their relationship.
Further kissing and affection between men comes under more scrutiny in the scene
between the two grand princes (Vassily and Yuri), sons of Dmitri Donskoi who come into
violent conflict with one another. In the script the descriptions of their reconciliation
ceremony appear as joyous and tearful, and rainbow-edged, almost sentimental. This
contrasts with the immediate scenes of carnage and torture after the sacking of Vladimir at
the hands of the younger prince conspiring with the Tatars.
85 In the filmed version, the scene
remains as a flashback juxtaposing a church ceremony of reconciliation with the present
torture of a priest inside the Dormition Cathedral. The brothers kiss three times under the
watchful gaze of a boyar, but the camera pans down to their feet, showing the older brother
placing his foot on his younger brother’s foot. The younger squirms his foot out from under
his brother’s, and their stance reminds one of a fighter’s position.
Regarding the penultimate scene of the film, here it involves the first interaction
between Andrei and Boriska. In the script the scene is quickly drawn as Andrei cradles a
84 Russian original from the final shot version:
“…mne i bez togo tiazhko bylo, a tut d’iavol voz’mi i sotvori vriazhdu mezhdu nami. Ne mogu ia tak uiti.
Ispovedovat’sia dolzhen. Primesh’? Ved’ ne smogu ia nichego, Daniil! Stol’ko let v odnoi kele prozhit’, ved’
krome tebia, i net u menia nikogo. Ia ved’ tvoimi glazami na mir gliazhu, tvoimi ushami slushaiu, tvoim
serdtsem, Danila.”
85 Ibid, 121, 124.
39
crying Boriska, whose bell worked despite his father not telling him the secret to making
bells. As Andrei breaks his vow of silence and invites Boriska to go with him to create more,
the script describes a man in a Tatar caftan staring at them, it is Danila returned from
obscurity after many years.
86
This scene in the script mirrors in a positive way the scene in the shot film of Kirill
watching Andrei and Daniil sharing a moment of intimate good-byes in Daniil’s cell. In the
film the scene leads directly to a color montage of icons by Rublev, while the script takes its
time making its exit by introducing one more scene. Danila, Andrei, and their apprentices on
their way to their next project. They come across the skomorokh from the beginning who was
put into exile and had his tongue cut out.87 The scene is very reminiscent of the cinema of
Akira Kurosawa, known for his medieval Samurai films. What makes the scene Kurosawaesque is the long-winded character discussion while sitting around a fire in an almost
Shakespearean way. More profoundly, the scene hints at the passing, transitory nature of all
things, not only a Kurosawa motif, but a key concept in Buddhism.
88
On the topic of Andrei’s place as an in-between character caught in communities, the
script shows more of this as well as how various characters try to coerce him or project onto
him promises of companionship, sensual delights, and even abandoning his ‘Russianness’.
Such an example comes from another abandoned scene which involves a peculiar interaction
between Andrei and a Tatar horse merchant. The merchant on horseback sadistically chases
Andrei who walks on foot, then orders him to sit in the saddle with him. He offers Andrei fur
mittens stolen from a Russian prince, dried horse meat warmed on his cheek, then finally
offers him a black stallion to keep. Andrei responds to the Tatar’s strange persistence with
“I’ll kill you!” to which the Tatar responds that all Russians are wicked. As a parting gift the
86 Ibid, 180. 87 Ibid, 186-87. 88 For comparisons see the Kurosawa films Throne of Blood (Kumonosu-jō) or The Hidden Fortress (Kakushi
Toride no San Akunin).
40
Tatar leaves a horse which follows the reluctant Andrei from a distance.
89 Here the attempts
at ties come from the ‘other’ which appears almost as an Orientalizing and effeminizing gaze
in how the Tatar treats Andrei. This interaction further blurs categories and conclusions to
whether the gestures are out of a desire for friendship or dominance or even as sexual favors.
The topic of the ethnic other will appear in the next section.
Concerning the female presence amidst male relationships, the script weaves a
reoccurring connection between women’s hair and horses’ manes, as well as a running theme
of crowds of (Russian) women which becomes intertwined with Andrei’s artistic and spiritual
inspiration. Andrei’s longing for companionship leads him to search. One scene that did not
make the final cut was a vivid description by Daniil of Russian women cutting their hair as
taxes to the Tatars, known as the ‘Field of Maidens’. After Daniil’s story, Kirill asks him if
he ever had a wife. Daniil answers that he had one and joined the monastery five years after
she died. “Did you love her?” Kirill asks. “I don’t know…no, I couldn’t have…” (ne
znaiu…net, ne liubil, navernoe…).90 Andrei remembers this description of the maidens’ field
and imagines it later.
91 Even later when Andrei is in an argument with Theophan about
human nature, Theophan mocks the story as not one of unselfishness but of ‘stupid women’
with no choice when faced with death.
92 All the same, Danila’s story of the Russian women
stays with Andrei, haunting him through his encounters with other people, beginning with the
witch Marfa.
The scene between Andrei and Marfa the pagan woman (witch) in the script is little
more than description, no exchange of dialogue or extended philosophizing. Nevertheless,
this encounter awakens in Andrei a creative sense, adds to his longing, and fosters his feeling
of transgression. In the final shot film, as Andrei inspects the proceedings of the pagan
89 Tarkovsky, Andrei Rublev, 35-40. 90 Ibid, 20. 91 Ibid, 33. 92 Ibid, 69.
41
villagers celebrating Ivan Kupalo, a group of men apprehend him and tie him to a support
beam inside a hut. Andrei threatens them with hellfire and the last judgment, to which they
respond with mockery and leave him. From the far end of the hut emerges Marfa, a woman
dressed in only a fur-lined coat. She asks him questions as to why he threatened them; Andrei
cannot look at her, saying how sinful it is to run around naked at night. Marfa says it is the
night when everyone loves each other, and that they do not wish to live in fear of being
forcibly converted by monks like him. Andrei counters: “You fear because you live without
love, or your love is sinful and bestial instead of brotherly.” She answers, “They’re all one
and the same, just love” (oni vse ediny. Liubov’ zhe). Then she violently kisses Andrei before
untying him at his request. The description of their interaction reads as erotically charged in
the script and acts as the spark for later scenes.
93
The scenes between Andrei and the holy fool (durochka) continue in teasing out and
manifesting all these feelings in Andrei. In the script their first encounter comes when Andrei
is in the middle of a creative block to complete the church mural. The fool’s rain-soaked hair
reminds Andrei of the witch’s hair as she swam away from her captors.
94 The fool’s reaction
to the paint splatters on the walls inspires Andrei to paint the Last Judgment as a feast, more
explicitly a procession of women.
In the film this connection between the mural, the story of the maidens, the witch, and
the fool is blurred to the point of disjuncture. In the script the fool gives birth to her halfTatar child while at the monastery and regains her sanity. The monks decide what to do with
the mixed heritage baby and decide to keep it, baptize it, and give it a Russian name.
95 In the
film she is carried off by Tatars before even becoming pregnant, and only appears again when
the bell sounds at the end, in rich garments and accompanied by a child and horses.
93 Ibid, 97. 94 Ibid, 109. 95 Ibid, 140-141.
42
Filipp’s Body: Control Over Choice in Light Wind
One of Tarkovsky’s unrealized scripts, Light Wind (1972) contains many of the
typical elements of male communities seen in the director’s other films. These elements
include both a religious and military setting, almost exclusive focus on male intimacy
alongside the script’s philosophical and spiritual pursuits, and the queer sense of family
structure in reconfiguring vertical and lateral ties. The overall themes of opposition in faith vs
science, irrationality vs reason, and spirituality vs materialism cannot be separated from the
ambiguous male to male relationships in that the central concern is that of power dynamics in
these vertical relationships. The mentors on either side of the opposing sides vie for power
over the would-be disciples, in the end the disciple choosing neither side.
Examining Light Wind has both the advantage and disadvantage of no screen
equivalent to compare it to as Tarkovsky’s themes and characters become more starkly
pronounced for analysis. The plot of the original source novel deals with the theme of control
over the male protagonist through physical or ideological strictures: Though Tarkovsky also
deals with this idea, the changes implemented by him are curious. The original 1941 novel
Ariel’ by Aleksandr Beliaev takes place mostly in India with English and ‘native’ characters.
The main protagonist, an English boy, gets continually passed around from couple to couple.
Each couple is a pair of men: first his guardians in England, then a pair of scientists at the
religious orphanage in Madras (present day Chennai), then a pair of US circus tycoons. The
young man constantly meets exploitation and experimentation at the hands of these men who
align themselves with making money or holding onto power. Even the Anglican priest he
meets tries to use the young man’s ability to fly to convert the local Indian population. The
43
only people that show him any sense of belonging are his orphan friend Sharad, his long-lost
sister from England, and two Bengali peasants (a grandfather and granddaughter).96
In Tarkovsky’s version the plot revolves around the intertwined lives of four
characters: the novice Filipp, his confessor Fr Gregory, Dekker the scientist, and Samuel the
conspiracy theorist. The trajectory of the story, however, begins and ends with the Filipp
from his time at as a monastery novice to his death in the trenches of WWI. Iakov the subtle
example of steadfast male to male companionship. A kind of homoeroticism of the final
screenplay comes in the script’s interplay of control and authority among the various men.
The monastery setting contains more strict rules, more furtive glances and longing gazes,
while outside the monastery men embrace, see each other dress and undress, share food, and
even kiss each other, though never on the lips. Characters also openly ask each other whom
they love (God, each other, etc.). In addition to the critiques on institutional religion, science,
and naïve faith, Tarkovsky’s script also makes a distinction between how men within and
outside of a strict setting interact with one another.
For story setting Tarkovsky also stresses how this location is not in Europe for much
of the story. The screenplay takes place ‘somewhere in Asia’, perhaps even Mt Sinai
according to Gorenstein.
97 The exotic and remote mountain setting allows for more flights of
fancy, as well as the possibility of relaxed masculine norms of conduct in a land on the edges
of Europe. But if it is in fact on Mt Sinai, it would also allude to a location of
spiritual/religious significance.
96 In terms of the development of the script drafts, as mentioned in the introduction by Synessios, the journey
from Ariel to Light Wind involved several proposals, revisions, and drafts. Even the final published version of
the screenplay has been revised so there is no clear way of ascertaining the development of this story from
Beliaev's novel to Tarkovsky’s screenplay. However, some themes as well as title changes are mentioned in
Tarkovsky’s diaries. The final script in fact keeps the central idea of flight and its implications on those who
witness it (see Synessios et al, Andrei Tarkovsky: The Collected Screenplays, 192). 97 Synessios et al, Collected Screenplays, 190.
44
The lead character of Filip acts as almost a homoerotic object of male desire in this
script, with characters psychically and psychologically disturbed by him or trying to possess
him and his talent which is expressed through his body doing the unnatural magic of flight.
Filipp’s attempts to fit into the monastic model of confessor and apologist do not go as
planned. Filipp’s first public flight fills people with terror, from shepherds to passersby.
Filipp finds himself caught up in his desire for physical/emotional intimacy with his
‘mentors’ who vie for control over him: The first scene of the entire screenplay shows the
novice Fiipp’s centrality in seeking emotional and even physical intimacy. It begins with
Filipp’s hands outstretched to Jesus in a nocturnal vision.
98 Later at confession Filipp tells his
confessor Fr. Gregorius that he loves him in response to being asked, then looks longingly at
Fr. Gregorius during the silent evening meal. From this point onwards comes a contrast of
mentors vying over Filipp’s body and mind: Father Gregorius, Filipp’s beloved mentor, tells
Filip to have faith, which provokes a strong negative reaction from the novice. Later Dekker
the scientist tells Filip to have faith to fly, then kisses him on the forehead, then Filip flies,
feeling his body.
99 Father Gregorius calls it a sin of the flesh100 showing a difference between
the two in how they approach physical intimacy.
The monastery abbot Fr. Martin comes to stand as a marker of Filipp’s longing for
physical comfort in a male community after leaving the monastery: Once Filipp returns to the
monastery refectory he kneels before Fr Martin and takes his hand. Once fed, Filip is ordered
by Fr Martin to meet him after the evening meal as he goes to find the monk a new confessor.
Regarding the non-religious characters Dekker’s fight with Fr. Martin over the question of
religion vs science is compromised with both men’s fight over Filipp. Dekker the scientist
and visionary appears as one of the characters who openly speak of their love for Filipp. In a
98 Ibid, 193. 99 Ibid, 213. 100 Ibid, 215.
45
moment of triangulated desire, Dekker and his assistant Klaf subtly fight over the desire and
possession of Filipp’s attachment. The two men are chastised by Fr Martin at the monastery
for misusing the laboratory. People are now making Filipp look like a new messiah. Dekker
suggests that they have to make Filipp look absurd, so their flying invention does not fall into
the wrong hands. He continues by saying that Filipp has perverted their scientific aims for
political ones, “and I believed in him…I loved him even…” Klaf retorts that Dekker never
loved Filip, implying that it was the success of their discovery that he loved more.
101
The itinerant Fr. Gregorius shows his queerness in proximity to the communities he
encounters, first military men then workers: Both within and outside the monastic setting
appear different manifestations of male communities in the script. Fr Gregorius, as Filipp’s
confessor, is a radical at the monastery who eventually leaves over his ideas being contrary to
the establishment. After becoming an itinerant journeyman Fr Gregorius finds himself at a
military garrison, where he is fed out of pity by the officers. This scene contains many
powerful elements that show unspoken assumptions and codes of masculinity clashing with
each other. The soldiers question Fr. Gregorius as to why he left the monastery and its
security. Fr Gregorius quotes scripture by saying man cannot live by bread alone, to which
one officer with a moustache responds, “apart from bread women are also necessary. And
that’s a little difficult there…” The other soldiers make neighing noises, poking lewd fun at
the monk’s lack of women or sense to stay secure.
102 Their animalistic play mimics neighing
horses, connected to Tarkovsky’s favorite motif of horses as beautiful and virile in all their
untamed senses. Fr. Gregorius goes on to speak of his anti-church and anti-violence stance.
They call him mad, and one red-headed officer mocks him coming to them for food. Fr
Gregorius puts aside the food and leaves, to which the officers chase after him saying it was a
101 Ibid, 231. 102 Ibid, 227.
46
joke. “The poor shall feed me,” he responds, and comes alone to a lake to drink with tears in
his eyes.
103 Fr. Gregorius’ emotional fragility contrasts to the brash bravado of the soldiers
who joke with him.
Fr. Gregorius and his encounter with the supposed ethnic ‘other’104 show him as one
who tries to be in a place of moral authority over them, despite the frailty of his body to the
climate of work outside the monastery. After he interacts with to the ‘dark faced peasants’ in
the field by the road, trying to sermonize to them, Fr Gregorius takes up work beside them at
their insistence. Once they rest the peasants let him eat with them, and he says that the
beginning of true brotherhood is in shared bread, labor, and love, not churches, universities,
or books.
105 As he continues, he falls asleep from fatigue, and the peasants leave him to go
back to work.
Filipp on the other hand and his interactions with the peasant shows his more
personable relation to the ‘ethnic other’: When Filipp first flies over the mountain village
103 Ibid, 228. 104 The ethnic other in Tarkovsky’s films relates to the asides his characters make over such things as Russian
vs. Ukrainian ethnicity and Russia vs. Asia via Tatars and even Japan (see chapter 5 of this dissertation). The
unrealized script drafts Tarkovsky wrote throughout his career also display his recurring preoccupations of male
community, strained male-female dynamics, and specific moments of touch. These scripts also mostly adhere to
historical settings with some touches of speculative fiction and introspective dreams. These scripts are titled The
First Teacher (1965); Tashkent The Bread City (1968); One Chance in a Thousand (1969); The End of The
Chieftain Ataman (1971); Ferocious One (1973); Sardor (1978), & Beware of Snakes (1979). Tarkovsky’s
Soviet Central Asian ‘westerns’ show absence of community, limited environments that force communal
intimacy, and even examples of a fear and anxiety around said intimacy. Sardor, for instance, is perhaps the
closest Tarkovsky ever came to making a script for a commercial audience. It is an ‘ostern’ or Soviet style
Western set in the frontiers of Central Asia among the peoples of Kazakhstan. Co-written and in a great rush for
money, the script has many Marxist maxims and Uzbek words for ‘flavor’. The most Tarkovskian character
appears to be Grasshopper, a Russian drifter with skinny legs who quotes poetry and smokes hashish. He makes
asides to spiritual things and acts a fool who knows more than he lets on. Tarkovsky in fact wanted to play this
character himself, but the script never got past the first written draft. Grasshopper encounters the main traveling
duo of Mirza and the girl Ene. At a dinner banquet Mirza forcibly opens Grasshopper’s mouth with his hand and
stuffs food into him. In between the force-feeding, when Mirza introduces himself and gestures to Ene to do the
same, Grasshopper says “I am not interested in her” (Synessios, The Collected Screenplays, 429). Grasshopper
then assumes a cross-legged position that ‘causes silent rapture in Ene.’ (ibid, 430). Later, after playing a game
of Russian roulette for more hashish and coins, Grasshopper and Mirza get into a physical fight. Mirza tried to
stop the Russian from playing and smoking, but the Russian responded by trying to strangle him while calling
him slurs. From this brief example we see that even in a ‘pot boiler’ of a script Tarkovsky would still show a
striving for physical proximity to create community, though here at its most extreme as it intertwines with
violence (ibid 421, 429, 430, 434). 105 Ibid, 222.
47
where the blacksmith’s son who had not died after taking communion, the very son comes to
look indifferently at the flying figure.
106 Later on his return the monastery Filipp encounters
this same peasant on the road. They maintain a respectful distance with sidewards glances at
each other, and the peasant says he is wary of Filipp. He finishes what he began telling Filipp
on his deathbed, and Filipp wonders aloud as to the nature of good and evil people, impure
times, the birth of dreams, and self-deception, all in the same speech. The Peasant walks
away with a smile as Filipp continues to the monastery.
107 This contrasts to the way Fr
Gregorius sermonizes to the farming peasants.
Filipp’s development in his autonomy begins with his incremental choices to not be a
part of ideologically supporting institutional religion which tricks the naïve. While still a
monk he goes further in his choice to break emotionally from old influences that have to ‘die
off’: Sometime after Filipp returns to the monastery, he is tasked with tending the reservoir of
‘sacred’ water where the sick come to drink and be healed. He has grown stouter and takes
pity on a paralyzed girl by giving her a cleaner cup. Fr Gregorius arrives, emaciated and
ragged, and bemoans Filipp’s position, saying he should have been an atheist instead if he
does not believe. Filip retorts that he does not believe in his old confessor but still believes in
God. Fr Gregorius turns hysterical at the sight of Fr Martin and tells the pilgrims the well is
ordinary water. The pilgrims start attacking him then leave him in a pool of his own blood.
108
Filipp is himself a queer presence as seen by women, the normalizing force. Samuel’s
wife says that Filip loves God differently, highlighting his queerness in a subtle way. Almost
immediately after this Samuel leads Filip by the hand behind the bar, and the wife comments
that Filip frightens her.
109 The wife’s remarks highlight Filipp’s queerness as well as make
her blind to the queerness of her husband who runs away with Filipp on a quest to fulfill his
106 Ibid, 230-31. 107 Ibid, 237-38. 108 Ibid, 239-41. 109 Ibid, 221.
48
mission. The once established family structure is upended by Filipp’s appearance. This scene
also shows Filipp’s own emotional reticence as well as unfamiliarity with women as Filipp
tries not to look at Samuel’s daughter because she is too beautiful.
110 Such a sentiment shows
how Filipp fells unable to express the desire he has towards feminine beauty either due to his
monastic vows or the male queer hold his mentors have on him.
The character of Samuel whirls with chaotic energy of excitement and even mania
over his personal theories becoming reality. In his first scene Samuel’s homelife offers him
no emotional, intellectual, or physical intimacy. He tries to kiss his wife, but she recoils
because of his cigar smell. Filip arrives and becomes Samuel’s outlet for his frustrations.
111
Filipp and Samuel’s strange partnership involves a physical aspect tied to Samuel’s
imposition of childhood ideation onto Filipp, with the model being from art. After an
argument with Samuel Filipp lies down by the fire, pretending not to sleep. Samuel
approaches him and bends over him before quickly moving away into the bushes.
112 The next
morning, Samuel touches Filipp’s shoulder to wake him up then says that he must appear to
the people in the robes of a martyr ‘as in the lithograph’ of Samuel’s childhood. After Filipp
returns from his first flight Samuel drapes Filipp’s unclothed body with curtains then
embraces him out of fervor in their ‘heroic deed’ going down in history.
113 Later Samuel
bandages Filipp’s wounds after Filipp is injured while stealing food. Then in a quasi-religious
manner they both eat the stolen goods. Once they have finished Filipp announces that their
“Last Supper” is over and that he will return to the monastery as a biblical reference to the
last supper of Jesus his disciples. Samuel dejectedly agrees, resolves to leave for Europe, then
110 Ibid, 220. 111 Ibid, 220. 112 Ibid, 225. 113 Ibid, 229.
49
repeatedly thanks Filipp, calling him a friend who changed his life. The two men embrace
after Filipp accompanies Samuel to the train station, signaling their mutual departure.114
Samuel’s ambition and delusions appear in his occasional ‘Freudian’ slip: In one
scene, Samuel unintentionally speaks of his trauma regarding his parents, which triggers a
need for physical intimacy with Filipp. As he is in mid argument with Filipp to show his
talent of flying and fulfill his mission, Samuel stops and begins a reverie on childhood and
family: he once saw a renaissance painting of a flying saint, and was enraptured each time he
saw it, but then one day he accidentally spilled ink on it. He then digresses about how his
mother loved him but beat him until he bled just to satisfy (ugodit’) Samuel’s step-father, a
“beautiful, fair-haired’ man younger than his mother.
115 Their argument quiets down as the
sun sets and the light goes. Later Samuel also reveals his intentions of using Filipp despite his
physical aches and pains. Once Filipp lands from his first flight he is worried and confused
and tired, but Samuel toasts to their success with stolen rum. “They believed me…finally,” he
says congratulating himself.
116
By the end of the script two contrasting models of escaping the power dynamic
appear: Filipp’s example and Iakov’s example. In the end Filipp chooses to step out of trying
to control those in his care, unlike what was attempted on him: The final scene brings all the
character elements together in the story of Filipp’s end. The scene takes place in the trenches
of Verdun in 1915, and Filipp is now an old military chaplain on the front lines. An angry
soldier tells Filipp to console a young soldier who cannot stop crying. The script says the boy
cries the way ‘children cry when they are left in a dark room.’
117 Filipp places his hands on
the boy’s head and the boy rests his cheek in his palm. Filipp tells him to remember goodness
and his nearest and dearest, to which the boy scoffs that he has no father, and that praying
114 Ibid, 236. 115 Ibid, 224. 116 Ibid, 230-31. 117 Ibid, 245.
50
does no good for his pain. Filipp gets up and speaks of his own fear of death and his
inadequacy to console anyone. As the soldiers call him mad, Filipp says that the only true and
holy people are those who know what they have lived for, and that greatness and heroism are
to be found in life on earth.
118 At this the signal announces for the soldiers to put on their gas
masks as they march out of the trenches. Filipp follows them and is shot dead. The script
concludes “The twentieth century is being christened in a font of fire.”119 Filipp’s death on
the battlefield merges the two competing settings of monastery and military, with Filipp
praising the physical, earthly life amidst death and violence. This theme will later appear in
other films concerning Tarkovsky’s men.
In the background of the fight over Filipp quietly runs a subplot of Iakov and his
relationship to Dekker. Iakov the small monk is allowed to be physically close to Dekker
while Klaf is rebuffed: “Do you love God?” Dekker asks Iakov who answers, “You ask a
terrifying question…you are sick in your soul, I feel sorry for you.” Once Dekker learns
Iakov’s name he asks if he has ever wrestled with an angel. Here is a double joke referencing
both the biblical story of Jacob wrestling with the angel of God and a subtle question on if
Iakov has been physically close to a man. Dekker rebuffs him and cries when Iakov cannot
answer. In the scene directly before this Dekker had pulled away his hand when Klaf tried to
touch it120. Furthermore, Iakov steps into the role of a helpmeet almost domestic companion
to the ailing Dekker. After the confrontation with Fr Martin Dekker leaves leaning on the
shoulder of Iakov the monk, and Klaf exclaims how the Roman government should have
made Jesus look ridiculous instead of crucified, then there would be no deification. Fr Martin
chides him not to blaspheme.
121 In an attempt to persuade the people not to believe Samuel or
Filipp, Dekkar flies in front of them with a rope tied to his ankle as Iakov holds it (much like
118 Ibid, 246. 119 Ibid, 247. 120 Ibid, 199-201. 121 Ibid, 232.
51
the opening dream from Federico Fellini’s 8 ½), but crash lands to earth trembling ‘like an
injured bird’, an image seen near the end of Mirror.
122
Refusal of the desire for physical intimacy comes even more starkly between Klaf and
Dekker: In the next scene, when Klaf comes in to say goodbye to an injured Dekker, he
confesses how happy he was to have spent the years working with him, much like Andrei
Rublev saying goodbye to Danila. He asks if he can embrace the professor, but Dekker
rebuffs him saying it is not necessary, he then rambles about how a memory when ‘she’ took
his hand and said the Truth would destroy him. At this Iakov spoon feeds the professor some
medicine.
123 In this way, Iakov falls into the role of a domestic helper much like the role of a
wife or nurse. Many years later, Iakov comes to take the elderly Dekker home from the
hospital. Even though Dekker does not recognize him, Iakov rebuttons the professor’s shirt
and straightens his tie.
124
It is at this point that Samuel appears again in the penultimate scene where he
discusses the ungraspable nature of Filipp and the queerness of men’s touch: As Iakov and
Dekker enter a café to escape the rain, they run into Samuel who badgers them with questions
and statements about Filipp, the man for whom he left his family. Inside the café a heater
oratory argument goes on about the immoral times as a sign of the apocalypse, and whether
there is a unifying thing for humanity if God does not exist. As the argument increases Iakov
decides they should leave despite the continuing rain. He tells Samuel that Filipp is now a
priest somewhere in Europe. Samuel sighs saying, “that is real life…Interesting meetings,
struggles, polemics…”125 This time cut to the future shows the unorthodox queer family
structure rather brotherhood the characters now have stepped into. This connection requires
specific movement and moments of touch, though not equal.
122 Ibid, 234. 123 Ibid. 124 Ibid, 244. 125 Ibid.
52
Both examples turn the vertical power dynamic into a lateral one, but Filipp chooses
to stand in strength against repeating a cycle while Iakov’s example chooses to be physically
indispensable. While the physical death of Filipp finds its counterpart in the loss of freedom
from Iakov, the scene of Filip’s speech to the young soldier shows a relinquishing of
patriarchal control; a freedom he was robbed of in his youth Filipp now gives away to a
younger man via his touch.
Alexei’s Comrades: The Masculine Act of Memory in Mirror
The films scripts as well as the final shot version of Mirror (1974) center the practice
of communal memory as one almost exclusively as male to male with the question, “Is
memory a gendered action?” Mirror is Tarkovsky’s ‘pseudo-biography’ in the Russian
literary tradition of first-person narratives similar though distinct from the author’s own
life.
126 If the idea of community for Tarkovsky relies on proximity in the image of two heads
together, then in Mirror the Other is in fact the audience in proximity with Alexei the
narrator, the surrogate for the director, opening himself to us. We are inside the protagonist’s
memories, thoughts, and emotional landscape, the most intimate we could be without
touching. Apart from the dynamic of the main character and the viewer, two primary scenes
of male community appear in Mirror: the first being the scene of the Spanish refugees in the
apartment, and the second Aleksei’s flashback to cadet school during the war. Both these
scenes come tinged with the effects and environments produced by the war, causing young
men and boys to abandon their homes and come together. If the film can be taken as a lasting
effect of the trauma of that war in that it is an exploration of the constant replaying of scenes
and memories in the protagonist’s subconscious, the communities depicted in said film are
stuck in the collective act of remembering as well, though in different manifestations. Male
126 see Andrew Wachtel, The Battle for Childhood (Stanford, 1990).
53
acts of memory in male-to-male relationships in Tarkovsky’s film of memory and family
history happens primarily in two scenes: the scene with the Spaniards and the narrator’s
memory of cadet school.
In the script provided by Synessios, a scene with perhaps the most socially critical
dialogue by Tarkovsky involves the Spaniards. In the script directions the men sit outside a
café and wear dark suits even though the weather is hot, making them stand out in the crowd
as well as the climate. The men talk about the past and how the city they came to has changed
since they arrived in Moscow as child refugees. The scene of Spanish refugees in Aleksei’s
apartment centers around one character, a middle-aged man who tells a story of a bullfighter
Palomo Linares he saw as a young boy. Before this sequence Aleksei asks Natalia to get the
man to stop him from talking about Spain, or it will ‘end in a scandal’. She seems to ignore
this and instead participates in paying attention and asking questions to the others. This
shows Natalia’s indifference to Aleksei’s concerns, as all they do when they meet is argue.
This moment also shows the frequency of the Spaniards to Aleksei’s apartment as well as the
frequency in which the topic of their homeland ends badly. Only Aleksei’s ex-wife Natalia
and the three other men in the room are interested in the story. One man stands and smokes
nonchalantly, another man sits and draws ornaments on a piece of paper. Luisa, an
expressionless middle-aged woman, looks away, as do the man’s daughters. In-between the
story come insertions of footage to a bullfight, then footage of the Spanish civil war and
refugees as collective remembering. This also shows Spaniards function in the scene as
welcome guests and even chosen family amidst the heartache and tension within Alexei’s
family. No one makes any indication as to how Alexei knows these people, or even the extent
of their relationship other than they seem to frequent the apartment enough times for the
narrator to know the usual order of events that may lead to an unpleasant scene.
54
What comes in this scene is an aspect of othering in seeing the Spanish children
gather. No clear goal is stated in the final film other than to engage, or disengage, in memory.
When one of the man’s daughters begins to dance to Spanish music he slaps her, saying how
the sight of her dancing is a mockery after years of her unwillingness to learn. Luisa then
mentions how “Val’tor” has been to Spain, but he remembers nothing, not providing any
context or further comments. Luiza tearfully leaves the apartment after confessing to Natalia
that she cannot go back to Spain since her husband and children are Russians now.
The implosion of remembering as a male activity excluding any variation to the
remembering, including female interpretations. The woman Lucia (or Maria depending on the
version) runs away from the table in tears as the men reminisce. One man chases after her and
pins her to the wall to stop her from crying. He tells her over and over that what they
remember is only a memory, and the Spain they knew no longer exists. The woman insists
that they promised as children they would go back someday but drops the issue when she
says she was hurrying to stand in line for fur hats.
127 In the script the precariousness of their
social status as well as their fraught relationships is more pointedly on display, as well as the
Soviet daily hardships surrounding them.
Next comes Alexei’s memory of cadet school which he shares with his son Ignat,
passing on the male act of memory to his son: Unspoken pacts between men show up in
Aleksei’s flashback to cadet school which depicts a group of boys in a snowy landscape
where a drill instructor teaches the boys how to shoot. In the published script draft the
instructor has no name except for the nickname “kortuzhenyi” or “shellshocked”, adding to
the boyish memory tinge of the scene. More telling still, in the script like the film the scene
begins with Aleksei’s son Ignat talking with him on the phone. Unlike the film, the reverie
127 Synessios et al, Collected Screenplays, 309-12.
55
begins after Aleksei asks his son incredulously why he has no girlfriend.
128 The script draft
also makes it very clear that there was a situation of triangulated desire in this memory, in
which the red-headed girl that young Aleksei liked was also the object of the instructor’s
desire.
The drill instructor acts as a surrogate father/older sibling to Alexei and the other
boys, though his nurturing is one of tough criticism. During the drill, Asafiev the blockade
orphan and his stubborn way of thinking clashes with the drill instructor, as they argue over
the definition of ‘about face’ (krugom). This clash shows another concern with remembering,
in this case remembering something incorrectly but stubbornly insisting it is the truth. The
instructor does show a hierarchical camaraderie with the boys, as he jokes with them while
also criticizing their mistakes. When a boy starts listing the names of the parts of a rifle, the
instructor remarks, “you’re a muzzle too” (sam ty dulo, Markov). When Asafiev throws the
hand grenade the instructor immediately throws his body on top of it. After a long tense
moment Asafiev says “it’s just a dummy” (Ona zhe uchebnaia). The drill instructor slowly
gets up muttering as he has a characteristic double-edged persona of a harsh yet protective
veteran.
In the subsequent a sequence of images, the subject becomes the Aleksei-instructorgirl triangle: the girl’s chapped lips burst with blood which she touches with her fingers; war
footage of soldiers crossing a river, with some soldiers naked, the word “bratsy” comes
across in the overdub; the footage stops abruptly when a cart overturns in the river,
proceeding with a cut back to Asafiev leaving the shooting range. The war footage continues
and leads into the poem reading of “Zhizn’, zhizn’.”129 The images are closely tied to the war,
to sensual sights, desire, and disappointment. Here also is the concern of generational
128 Ibid, 293-298. 129 See chapter 3 for more on this poem.
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community and its survival, most importantly with proper knowledge as its spearhead. The
brief but powerful focus on the blockade orphan Asafiev shows another thread in the pattern
of characters who do not fit comfortably in the group, a pattern that would lead Tarkovsky to
economize the scope of the community and magnify the presence and immediacy of the lone
outsider.
Kinship’s End: Failed Desire in Stalker
In many ways Stalker (1979) is Tarkovsky’s most tightly constructed film with its
reduced characters, limited settings, and a relatively straightforward, chronological plot. This
concentration of focus also reveals some of the concerns of community expressed in his
previous films. Here, however, the community never comes together and in fact is in ruins
throughout the story. As noted by Nariman Skakov, “The close-up of the back of Stalker’s
head, which goes against the conventions of classical scenography, evolves into a major
stylistic device in the course of the film.”130 This remark indicates that the characters even
look away from the viewer as well as away from each other in a visual marker of an absent
community.
The themes of searching for unfulfilled desire and resignation intertwines with the
more prominent narrative of visiting the room in the Zone to grant wishes. In this
interpretation, however, the three main characters never enter the Room to realize their
wishes because the entire journey has been the reality of what they crave: companionship
with other men. This companionship, however, cannot take away the pain they each push
down, nor can it keep them from disclosing it from each other as the journey progresses
deeper into the Zone. Ultimately, though, the men in the film do not connect as they retreat
130 Nariman Skakov, The Cinema of Tarkovsky: Labyrinths of Space and Time (Taurus, 2012), 143.
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into themselves around each other for safety, as evident in their last shot at the threshold of
the Room where the three of them sit together but face away from each other.
All three men show their longing for connection in different ways and at different
moments while holding the contrary motions of pulling away from these connections the
moment the opportunity arises. The Stalker character shows subtle hints that he desires the
sensuality of touch in relationships, but only experiences its opposite in the real world, and
even rebuffs it. When his wife embraces him before his journey and tells him not to go, he
ignores her and says everywhere feels like a prison. However, when the three men arrive in
the Zone, Stalker walks away from them to lie down in the tall grass. Tarkovsky’s diary entry
from August 26, 1977 speaks of a new shift in the development of Stalker’s character who
“instead of being some kind of drug dealer or poacher, has to be a slave, a believer, a pagan
of the Zone.”131 Once they arrive in the Zone Stalker lies down in the grass (a possible
Dostoevsky homage to characters kissing the earth). Stalker makes frequent asides about his
teacher Porcupine (Dikobraz) in an awe-inspired way, revealing the reverence he has for his
teacher. This reverence of the mentor-student relationship may appear in how Stalker treats
the Zone with caution and even a ritualistic respect in honor of the bond he had with his
teacher as well as to the landscape itself.
Robert Bird discusses the earlier drafts of Stalker, of which there are many. One
draft, namely the second full version, describes a vision of a landscape the three men see
before approaching the Room and makes explicit comparisons to a Roerich painting.
132 The
mentioning of Roerich, a painter often associated with mystic scenes of Central Asia, adds a
quality of both spirituality and othering of the landscape into a fantastical, ancient space.
Synessios mentions that the original plan for shooting the locations was to be in the deserts of
131 Andrei Tarkovsky, Time within Time (Faber and Faber, 1994), 147. 132 Robert Bird. Andrei Tarkovsky: Elements of Cinema (Reaktion books, 2014), 166-67.
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Central Asia as well, but due to complications a new location had to be found quickly, so the
production moved to a lush, forest-filled industrial decay in the Estonian Baltic north. This
exoticizing i.e., othering of the landscape still appears in the musical soundtrack of a distorted
Tar or Azeri-Persian instrument and a flute.
Stalker marks a further withdrawal from the communities of men depicted in the
earlier films into the more immediate image of the hermetic, artistic fool seen in Tarkovsky’s
later films. The drama focuses on the three characters of the stalker, the writer, and the
professor, with ghostly mentions to stalker’s teacher, Porcupine, the appearance of a
bartender, and the disembodied voice of the professor’s lab colleague on the phone (called
the lab superior in the script). The only women are Stalker’s wife, the lady speaking with the
Writer outside the bar, and Stalker’s daughter Martyshka (sometimes called ‘Monkey’ in the
English subtitles). The dynamics between the three main men is the most interesting part of
the film, as well as the most visible form of a male ‘community’. This community, however,
is only bound together in the shared desire for the Zone and the room in it.
The professor character maintains a nihilistic depression throughout the journey,
which both drives him to his goal of blowing up the room as well as letting go of said goal
seeing it would make no difference. The moment of the Professor’s longing for connection,
however, comes in the scene with the telephone where he calls his lab colleague. As with
other elements of the film, no explanation is given whether this is his actual colleague in the
outside world or a phantasm of the Zone. Either way, the Professor makes a deliberate choice
to dial, to connect, granted with the dry intent of gloating. The colleague says it is all for
nothing since the professor’s career is now over. He invokes Herostratus, a fourth century
BCE Greek who sought to become famous by arson. The colleague takes a personal turn by
saying that the call is just revenge because he slept with the professor’s wife 20 years ago,
then tries to assert masculine dominance by telling him not to hang up the phone. He presses
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the point further when he says he imagines the professor hanging himself in prison, to which
the professor ends the call. He makes the gesture to connect but the utterance becomes a
poisonous exchange of pride and insults. Visually we see a closeup of the professor with the
receiver which adds to the sense of isolation.
The Stalker himself shows little to no character development over the course of the
film, whereas the writer is the character who changes the most throughout the film. The
writer steps into embodying his true fears and opinions, which leads to him lashing out
against the stalker and trying to align with the professor’s hopelessness. The writer in
particular manifests an anxious attachment to those around him. He is constantly clinging to
people or using humor to mask his fears and embarrassment. At the point where he goes first
into the ‘meat grinder’ the writer undergoes a self-realization culminating in his monologue.
His monologue itself is tuning moment of vulnerability that ebbs and flows with
defensiveness.
The available script version and final version of the Writer’s monologue are identical
with differences in direction notes surrounding the speech of the characters. While this does
not significantly alter the content of the scene, it does create more understanding towards the
theme of unattainable, desired community in the film. In this moment the writer is vulnerable
but pushes away reciprocal feelings. The Writer’s monologue gives an outward impression of
angry lashing out in response to the lack of what he truly desires: a connection through
community. Betrays his want for He describes himself as ‘without a conscience, only
nerves.” This emphasizes an imposed rational, positivistic attitude which contrasts with his
original intent in being a writer to help people. He describes the people around him as ‘swine’
(svolochi) with a ‘sensory hunger’ (sensornoe golodanie), and how both praise and insults
wound him. The Writer’s description of these people as ‘common and literate’ reveals his
mask of hatred towards them mixed with his secret want for their connection to him and his
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work133. After this outpouring Stalker praises his self-realization (Now you’ll live a hundred
years), but the Writer retorts bitterly “like the eternal Jew,”134 rejecting the feelings he craves
from a person physically in his presence.
135 Keeping in mind character placement, the Writer
sits alone at the deep well, the other two sit cautiously behind a sand drift, showing the
Writer’s emotional reticence to closeness by his physical placement away from them.
In the scene at the threshold of the room the pain of each character becomes a
throbbing, ugly presence, like the beating heart and bloody organs of a dissected animal. By
the end of the scene, after arguments of how to approach the room which incites many
emotions from the three characters, all three men sit with their backs to one another, unable to
meet each other’s gaze. Several moments leading up to this point appear as spectral and
puzzling asides to the idea of connection amongst the ruins, such as a fleeting shot of two
skeletons embracing with a plant growing out of their intimate parts, or the Stalker’s
adoration of his mentor Porcupine.
The ambivalent male-female relations appear in Stalker’s family which consists of an
unnamed wife and a daughter Martyshka. The wife begs Stalker not to go then collapses into
hysterics when he does. The penultimate scene of the wife’s monologue to the audience
offers a rare moment of intimacy with a female character in Tarkovsky as she takes us into
her confidence. The content of her monologue speaks of long-suffering and even the role of
martyrdom in her relationship to Stalker. Here what should have been a continued pattern of
male bonds as in previous films is in fact inverted to male discontent and an intimate though
tortured bond with a woman that leaves it unclear whether this is in fact a community of
heroic perseverance or of entrapment. An equally powerful and haunting visual from the film
comes right before this scene on an unexplained shot with no dialogue of two skeletons
133 Synessios et al, Collected Screenplays, 403-4. 134 This remark in the script could point to a gothic sensibility much like a reference to Melmoth the Wanderer
(see chapter 3 for discussion of the Tarkovskian gothic.)
135 This remark is not in the printed script.
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embracing each other and a sapling sprouting from in-between their abdomens, showing an
analogous image for desire and intimacy that can never be attained.
The wife acts as a cry for “normalcy” especially in how she cares for and nurses the
Stalker once he returns. The quest for intimacy and its negative example in Tarkovsky’s
Stalker becomes exemplified and even challenged in its final scene. In these final moments
the daughter Martyshka sits at a table reading Tyutchev’s poem about desire for the beloved.
This moment contrasts with the desires assumed by three male characters who went to the
room in the Zone. The daughter has a moment where desire is voiced internally, but still left
unspoken. This moment also contrasts with the previous scene of the wife’s monologue as a
form of resignation rather than selfless heroism. This desire becomes manifest in the
movement of the glasses across the table, assumedly by the daughter using only her mind,
‘touching’ them with her desire to do so. Preceding this mysterious, simplistic moment of
sensitivity comes scene upon scene of men unable to accept the intimacy they crave.
Conclusion
Exploratory aspects of community in Tarkovsky include questions of group versus
other on religious, ethnic, gender, and professional planes. While there is a consistent theme
of striving to form community, be it family, friends, or vocation, there is also a consistent ebb
and flow in said attempts at community. Such striving frequently elicits conflicting emotions
in characters of pulling and pushing others away, most often from unspoken inner turmoil or
pain. Even negative examples appear in the noticeable lack of community or harmonious
group from such films as Mirror or Stalker.
This recurring image of proximity between two men rarely if ever becomes a
proximity granted to male-female interactions. Often these men tend to be colleagues or
coworkers, doubles, or surrogate family members, and occasionally actually relatives. There
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is an urge of outward energy to form connection as a natural, unquestioned thing. When there
is any philosophizing on the relationships Tarkovsky often has characters subjugate their love
for one another as a necessary step in artistic or spiritual pursuits. For example, Light Wind
displays explicitly how male characters express their feelings for one another, either in love
or obsession. Amidst the men looking at, touching, embracing, or even kissing each other are
long soliloquies on the higher moral principles of spiritual journeys and the nature of the
ideal, among many other muddled conversation topics. Contrast this with the only malefemale couple in the story who never touch and eventually end up separated.
Tarkovsky’s first set of films all depict community within the context of
Medieval/Soviet History. Before them, however, he already started to explore these themes in
several different genres. Tarkovsky’s early student films The Killers (1956) and There Will
Be No Leave Today (1957/8) involve groups of men in difficult circumstances. Tarkovsky’s
mature films step away from the historical contexts established early in his career moving
towards alternative settings. Though they defy genre conventions, Solaris and Stalker can be
loosely called speculative fiction set in an unspecified future. Mirror and Nostalghia find
their settings in times personal to Tarkovsky’s past and present taking place at the border
between waking and dreaming. Sacrifice sits somewhere in-between as it is an apocalyptic
premise with a focus on the main character’s dreams and visions.
In general, all the middle to later film examples show limited environments that force
intimacy and even generate the fear of intimacy between characters. Be it outer space, the
military, a post-apocalyptic landscape, a foreign land, or even overbearing family life, these
environments show a gradual decline in the filmography of male-centric communities in
favor of male-centric individual characters. Said characters, however, still have some form of
connection or ‘community’ though in more subtle ways.
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Chapter 2: “It Was Crime and Punishment!”: Dostoevsky and Family Dynamics in the
Screenplay Drafts to Solaris
Tarkovsky’s love for Dostoevsky and personal experience influenced the portrayal
of family bonds and breaking points in Solaris (1972). Such works as Crime and Punishment
and The Adolescent appear in the director’s diaries and letters marked specifically for their
protagonists and different types of family relationships portrayed within them. Tarkovsky
openly grappled with many of the same concerns as the nineteenth century thinker,
particularly using the language of theology and spirituality. Solaris forms an intuitive
connection between Stanisław Lem’s twentieth century science fiction novel and
Dostoevsky’s nineteenth century psychological thriller through discussion of the familial
relationships towards the protagonist Kris Kelvin, including chosen family (Hari, Berton) and
biological family (father, mother). Connection among these family members comes through
physical touch and verbal expression, both of which tie the family subplot to the overarching
theme through symbolic means. While the finished film Solaris focuses on the individual
experience conflicting with the unknown, Tarkovsky’s process of adaptation tells a subtle
story on the dissolution of and longing for family bonds. This story bleeds through changes in
the drafts of the screenplay as well as the editing of the shot material.
Though the central theme of Solaris involves the human psyche exposed to the
ineffable cosmos, this theme springs from the human struggle of family members
communicating their feelings to one another. The early drafts of the film add to this theme by
emphasizing how such a struggle becomes less direct—and, I argue, less successful—through
the various drafts of the script. These drafts and other materials—including published diary
entries, recollections from colleagues, and a written correspondence with the director’s
father—show Tarkovsky’s preoccupation with family dynamics more clearly than the
finished film does.
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Dostoevsky and the Tarkovskys
Tarkovsky stated that an early draft of the Solaris script co-written by Fridrikh
Gorenstein connects to Dostoevsky via setting and characterization:
“We wrote a version of the script which I really liked. Practically everything
happened on Earth: the whole backstory with Hari, why she appears there on
Solaris. It was crime and punishment! And, of course, it was counter to the
thinking of Lem. He was interested in the struggle of humanity with space; for me
the dilemma was an inner, spiritual one. I chose this novel only because I saw at
first a work which I could specify as a story of repentance. What is repentance or
remorse in the direct, classical meaning of the word? It is when our memory of
wrongdoings and sins becomes a reality. For me, Lem was the means to make such
a picture…”136
Tarkovsky uses two separate words here in this statement: repentance (pokaianie)
and remorse (raskaianie) to describe the story he envisioned, showing a spontaneously
nuanced view. Lem states in an interview that Tarkovsky adapted Crime and Punishment
rather than Solaris. Lem justifies his attempt at a slight in the same way that Tarkovsky
uplifts the first draft: in the reappearance of the dead wife as a manifestation of guilt.137 The
religious language used by Tarkovsky throughout all his interviews and personal writings
136 Nikolai Boldyrev, Zhertvoprinoshenie Andreia Tarkovskogo (Vagrius, 2004), 197:
“My napisali variant stsenariia, kotoryi mne ochen' nravilsia. Tam voobshche vse proiskhodilo na Zemle. Vsia
predystoriia s Khari, pochemu ona voznikaet tam, na Solyarise. V obshchem, prestuplenie i nakazanie! I,
konechno, eto sovershenno protivorechilo zamyslu Lema. Ego interesovalo stolknoenie cheloveka s kosmosom,
s Neizvestnym, a menia—problema vnutrenniaia, dukhovnaia. Ya vzial etot roman tol'ko potomu, chto vpervye
uvidel proizvedenie, kotoroe mog by opredelit' kak istoriiu pokaianiia. Chto takoe pokaianie, raskaianie v
priamom, klassicheskom smysle etogo slova? Kogda dlia nas nasha pamiat' o sovershennykh postupkakh, o
grekhakh prevrashchaetsia v real'nost'. Dlia menia Lema byl povodom sdelat' takuiu kartinu…” 137 See Stanisław Bereś, Rozmowy ze Stanisławem Lemem (Krakow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1987).
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comes in large part from both Christian ideas of guilt and shame via Dostoevskian thought.
Thus, the story Tarkovsky wanted to make between Kris and Hari is a spiritual mirror to that
of Raskol’nikov and Sonya. Kris feels the need to repent for the suicide of his wife prior to
the events of the story, a feeling made evident by her reappearance in space. “Shame is an
emotion that will save humanity,” Kris says in delirium.
These words of moral weight appear influenced by Tarkovsky’s own father, who
admired Dostoevsky and other Russian writers and spoke of them in his interview titled
“Dostoevsky and Russian Poetry.”138 Here Arseny Tarkovsky calls Dostoevsky’s work a
“poetry of conscience” (poeziia sovesti) and compares Dostoevsky to Sluchevsky, mixing
low and high styles, a nervous tone (nervnost’), and psychological lyricism. He then
discusses Dostoevsky’s influence in the poetry of the Silver Age—for example, how the lyric
persona of Akhmatova’s collection Chetki could be a sort of Nastasya Filippovna in its focus
on psychological crisis. Dostoevsky as described by Arseny Tarkovsky fosters a “feeling of
responsibility for each and every person” in the context of morality and spirituality and goes
beyond being a mere writer to become the “atmosphere we breathe. Dostoevsky, like our
other thinkers, participates in the making of our typicality (tipichnost’) and our individuality
(individual’nost’).”139
Arseny Tarkovsky promotes an extensive study of all types of writing from one
writer; for a proper understanding of Dostoevsky, one must include reading all the published
material, early redactions, as well as preparatory material, diaries, and letters. Andrei
Tarkovsky’s diary includes many entries about reading Dostoevsky’s letters and diaries and
buying the complete set of his works. This point connects him to his father’s thoughts on how
to read and understand Dostoevsky, as if he took his father’s words to heart. Among his diary
138 Arsenii Tarkovskii et al, “Interview with Zbignew Poguzesta,” in Arsenii Tarkovskii: Stikhotvoreniia raznykh
let. Stat’i, zametki, interviu (Literaturnyi muzei, 2017), 411-14. 139 Ibid, 414.
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entries, Tarkovsky mentions The Adolescent as a possible screenplay.
140 Tarkovsky’s
thoughts on Dostoevsky largely focus on philosophical and theological discourse, character
dynamics, and even suppositions on the author’s personality.
Both Dostoevsky and Tarkovsky show consistent instances of characters touching
each other, as well as little to no explanation of this use of touch. The work connecting the
two in the father-son dynamic of touch comes in The Adolescent. According to his sister
Marina, Andrei Tarkovsky began reading The Adolescent during his years studying film at
VGIK. Thoughts from the 40-year-old Tarkovsky looking back on the work discuss the death
of the idea in the protagonist Arkady Dolgoruky and Rothschildism: “Now I understand
Dolgorukii’s reaction to the events he survived which caused the death of his ‘idea.’ He gave
all his soul to the ones he loved, and this was the greatest treasure of his accumulated
wealth…”141 The novel stayed with Andrei throughout his life, in which he actively
compared himself to Dolgoruky and his relationships to his family through the ideas of love
and personal offense. Tarkovsky mentions The Adolescent with great admiration as a
poignant novel about a character’s formation in striving for love: “This [The Adolescent] is an
inflamed, feverish tale of a restless soul overflowing with love and resentment towards those
who reject this love. And he only calms down when he finds another object to direct his
passion. The circle is closed. The child becomes an adult. His character is finally
formed...”142
These emphatic remarks show what types of characters Tarkovsky was drawn to,
namely Dolgoruky and his estranged biological father, Andrei Versilov, who both grapple
140 Andrei Tarkovsky et al. Time within Time, 14. NB: The book is listed in the translation as A Raw Youth. 141 Ibid, 68: teper’ mne poniatna reaktsiia Dolgorukogo na sobytiia, kotorye on perezhil, vyrazivshiesia v smerti
ego “idei.” Vse dushevnye sily on otdal tem, kogo liubil, i eto byl samyi vysokii vklad ego kapitala... 142 Filimonov, Andrei Tarkovskii, 64:
Podrostok Dostoevskogo—velikii roman. On povestvuet o stanovlenii kharaktera, stremliashegostia k liubvi I
tol’ko v nei sposobnogo rastvorit’sia tselikom. Eto vospalennyi, likhoradochnyi rasskaz o miatushcheisia dushe,
perepolnennoi liubov’iu i obidoi k tem, kto etu liubov’ otvergaet, i on uspokaivaetsia, kogda nakhodit inoi
predmet, k kotoromu mozhno prilozhit’ svoiu strast’. Krug zamykaetsia. Rebenok stanovitsia vzroslym. Ego
kharakter okonchatel’no formiruetsia…
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with the concepts of love and resentment (obida). Citing one example of the novel itself, one
sees the longing for parental connection, especially manifested by physical touch.
In chapter 1, part II of Dostoevsky’s The Adolescent, amidst a scene of controlled
chaos appears a moment of sudden candidness between father and son. After a series of talks
that are unfurled and interrupted along the way, Dolgoruky leads his father down to the front
door of his apartment building. Once at the brink of saying goodbye, in the dark by the door,
Arkady grasps Versilov’s hand and kisses it, eliciting an equally unexpected reaction from
Versilov: he becomes tenderly frightened and asks in wonder as to the reason for his son’s
love for him. Arkady quickly ascends back up the stairs and cries into his pillow:
...I suddenly grabbed his hand; it was pitch-black darkness. He shuddered, but
was silent. I fell on his hand and suddenly began to kiss it greedily, several
times, many times.
‘My dear boy, why do you love me so much?’ he said, but in a completely
different voice […] as if he himself were not speaking.
I wanted to answer, but I couldn't and ran upstairs. [...] Sobbing burst from me
with such force, and I was so happy ... but what to describe!
I wrote it down now without shame, because maybe it was all good, despite all
the absurdity.143
Arkady makes an interesting self-assessment after his interaction with Versilov. He
makes no explanations to the inner motivations or emotions in the moment of kissing his
143 Original text:
…Ia vdrug skhvatil ego za ruku; byla sovershennaia temnota. On vzdrognul, no molchal. Ia pripal k ruke ego i
vdrug zhadno stal ee tselovat’, neskol’ko raz, mnogo raz.
— Milyi moi mal’chik, da za chto ty menia tak liubish’? —prigovoril on, no uzhe sovsem drugim golosom […]
tochno i ne on govoril.
Ia khotel bylo chto-to otvetit’, no ne smog i pobezhal naverkh. […] Rydan’ia ravlis’ iz menia s toskoi siloiu, i ia
byl tak schastliv…no chto opisyvat’!
Ia zapisal eto teper’ ne stydias’, potomu chto, mozhet byt’, vse eto bylo i khorosho, nesmotria na vsiu nelepost’.
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father’s hand, only his action and reaction. He also sees that the act of writing down what
happened cuts through the shame and allows for some positive feelings to surface. Be it selfsoothing or self-deception, Arkady describes and inscribes what transpired between him and
his father. Ambivalent feelings remain from Arkady regarding his father, however, since in
the desire for closeness there is the equal desire for rejection. As such, this moment of
physical and emotional exchange comes swiftly and elicits almost a paralysis on both parties,
feeding into a tension from contrary inner forces.
Similar instances of outbursts regarding affection appear in other Dostoevsky works:
Raskolnikov wanting but unable to embrace his sister as a goodbye in Crime and
Punishment; Raskolnikov’s dream of the beaten horse, in which he embraces his father but
feels equally choked; Stavrogin saying to the priest Tikhon, “I love you” in the middle of his
angry speech in Demons; and Alyosha kissing Ivan on the lips in response to “The Grand
Inquisitor” story in The Brothers Karamazov. These moments come swiftly and unexpectedly
and are usually in conjunction with longing for and rejection of familial connection.
Anne Berman, in her study contrasting siblinghood in Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, says
that The Adolescent is the novel in Dostoevsky’s oeuvre that shifts focus explicitly to the
breakdown of the family.144 In play is Dostoevsky’s idea of the “accidental family” in
response to Tolstoy’s idyllic depictions of childhood in his novel Childhood (Detstvo). The
Adolescent in particular presents its own family portrait to make statements about Russian
society at the time in contrast to Demons, which presents society as a metaphorical family.
According to Berman, Dostoevsky’s accidental families “generate a fractured, decomposing
social world.”145 The nature of this accidental family for Dostoevsky was in the loss among
fathers of common ideas about family that could be passed on to the children.146 This
144 Berman, Siblings in Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, 113. 145 Ibid, 114. 146 Dostoevsky et al, A Writer’s Diary Volume 2, 1041.
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emphasis on “vertical bonds” and their examples of failure in Dostoevsky’s works forgets the
“lateral bonds” of found siblings that act as alternative models for love, support, and
understanding.147 Susanne Fusso says that abandoned, i.e. orphaned, children deal with
depravity of parents in Dostoevsky either by surrogate fathers or closer bonds with
siblings.148 Interestingly enough, in Tarkovsky, there is no strict reliance on an “accidental
family,” be it surrogate fathers or close siblings. Only earlier works From Steamroller to
Andrei Rublev explore shared bonds with a found family. As Tarkovsky’s cinema continues,
there is less emphasis on family and more of a smokescreen of the protagonist becoming
actualized with their spiritual and artistic selves outside of the influence or support of family.
But the longing remains, and more explicitly so in these earlier drafts to Solaris.
It is no secret that Tarkovsky had a complicated relationship with his parents, which
he explored explicitly in Mirror. These parental problems Tarkovsky experienced are
explained in his private writing as a manifestation of something from Dostoevsky, more
specifically, from The Adolescent. It is this contradictory motion of longing for connection
and repulsion at its expression that drives the unspoken drama of Solaris, the subsequent
drafts being more in line with Tarkovsky’s reality than the earliest, more optimistic draft. The
paradox here is that the more obscure in emotional expression and dream-fantasy the script
becomes, the closer it appears to mirror what Tarkovsky himself may have been experiencing
with his own parents, his father in particular. The quiet understanding and exchange of
physical affection in the first draft dissipates from the father scenes by the last version.
Meanwhile, the mother scene becomes less real and more dreamlike and softer in dialogue,
which, when contrasted to what happened while on Earth, only makes a more disturbing
147 Berman, Siblings in Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, 115. 148 Susanne Fusso, Discovering Sexuality in Dostoevsky (Northwestern University Press, 2006), 107.
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juxtaposition between reality for Kris and the subconscious fantasies shown to him by the
forces on the Solaris space station.
Alongside this father-son admiration comes a conflict not unlike the parental
clashes depicted in the early drafts of Solaris or even in a Dostoevsky novel. In a letter from
1957, Tarkovsky tries to reconcile with his father after some unknown offense. In his letter
the 25-year-old Andrei Tarkovsky shows a youthful, frenzied focus and a great deal of pain.
Amidst asking for forgiveness and calling himself names, Andrei Tarkovsky invokes
Dostoevsky, specifically the father-son relationship in The Adolescent: “I don’t think a son
has loved his father any more than I have (except maybe that fantasy of Dostoevsky’s in the
shape of Dolgorukii).” He makes firm that his love from afar and seeing his fulfillment in his
father is not any form of Freudianism (eto ne freidizm), adding to the general anti-Freud
stance he takes in all of his interviews regarding his movies. Throughout the letter, though,
Andrei Tarkovsky calls his father “My dear” (milyi moi) and ends with “I kiss you” (tseluiu
vas), common terms of endearment in Russian used here almost in the same way Versilov
uses this term of endearment to his estranged biological son, Arkady. It is unknown whether
or not his father responded to this letter, but looking at a diary entry from years later gives the
impression that his father addressed it in the same way Nik Kelvin in the first draft responded
to Kris Kelvin’s desire to spend his last day on Earth with him: silence followed by an
immediate change in subject.
Another writing from years later shows even more of the link between fiction and
his own reality that Tarkovsky returned to. A diary entry from September 12, 1970149 shows
Andrei Tarkovsky still grappling with how to communicate with his father. In the wake of his
separation from his first wife and the birth of his son, and on the eve of leaving to shoot
exterior shots in Tokyo for Solaris, Andrei Tarkovsky contemplates his strained relationship
149 September 14 in the Russian edition.
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with his father. He considers writing a letter but then decides against it for fear of it going
undiscussed and ignored even if he and his father were in the same room. He calls this “some
kind of Dostoevskyism, or a Dolgorukyism” (Dostoevshchina kakaia-to, dolgorukovshchina).
This letter only adds to the ambiguous status of character relationships and a contradictory
sense of destabilization in Tarkovsky’s work along with the given idea of touch as a
stabilizing action. In a scene analysis from The Steamroller and the Violin—namely when the
boy Sasha visits his violin teacher and sees a girl sitting in the hallway—scholar Robert Bird
makes this observation: “Each of the five characters in the scene becomes the center of
attention at least for a moment, rendering their interaction polycentric and enigmatic.”150 This
type of interaction can well characterize other films of Tarkovsky and how characters relate
to each other. The focus of the scene is often destabilized, and the characters often cannot
look each other in the eye. Instead, characters look in various directions away from each
other, posing in almost painterly manners. This type of scene and character blocking gives an
uncertain emotional sense as well. The placid appearance, however, usually holds an
underlying tension that is left largely ignored or unexplained.
One other scene that comes to mind is the argument on humanity between Theophan
the Greek and Andrei in Andrei Rublev. The characters, in a mentor-disciple relationship,
pause so their faces almost overlap in the shot, but they are looking in opposite directions.
Then the camera slyly moves back and forth between the two. This, of course, is indicative of
the disagreement between the characters, but such enigmatic avoidance also appears in scenes
where characters are supposed to be getting along with one another. In a scene from
Sacrifice, when Alexander receives a birthday gift of a large, framed map, his wife Adelaide
joins in the conversation almost merrily, yet flits her shawl around the map, never looking
into Alexander’s face or even touching him. Of course, it is best to keep in mind that with
150 Bird, Elements of Cinema, 33.
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such placement of characters there always appears to be subordination to the individual
scene, making each instance almost specific to the film it was taken from.
Granted, the moments of physical and emotional intimacy by kissing and embracing
appear much more elusive in the final cut of Solaris. Such moments appear between Kris and
the apparition of Hari, in Kris’ dream of his mother, and in the final shot of Kris and his
“father” at his house as replicated in the sea of Solaris. In all these instances, Kris never
touches or embraces the real people in his family, only their simulacra. When in and amongst
his father and aunt in the Earth portion of the film (approximately the first 40 minutes), Kris
is markedly avoidant of looking at them and especially being near them. This highlights an
emotional skittishness on the part of all the family members who appear to be at a loss for
how to express their feelings on the eve of Kris’ departure into space. It is the aunt’s
sorrowful, silent weeping at the end of the sequence in her shawl and against the misty
landscape that allows for a glimpse into her inner world. Additionally, Kris’ father, after
several moments of puttering around the estate trying to put things in order, has an outburst
against Kris when his colleague, Berton, leaves in exasperation. These cracks in the glacial
veneer of the family characters serve as pointers to the moments on the space station when
the apparition of Hari shows emotional and hysterical episodes of self-destructive actions.
She is the manifestation of the underlying feelings pushed down and repressed on Earth. As
will be shown in the following examples, both Hari and the other characters change over the
course of the script drafts.
Embrace of the Prodigal Son: Kris’ Father and Paternal Touch
When looking critically at Solaris, the majority of scholarship focuses on the
singular journey of Kris Kelvin and his battle with extraterrestrial forces in the shape of his
dead wife, Hari. Much of the screen time is dominated solely by Kris himself either walking,
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standing, or lying down. The narrative is a solitary one, despite the presence of the other
characters, both at the space station and on Earth. The characters in Kris’ family are on the
periphery, mostly observing him or having enigmatic exchanges with him, as if with an
underlying pain. The same cannot be entirely true, however, for the earlier drafts of the script,
which contain more interaction between Kris and his father, and these earliest scenes have
breathtakingly direct declarations of affection, embarrassment, and uttered thoughts about
relationships themselves. The final cuts of the script pare back on the dialogue in favor of
sparse exchanges and irritation with no spoken source. The first working draft leaves less to
the imagination in terms of emotional declarations, which almost take a theatrical high
drama. Many cuts were made between the American, French, and Italian versions of the
film.151 The original cut, which was over three hours long before being submitted to Cannes
in a shorter form, included a scene between Kris and his father that “might” have clarified
why their relationship is so strained, according to the editor, Liudmila Feiginova.152 What can
be done is to examine the father scenes from all three available versions of Solaris in light of
these comments from the editor. Looking at four specific instances of changes among these
scenes with Kris’ father reveals what was originally emphasized and what was eventually
downplayed.
All the scenes with Kris’ father take place in the Earth prelude with one exception at
the very end of the film, or the return. The earliest available written draft of the script
described Kris’ father, Nik Kelvin, as a “tall, grey-haired man with long whiskers”
(Bakenbardy), a description that would later be perfectly matched by the actor Nikolai
Grinko. Kris’ father also built his house to look like his grandfather’s house in the old style,
which he loved, showing that longing among the male members of the family affects all the
151 NB: Johnson and Petrie do not mention the later Japanese adaptation for TV, Planet Solaris. 152 Johnson and Petrie, The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual Fugue, 272.
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members in each successive generation with a desire for closeness with the previous men.
The added dimension of the father’s profession as a former Solarist places pressure onto Kris’
mission he may or may not return from.
153
Continuing the topic of examples of chosen family in Solaris, in the opening section
on Earth, Kris Kelvin’s father Nik invites Berton, an old, visiting colleague to the farewell
party before Kris’ departure to space. Berton shows them a trial video of his testimony of
what he saw on the planet Solaris, a display of vertical power and forced speech. As will be
seen later in this chapter, Kris’ farewell evening is one of sorrow, with empty gestures
between the male characters who are unable to express themselves. Upon the arrival of
Berton, the inner reaction of Kris is made quite clear in the first draft: he is sad and a bit
resentful that his last day on Earth before his voyage to Solaris will not be spent alone with
his father. As the father trips over himself to greet Berton, the script says that Kris does not
like when his father speaks this way (ozhivlenno i nevpopad).”154 Later, when they do have a
moment alone together, Kris even tells his father that he wanted the day to be just to
themselves (“Otets [...] mne khotelos’ by provesti etot den’ tol’ko s toboi.”)155 The father
ignores his son’s vulnerable statement and continues talking about Berton. Kris silently looks
at his father as he continues talking. Then comes a sudden moment of emotional and physical
honesty, revealing how Kris loves his father despite his change of character over the years.
He then tries to kiss him affectionately on the shoulder:
Kris loved his father. True, he had become louder and more talkative with people over
the years, but now, on the eve of his departure, this did not mean anything. A tender
feeling towards his father overtook Kris. He approached his father, bent down and
kissed him on the shoulder.
153 See Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence (Oxford University Press, 1973 (second edition 1997)). 154 Salynskii, Materialy i dokumenty, 96-97. 155 Ibid, 99.
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“What’s with you?” asked the father, surprised.
“I’ll go to my room,” said Kris.
“Listen, Kris,” he said to his son […] “It seems you’ve packed your mother’s
photograph…the one over your bed in the nursery…leave it, I’ve gotten used to
it.”156
This moment has overtures of the biblical story of the Prodigal son (the one who
came to his senses and returned to his father from destitution in a foreign land), only here the
emotional ‘return’ leading to a kiss from the son only leads to the father’s bewilderment and
the son’s withdrawal. Nik Kelvin’s avoidant response to Kris’ tenderness plus the request to
leave the picture of Kris’ mother leaves an ambiguity concerning the father’s own feelings.
Later Kris sees the picture of his mother on the wall and connects to it as if she were there
looking at him, wanting to speak: “Kris' mother was in her early thirties in this photo. A
woman with open and light eyes spaced wide apart from each other. Kris looked at her, and it
suddenly seemed to him that she, too, was looking straight into his eyes, as if she wanted to
say something.”157 This exchange is removed from the subsequent drafts of the movie,
instead replaced with a dialogue between the two characters with a shot of the mother’s
photograph on the wall. The dialogue becomes more elusive about the cause of the sadness
between the two. Kris begins with a judgement of Berton, to which his father chides him.
156 Ibid, 99:
Kris liubil svoego ottsa. Pravda, s godami on na liudiakh stal nemnogo shumen i govorliv, no seichas, nakanune
ot"yezda, eto ne imelo znacheniia. Nezhnoe chuvstvo k ottsu ovladelo Krisom. On podoshel, naklonilsia i
potseloval ego v plecho.
-Ty chego? –udivlenno sprosil otets.
-Ia poydu k sebe, - skazal Kris.
-Poslushai, Kris, - okliknul on syna,- Ty, kazhetsia, vzial s soboi fotografiiu materi...Tu, kotoraia visela u tebia v
detskoi, nad krovat'iu...ostav' ee, ia privyk k nei. 157 Ibid, 99-100:
Materi Krisa na etom snimke bylo tridtsat' s nebol'shim. Eto byla zhenshchina s otkrytymi i shiroko
rasstavlennymi svetlymi glazami. Kris smotrel na nee, i emu vdrug pokazalos', chto ona tozhe smotrit priamo
emu v glaza, tochno khochet chto-to skazat'.
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Eventually, Kris’ father admits that they do not talk much. Kris responds by saying that he is
happy to hear it said by his father, despite it being “the final day”; his father repeats the
words “final day,” then adds his own take on what it means: “Things always get antagonistic
when people say goodbye for real” (kogda proshchaiutsia spetsial’no, potom vsegda byvaet
protivno).
This entire exchange is made with the two men’s backs to the camera and their
faces turned in opposite directions from one another. This placement highlights their inability
to be comfortable with vulnerability as well as the sadness of the moment. The father glances
over his own comment and continues with talking about the matters of the day, seeming to try
and distance the conversation from what they had both touched upon: Kris’ final day to see
his father. In some ways, the elements of the first script remain in this moment; what changes
is how they are brought to the attention of the audience. The kiss to the shoulder becomes a
momentary acknowledgment of their relationship, the weight of which is carried in the
pauses.
The changes to the scene of Berton’s sudden departure are more markedly different,
as Kris’ father becomes more embarrassed of the fact that his son insulted his colleague,
friend, and chosen brother. The pain of the departure is felt through this outburst, and the
aftermath of the sorrow even more so as it stains the last moments they will have together.
After Kris questions the validity of continuing Solaristics (Berton’s lifework), Berton leaves
in exasperation, saying that Kris is an accountant instead of a Solarist, a petulant slight that
began as an offhanded joke from Kris’ father (Solarists remind him of accountants preparing
yearly tax figures). This slight remains the same throughout all drafts of the screenplay. What
is different in this initial draft is Berton’s additional dialogue that Kris’ spiritual fathers are
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all cryptic scientists (vse eti Shennony, Timolisy)158. Nik asks what happened, then quietly
sits next to Kris on the bench:
Kelvin Sr. walked deeper into the pathway and met Kris sitting on a bench.
“What happened?” asked the father.
“When I arrive in fifteen years, a lot will probably change here, in this garden...”
Chris said quietly.
The father sat down next to him on the bench. The ionizer crackled.
159
The bewilderment shifts from Kris pondering what his return will be like to Nik
Kelvin angrily saying how cruel people (like his son) should not go into space. The father no
longer sits quietly with his son as in the earlier draft but mangles his execution of the
sentiments “I will miss you.”
This is markedly different in subsequent drafts and the final film, where Kris’ father gives an
angry outburst.160 When Berton storms off from the family dacha in the final screenplay draft,
the father lashes out at Kris: “Why did you offend him? you're too cruel, that's what I have to
tell you. It’s dangerous to let people like you into space. Everything’s too fragile there! Yes
Yes! That's exactly it, fragile! The earth has already somehow adapted to people like you,
even though it cost it some damn sacrifices.” 161 The father speaks of possibly dying before
Kris’ return and speculates of Kris’ jealousy of Berton’s closeness to his father (...ty chto,
158 Ibid, 124. 159 Ibid, 125:
Kel'vin-starshii poshel vglub' allei i vstretil Krisa, kotoryi sidel na skameike.
-Chto sluchilos'?- sprosil otets.
- Kogda ia prilechu cherez piatnadtsat' let, zdes', navernoe, mnogoe izmenitsia, v etom sadu...- tikho skazal Kris.
Otets uselsia riadom na skameiku. Potreskival ionizator.
160 Ibid, 223. 161 Ibid:
Za chto ty ego obidel? ty slishkom zhestok, vot chto ia tebe dolzhen skazat'. takikh, kak ty, opasno puskat' v
kosmos. tam vse chereschur khrupko! Da, da! Vot imenno khrupko! Zemlia uzhe koe-kak prisposobilas' k takim
kak ty, khot' eto i stoilo ei chert-te kakikh zhertv.
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revnuesh’ ego k tomu, chto on menia pokhoronit, a ne ty). Moreover, Kris’ father is upset
because Kris does not accept Berton as he does: as chosen family. Berton even asks Nik to
look after his son for a while, showing their kinship and trust beyond mere colleagues with 20
years of friendship between them.
The shift from explicit to implicit emotional exchange in the final version of the
film leaves these scenes without the disarming directness of their earlier drafts. The dialogue
and emotions become murkier and hazier, matching more with the overall tone of the scene
than the will of the characters to show affection towards each other. As evening falls, Kris
goes to the yard to burn some items, including a picture of Hari. Nik Kelvin joins him.
Finally, Kris speaks. In the first draft, he comments on relationships between parents and
children:
“I have a strange feeling,” said Kris. “It’s usually children who are more attached
to the mother. There should be more respect for the father, but less love.”
“Silly you,” said the father, “You shouldn’t be so pointed on the eve of a departure.
Us pilots consider it a bad omen.”162
When Kris tries to say that children usually relate differently between their mothers
and fathers, Nik Kelvin playfully (or perhaps not so playfully) calls him “chudák”
(weirdo/wretch), saying to not be so sharp-tongued on the eve before takeoff. This dredges up
Kris’ feelings of his father, bringing him to the point of tears:
162 Ibid, 132:
“Stranno u menia chuvstvo, skazal Kris.—obychno deti bol'she priviazyvaiutsia k materi. K ottsu dolzhno byt'
bol'she pochteniia, no men'she liubvi.
-Chudak ty, -skazal otets, -nakanune vyleta ne stoit ostrit'. U nas, letchikov, eto plokhaia primeta.”
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Kris was grateful to his father for turning this conversation into a joke, because he felt
a spasm constricting his throat.
“There, there, Kris,” said the father.
Kris smiled and looked at the photo he was holding in his hand.
“Thank you,” he said after a pause.
“For what?”
“Because you didn’t lose the conversation about her... about Hari... I found this
among the old papers,” Kris said and from a distance showed his father a card in a
burnt frame.163
This exchange is drastically shortened in the subsequent drafts as Kris merely burns
his effects as his father says he will take care of any business if problems should arise. Kris
asks to take a roll of film (a home video of him, his father, and his mother), to which his
father concedes, thus speaking the last line of dialogue between the two. Meanwhile, his aunt
turns away in tears to look out at the misty horizon (a shot that will be echoed in later films,
such as Nostalghia and Sacrifice). The touching display of emotion from Kris and his father
in the original version is here replaced with a somber masking of hurt and sorrow with a
short, pragmatic exchange. The shift of focus is now on what is left unsaid and shown
through wordless movements.
163 Ibid, 132-33:
Kris byl blagodaren ottsu za to, chto on perevel etot razgovor v shutku, potomu chto chuvstvoval, kak spazma
szhimayet emu gorlo.
-Nu, nu, Kris, -skazal otets.
Kris ulybnulsia, vzglianul na fotografiiu, kotoruiu derzhal v ruke.
-Spasibo, -pomolchav, skazal on.
-Za chto?
-Za to, chto ty ne zaterial razgovor o nei...o Khari...ia nashel eto v starykh bumagakh, -skazal Kris i izdali ottsu
pokazal kartochku v obgorevshei ramke.
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The final scene of the film in the first script version makes it more explicit that Kris
does not return to Earth. Kris sees a copy of himself (Kris II) returning to his father’s home
and embracing him:
Finally, the father turned around.
Kris-II dropped his bag, hurried up, and embraced him so tightly that he [the
father] dropped his stick and staggered. Chris picked him up and carried him
to a nearby chair.
The father sat down, and Kris-II, without looking him in the face, sank to the
floor and buried himself in his dry, senile knees.
They sat like that for a long time and, of course, were silent. The real Chris,
watching this scene through the window, thought with horror of how he would
feel if his father spoke.164
His colleague Snout asks if he will return to the real Earth, but Kris responds that he
will not. This dialogue in subsequent drafts changes to take place before Kris’ return to
‘Earth’, except here, there is a clear response from Kris as he states his desire and reason for
staying: “Besides desire and love, there is also a duty […] I mean our human duty to our own
destiny, which our ancestors chose for us when they first descended from the tree and took a
stick in their forelimbs. As long as a man remembers his ancient duty, he will remain a
man.”165
164Ibid, 133:
Nakonets, otets obernulsia. Kris-II brosil meshok, toroplivo podoshel i obnial ego tak sil'no, chto tot uronil
palku i poshatnulsia. Kris podnial ego na ruki i perenes na stoiashchii poblizosti stul. Otets sel, a Kris-II, ne
gliadia emu v litso, opustilsia na pol i utknulsia v ego sukhie starcheskie koleni. Tak sideli oni dolgo i,
konechno, molchali. Istinnyi Kris, nabliudaia v okno etu stsenu, s uzhasom podumal o tom, chto on
pochuvstvuet, esli otets zagovorit.
165 Ibid, 88-89/202-205:
Krome zhelanii i liubvi, sushchestvuet eshche dolg […] ia imeiu v vidu nash chelovecheskii dolg pered
sobstvennoi sud'boi, kotoruiu dlia nas vybral nash prashchur, kogda on vpervye spustilsia s dereva i vzial v
perednie konechnosti palku. Poka chelovek budet pomnit' svoi drevnii dolg, on ostanetsia chelovekom.
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The second working draft version and the final version of the last scene leave out
the scientific and moral reasons for the sudden appearance of the earthly house, making the
finale eerie and dreamlike. These two versions are identical, except for the use of sound
editing. In the working version, the only sound heard is the water falling on the father inside
the house as Kris stares into the window. The music only begins when Kris embraces his
father on his knees as the camera ascends back and upwards into the air. In the final version,
the music begins as Kris approaches the house, swelling as he places his forehead and hand
on the window and looks inside. This layering of the music to the action in the scene makes
for an unsettling atmosphere, in which the embrace is not relief but a disturbing vision of loss
of reality. Even more unsettling is the way the father and son embrace. Their posture is
clearly a recreation of The Return of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt, and yet, unlike the
tender warmth of the original draft—or even of the original painting—the movements here
are mechanical and stiff, even theatrical, highlighting the fact that this is not the real Earth or
the real father Kris searches for. The fleeting and longed for embrace, even when in the
trappings of a cosmic fantasy, are to be forever unfulfilling. The characters are caught in the
central inertia towards and away from each other, much like Dolgoruky and Versilov.
The strangeness of the moment the prodigal son embraces his father is markedly
absent from most scholarship around the scene. In his contribution to the 2008 omnibus
publication Tarkovsky, for example, Vlad Strukov makes several claims that the character of
Kris Kelvin’s father represents knowledge, and the final scene of Kris embracing his likeness
on the semblance of Earth as a connecting act of transcending consciousness. “Solaris,”
writes Strukov, “is a hermeneutic world of man’s experience, his power, dependence, mastery
and sacredness.”166 Conversely, the women in the film—Hari, the mother, and the aunt—
166 Vlad Strukov, “Visualization of Self and Space in Tarkovsky’s Solaris,” in Tarkovsky (Black Dog Press,
2008), 68.
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show the sublime in the world of dreams as filtered by the consciousness of the male
characters.167 While it is true Kris’ parents play significant roles in Solaris, their significance
is less symbolic and more as actual family members to the unspoken drama of the scenes they
are involved in. Solaris, it seems, was a testing ground for the preoccupation with family and
memory that would take over Tarkovsky’s next film project, which would eventually become
Mirror. Strukov himself notes the connection between Solaris and Mirror in its main focus of
human memory,168 though this brief observation does not include the theme of family or loss
of communication.
Kissing the Earth Mother: Kris’ Dream Scene and Maternal Touch
In contrast to the father scenes, the mother scene is concentrated in the last act of
the film. The mother does briefly appear in other parts—in a wall photograph, in Kris’ home
video, and in other parts of Kris’ fever dream—but she only speaks in her final, longest
scene. This scene is just as much about the father as it is about the mother, or Hari the wife,
as revealed by examining the variations in the script and final cut. Overall, the development
of the drafts in the mother scene reflects most changes from draft to draft in tightening the
script. Be it the clarification of Tarkovsky’s vision or pressure to cut the film down by
censors169—which later interviews with the production team state were not a factor to the
film’s cuts170— the third and final iteration of the scene is significantly more to the point than
the previous versions, but no less complex or mysterious.
The scene in question takes place close to the end of the film. After taking ill and
being led to his room by Snout and Hari, Kris has a succession of fevered dreams and
167 Ibid, 69. 168 Ibid, 75. 169 Johnson and Petrie, A Visual Fugue, 99. 170 See Dmitrii Salynskii, “Novyi vzgliad na starye veshchi,” Kinovedcheskie zapiski (2011):
http://www.kinozapiski.ru/ru/article/sendvalues/1294
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memories as he succumbs to his sickness. The final dream sequence involves a meeting with
his mother before Kris wakes from his fever to the news that the Hari doppelgänger has
disappeared for good.
Suggestions of unresolved conflicts are revealed with the appearance of the mother,
the hallucination of multiple versions of Hari, clothing cues of the mother dressed in Hari’s
slip, and the setting of an earthbound space station.171 According to Johnson and Petrie, the
mother appears as an enigmatic figure who “wanders around distractedly or sits munching an
apple” while Kris “attempts to appease her.” The mother is “aloof and sadly reproachful,”
treating Kris like a child.172 The meeting between Kris and his mother is the only such
instance in the film of dialogue between them, as it is implied that Kris’ mother died when he
was still very young. His memory of her is tied to material objects, such as her photograph
and a home video reel shot by his father. Both these objects depict Kris’ mother as a young
woman in a long dress, which is how she appears to the now adult Kris. What remains similar
in all three versions of this meeting is the dream’s setting, the connection to Earth through
various means, and the bitter undertones that this meeting is not real and will be fleeting.
In the earliest draft, which exists only in written form, the meeting with the mother
takes place in an undefined white space. Directly before this meeting, Kris’ fever dream has
him speaking with his deceased wife Hari, only to have her emerge from the shadows and
appear as his mother instead. Kris has a tense mother-son dialogue with her in which she says
that he thinks only about himself and to not ask stupid questions since her time is short. He
says that she is only a copy, but he accepts her gifts of freshly picked food from an earthly
garden: tomatoes, radishes, onions, and cucumbers. They eat as if performing a “half
forgotten, but holy and dear ritual.” He weeps as she feeds him, and she is described as
171 Johnson and Petrie, A Visual Fugue, 110. 172 Ibid, 277.
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“shedding a tear.” He smells her Earth-stained hands and asks her forgiveness, requesting her
not to leave. But the dream ends, and Kris comes out of his sleep.
Here the mother becomes an Earth goddess figure showing Kris’ longing for planet
Earth alongside more painful memories of his mother’s terse care. She manifests more openly
the connection to home that is woven throughout the film, even more so than the appearances
of Hari. As the force of Solaris penetrates something deeper in Kris—deeper than his longing
for his dead wife, the appearance of the mother links her to primal senses of taste and smell.
This scene from written draft stays in the realm of dreams due to the undefined setting and
morphing of figures.173
This is an explicit connection to Dostoevsky’s conception of the earth as a spiritual
force related to the mother of God and the Slavic figure of Mother Damp Earth (mat’-syrazemlia).
174 Both the mother’s quips to her son and the subtle link between the mother and the
wife are features that appear very clearly in Tarkovsky’s later film Mirror. The explicit
instance of this trope in Mirror is the clear repetition of the son asking his mother’s
forgiveness, and the mother saying nothing in return. More generally, the appearance of a
figure making orders and saying how little time there is becomes the scene in which Ignat is
visited by the strange woman who tells him to read from a journal on the bookshelf.
In the directions surrounding the dialogue, however, there is still the sense that this is
not Kris’ mother. In addition, in this version, Kris is more melodramatic in his dialogue,
openly saying he is dying and she is just a copy “truer than the original.” Such statements
from the delirious Kris signal his loss of spirit and strength in his sense of reality, a marked
173 Similar imagery appears in a diary entry from June 9, 1980. Tarkovsky describes a dream of being in
Moscow and seeing a cow with a human head, stroking her, and smelling her scent left on his palm:“The
penetrating, tender, homely smell of life and happiness.” See Tarkovsky, Time within Time, 256-257. 174 Cf. Svetlana Anatol’evna Skuridina. “Mat’-syra-zemlia kak mifopoeticheskaia konstanta tvorchestva F. M.
Dostoevskogo: onomasticheskii aspekt.” Bulletin of Slavic Cultures, No. 4 (2016): 143-150.
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difference to when he first arrives. Kris more fervently gives himself over to the illusion
offered by the space as he eats what his mother brought him and asks her not to go.
In the second version, or rather the working cut of the film before final editing, the
dream meeting takes place in the living room of the space station. However, various objects
from earth litter the space, and everything is covered in cellophane. Objects explicitly
mentioned in the directions are a “vase with flowers on the chair,” which are objects that
appear not only in subsequent Tarkovsky movies but in Arseny Tarkovsky’s poem “First
Meetings” featured in Mirror. Even the directions clearly state, “this is a continuation of the
dream.” At the sight of his mother, Kris invites her to sit and exchanges dialogue with her.
The conversation is markedly less tense than the written draft, and Kris’ declaration of dying
is softened to “I got sick,” which then becomes in the audio, “I got tired.” As the mother tries
to leave, Kris asks her forgiveness, to which the mother asks, “Why are you trying to justify
yourself?” as if subtly chastising him. Kris then says questioningly that he does not
completely feel she is his mother, to which she responds that he does not feel like her son.
The dialogue becomes less direct in its questions and answers; the mother asks if he is happy,
to which he responds, “Somehow here this understanding has no place.” She says he is losing
the most important thing, i.e. the ability to appreciate the simplest things.
When Kris expresses his loneliness, his mother says, “You seem to have been asking
for it, as far as I understand,” then follows this all-knowing attitude with a succession of
questions: What are you doing here? Why are you here? What are your goals? Such questions
appear to relate to the overall status of the mission to Solaris, questions that have plagued
Kris even since before his arrival. And such questions ultimately go unanswered. To end the
scene, the mother notices dirt and bruises on Kris’ arm and washes them with a pitcher and
basin, other objects that appear in “First Meetings”. As she leaves, Kris asks her to stay.
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What is left out of the script but placed in the film is the non-verbal communication
the mother has with Kris. This written script, compared to the actual footage, leaves out the
subtleties added in while filming. The mother touches a horn hanging from the wall before
looking at the camera and letting out a smile and a chuckle; she eats an apple while looking
coyly at Kris; and she kisses the back of Kris’ head while she washes his arm. These minute
gestures reiterate the longing for connection that Kris appears to be unable to express by the
final version of the script.
All of the shots in the third version of the scene are almost identical to the shots in
version two. The dialogue, however, is noticeably shortened and redubbed in places, which
grants many more silences and adds weight to the glances and movements of the two
characters. The directions appear similar to version two with slight variations: despite the
shots being the same, the scene takes place in Kris’ room at the space station with the vase of
flowers “lying” (lezhat’) on the chair instead of “standing” (stoiat’). The questions the mother
asks Kris as she eats an apple are not about Kris’ goals and work but about more personal,
familial concerns: “Why are you embarrassing us? What did you expect? Why didn’t you
call?” The concern is less about the hallucinations from Solaris and more fixated on the
unresolved memories Kris has stored within him. Perhaps the mother’s dialogue was made
terser and more enigmatic as well to appear as snippets of dialogue from Kris’ memories
rather than as a knowing apparition from space. The dream sequence of the mother in
particular shows Kris’ longing and mourning for “the experience of Earth” as indicated by the
presence of plastic sheets covering the room.175 It may also explain why the tin of plants
shown throughout the film reappears in this dream next to a moving decanter top.176 This
175 Strukov, “Visualizations of Self and Space,” 73. 176 Cf. Nariman Skakov, Labyrinths of Time and Space (Taurus, 2012); and Strukov, “Visualizations of Self and
Space,” in Tarkovsky (Black Dog Press 2008).
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scene, as well as the scenes involving the father, acts as a testing ground for scenes in later
films that deal with parental relationships and confrontation.
“I Bow to All Human Suffering”: Hari as Desired Spousal Touch
Continuing the connection of family dynamics to the greater plot, Tarkovsky’s
reoccurring concern over the limits of human knowledge connects to the emotional
boundaries alienating his characters attempting to understand and reach out to one another.
For example, Kris’ father shows physical proximity without emotional access while the
double of Hari shows emotional proximity with no bounds. This added dimension of the
parents’ relationships to Kris deepens his relation to Hari as chosen family. Once on the
station and confronted with ghosts of his past, he as a human comes face to face with the
planet Solaris itself, which inhabits an ambiguous in-between state of queer generativity in its
summoning of simulacra.
The queer generativity in the form of visions comes distilled in various instances
throughout the film. Berton’s vision of a giant, glistening infant resembling his dead
colleague’s child pushes this point further. The desire for stabilizing touch is fully manifested
not only in Hari but also in the guests of the other crew members. Gibarian’s visitor is a
young girl in Tarkovsky’s script, which was originally a tall, dark-skinned African woman in
Lem’s novel, adding an othering element to the want for physical proximity in the alienating
environment of space. Hari, though, comes as the clearest example of a manifestation of
desired connection granted to Kris by the cosmic sea of Solaris.
Tarkovsky’s rare depiction of erotic touch between man and woman in the scenes
between Kris and Hari becomes overlapped onto the Dostoevskian glorification of suffering
and shame, much like his thoughts on linking the earliest draft of the film to Crime and
Punishment. Though they kiss and caress on Kris’ bed, Kris must undo Hari’s dress with a
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pair of scissors and tear it with his hands, a visual image of surreal qualities verging on
“divergent” sexual fetishism. Equally fetishistic is the overlapping of Kris’ mother with Hari
in his fever dream, a motif explored further in Mirror. An exemplary scene of Hari’s position
and how the men interact on the space station appears in part two at Snaut’s birthday party.
The scene opens in the library with Sartorius, Kris, and the clone of Hari waiting for Snaut’s
arrival. Kris and Hari sit next to each other, unmoving, while Sartorius sits further away from
them at the other end of the table. The general atmosphere comes across as one of unease,
even sorrow, as the empty gesture of a party full of strife and hopelessness unfolds. Once
Snaut arrives drunk and late to his own party, the deeper resentments between the crew begin
to show up as well. Snaut makes a longwinded speech and prods Kris to read from one of the
books on the table.177 In the final cut, he bumps into Hari’s hand, then holds it tenderly before
kissing it. This direction is missing from all the script drafts and seems to have been an
improvised gesture. Snaut’s action appears as a signal of desire amidst blurred categories of
Hari’s humanity or illusion in an almost sadistic form of control. This action is a change from
his usual, feeble attempts to explain and calm Kris as he settles into life on the space station
and when reality later becomes unclear and hazy.
Hari’s speech further adds to the uncertainty of her humanity as either real or illusory.
After the banter back and forth between the men, Hari speaks unexpectedly and abruptly. Her
first utterance begins in the penultimate draft of the script with a continuation of their toast to
Gibarian and humanity, and Kris’ rhetorical quip asking if Gibarian is a human being:
Hari: I don't count here...I understand I’m not a human […] You are all so
very wordy. And you’re very careful about your peace. You spoke perfectly
177 Snaut’s reads a passage from Cervantes’ Don Quixote concerning sleep as the uniting factor of humanity and
how closely it resembles death. This points to the dream-like experiences of the crew and waking death of their
visitors.
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about humanity. Only you forget that looking for knowledge should be paid by
suffering. This is the payment. Here is everything and...
Sartorius: Pardon me! I was only talking about debt. One must act like a
human.178
The next part of Hari’s speech is where the filmed version begins and marks Hari’s
consciousness of her place among the human male scientists, as well as Kris’ difference from
the rest:
…but I think Kris Kelvin is more consistent than you both. In non-human
conditions, he behaves humanly, and you pretend that all this does not concern
you, and consider your guests, you, it seems, this is calling us, something
external, interfering.179
The script omits any direction in the following moment, but in the final cut of the film, Hari
places both her hands on either side of Kris’ head to a close-up of Kris’ face, cutting out
Hari’s head from the shot, as if to signal the conflicting emotions and illusion of the moment
as Hari says:
…and Kris loves me. Maybe he doesn't love me, but just protecting himself
from himself. True! He wants me alive...to prove to himself that I am dead,
and he is not guilty of anything. This is not the thing. It does not matter why a
178 Salynskii, Materialy i dokumenty, 246:
Hari: ia zdes' ne v schet…ia ponimaiu, ia ved' ne chelovek […] Vy vse ochen' mnogoslovny. I ochen' zabotites'
o svoem spokoistvii. Vy prekrasno govorili o cheloveke. Tol'ko vy zabyli o tom, chto za stremlenie k poznaniiu
prikhoditsia rasplachivat'sia stradaniem. Eto rasplata. vot vy vse i...
Sartorius: Pozvol'te! Ia govoril lish' o dolge. Nado vesti sebia po-chelovecheski. 179 Ibid, 246:
no mne kazhetsia, chto kris kel'vin bolee posledovatelen, chem vy oba. v nechelovecheskikh usloviiakh on vedet
sebia po-chelovecheski, a vy delayete vid, chto vse eto vas ne kasayetsya, i schitayete svoikh gostey, vy,
kazhetsya, tak nas nazyvayete, chem- to vneshnim, meshayushchim.a ved' etovy sami, eto vasha sovest'.
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person loves. This is different for everyone. It's not Kris losing face. It’s all of
you! You betray yourself!180
Hari continues by saying that Kris is the only honest man on board, asking Sartorius
not to interrupt a woman. “You’re not a woman, you’re not even a human being” says
Sartorius. Hari replies that her tears show her to be becoming more of a human thanks to
Kris’ love for a memory. At this moment, the camera shows a close-up of Hari’s face and the
tears on her cheeks. The moment becomes a play of poignancy as the tears, which should
signal true fraught emotion, comes from a specter of the past via cosmic forces.
After this moment, Hari knocks over an object. Kris approaches Hari and kneels
before her, and the shot shows him before her bare feet as another disarming image of
illusionary human grace and allure amidst cold outer space. Sartorius exclaims in a rare
gesture of concern for Kris to stop kneeling and what his attachment to the guest of Hari
means in the long term. Kris’ gesture makes the most obvious allusions to Crime and
Punishment (chapter 4, part 4) when Raskolnikov bows to Sonya and says, “I don’t bow to
you, I bow to all the suffering of humanity” (Ia ne tebe poklonilsia, ia vsemu stradaniiu
chelovecheskomu poklonilsia). In the context of Kris and Hari, the bow becomes an
expression of desire—desire to believe the extraterrestrial figment for its semblance of
humanity.
Hari’s speech in this scene becomes particularly noteworthy upon further thought.
Much like the creature in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or the myth of Pygmalion, the clone
of Hari provides an unsettling presence to the sense of normalcy; in this case, the attempts the
180 Ibid, 246:
…a kris menya lyubit. mozhet byt', on ne menia liubit, a prosto zashchishchayetsya ot samogo sebya. pravda!
khochet mnoyu, zhivoy...dokazat' sebe, chtokharine umirala, i on ni v chemne vinovat. delo ne v etom. ne
vazhno, pochemu chelovek lyubit. eto u vsekh po-raznomu. eto ne kris teryayet litso. a vy! Vy predaete sebia!
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crew tries to make to bring Earth to the space station to minimize the loneliness and
homesickness that killed Gibarian. The Other appears in their midst by their own creation,
and there arises a simultaneous repulsion and attraction towards it. The attraction lies in how
well the clone can resemble reality, or desired reality. Kris endeavors to normalize the clone’s
presence by introducing it as his wife Hari, to which Sartorius scoffs sarcastically.
This character of Hari brings in a complicated aspect to the displays of gender
performativity in Tarkovsky’s films as well. The clone takes on the appearance and
mannerisms of a woman thanks to feeding off Kris’ memories and deeper desires, but as seen
through the objective, scientific eyes of Sartorius, the presentation of womanhood by the
clone is mere illusion. One could argue that Hari’s tears are not an indicator of her gender but
a mark of her humanity. Both male and female characters shed tears and cry in Tarkovsky,
always coming at a moment of emotional duress or release. In Solaris, Kris eventually sheds
tears in the dream scene between him and his “mother.” However, Hari’s clone ultimately
makes independent attempts at female performativity, asking not to be interrupted as she is a
woman. But, as the film progresses to the final reveal of Kris embracing his father on an
island in the sea of Solaris, Hari becomes one with the unknown again. Kris shows and has
shown that he ultimately rejects reality and chooses the unknown for its semblance of
intimacy.181
Conclusion
Further research to currently accessible materials may not have a clear answer as to
the degree of Tarkovsky’s personal life in Solaris; however, the Dostoevsky subtext exists
from the director’s earliest thoughts of adapting the science fiction novel to the screen.
181For more see JL Austin, “Performative Utterance” (Philosophical Papers 3 1979); and Judith Butler, Gender
Trouble (Routledge, 2006).
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Example scenes and characters from the film show Tarkovsky’s focus on Dostoevskian
family dynamics in aspects of chosen family (husband and wife) vs. biological family (parent
and child).
At the same time resenting his father, Tarkovsky was not afraid to express his love
and admiration for his father. Actress Natalya Bondarchuk recalled how she shared a moment
with Tarkovsky during the filming of Solaris. The topic of conversation eventually turned to
their parents, particularly how they each related to their respective fathers, with Tarkovsky
admitting his tender love for his own:
Andrei warmly asked me, “How old were you when your parents separated?”
“Eight.” I responded gloomily.
“I was even younger,” Andrei said unexpectedly, “Children probably suffer more than
their parents who separate […] In this life do you love your father?”
“Yes, of course, I love my father, and the fact that I so rarely see him only makes the
feeling stronger.” I said.
[…] “I also love my father very much, tenderly and selflessly.” Andrei said quietly.182
Bondarchuk also reveals how she saw the director’s father Arseny Tarkovsky for the
first time 17 years later as he attended the premier of Sacrifice. At that point, it was too late
for either father or son to say goodbye in person, since Andrei Tarkovsky died abroad before
the release of the film.183 By all current accounts, any unspoken feelings between father and
182 Natal’ia Bondarchuka, “Vstrechi na “Soliarise”,” in O Tarkovskom, (Progress Izdat., 1989), 149-150:
Andrei teplo sprosil: — Skol'ko tebe bylo let, kogda roditeli rasstalis'?
— Vosem', — khmuro otvetila ia.
— A mne eshche men'she, — neozhidanno skazal Andrei.—Navernoe, deti stradaiut sil'nee roditelei, kotorye
rasstaiutsia [...] Nu a v etoi zhizni ty ochen' liubish' svoego ottsa?
— Da, konechno, ia liubliu svoego ottsa, a to, chto ia ego redko vizhu, tol'ko usilivaet chuvstvo, — priznalas' ia.
[…] IA tozhe ochen' liubliu svoego ottsa, nezhno i predanno, — tikho proiznes Andrei. 183 Ibid, 150.
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son remained so at the time of their deaths. Even more remarkable, then, is Tarkovsky’s own
journey of wrestling with depicting strained family dynamics in his script, laying bare his
personal drama in the story of Solaris. It is precisely in fantasy that Tarkovsky believed
Dostoevsky came to the ideal of father-son relationships in Dolgoruky and Versilov as
indicated by his letter. How much more would the entrapment of Kris existing in fantasy
draw him closer to his ideal of connection and family? By creating this world, Tarkovsky
makes an ambiguous paradise, where the feeling of joy and reconciliation is framed within
the knowledge that it cannot be realized with their prototypes, only in simulacra.
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Chapter 3: Touched by Ghosts: Tarkovskian Gothic and Kinship with the Otherworldly
Tarkovsky’s focus on community and relationships includes kinship with the
otherworldly in the form of the dead and the imaginary. The dead for Tarkovsky never stay
dead and are kept alive and in connection with the living via dreams and memories.
Tarkovsky shows such kinship via the gothic notion of haunting. This chapter presents these
hauntings as an intersection of relationships with the gothic (specifically ghosts). Among
Tarkovsky’s output are three distinct pieces dealing with reoccurring spirits in dynamic
relationships to the living: the unfilmed Hoffmaniana (1974), the early short story “I Live
with Your Photograph” (1962), and the finished film Mirror (1975).
This connection to the otherworldly comes foregrounded in some of Tarkovsky’s
literary forefathers such as the master innovator E.T.A. Hoffmann, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and
his father Arseny Tarkovsky. This foregrounding makes intertextuality in Tarkovsky’s work a
type of metaphorical ‘touch’ which compliments the physical touch between his characters. I
argue that these spectral relationships challenge and destabilize the standard life-death binary.
This challenge appears as an ambiguousness of relationships with mixed signs (a sort of
queering); these ‘queered’ relationships manifest differently in each example work, be they a
master-slave, parent-child, or (ex) romantic partner dynamic.
Tarkovskian Gothic
A starting point for capturing these intersecting relationships in a gothic sense lies in
Tarkovsky’s elusive quality of suspense. Though ‘gothic’ was never a term Tarkovsky
himself used, there is this aspect of the sinister and spectral that permeates throughout his
work. An atmosphere of anticipatory dread runs through some of Tarkovsky’s most
memorable scenes, ushering in a fear of encountering a nameless other by heightened
awareness via long takes and isolated sounds. Quite often in Tarkovsky, the source of the
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‘other’ is left unsolved, giving the atmosphere a build-up of suspense without the reveal. All
these aspects of dread create a haunted presence that may or may not be connected to ghosts.
This fits into Tarkovsky’s shared belief with Dostoevsky in the limits of human reason when
encountering the irrational, and, as his characterization of Hoffmann points out, a rally
against ‘common sense’ (zdravyi smysl).184
My term “Tarkovskian gothic” can be applied to several if not all Tarkovsky’s films.
For a brief working definition of gothic I invoke the literary and cinematic gothic of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries with familiar tropes of uneasy atmospheres and situations
such as old buildings, monstrous adversaries, gloomy weather, women in white dresses, etc.
A consistent trope in this form of gothic is the idea of transformation and the darker aspects
of humanity manifesting into the living world. This trope compliments the idea of the
Uncanny used by Freud and the Surrealists, a point which will be expanded upon later.
I also use the term gothic in its focus on the marginal, the antediluvian, as well as a
place of communion. The gothic’s confrontation of such unspoken things as norms of
masculinity or even deference to paternity are both topics relevant to Tarkovsky.
185 Much like
this dual nature of gothic, Tarkovsky himself inhabits a liminal position between outsider and
insider: while he presented works in the international arthouse tradition, he enjoyed continued
access to the resources of the establishment at Mosfilm and in the VGIK network of artistic
colleagues. His work was touted as subversive with its focus on the past and meditations on
personal pain, and yet it contains no open criticisms of the Soviet political regime.
186 Thus, as
184 Synessios et al, The Collected Screenplays, 354. 185 See William Hughes and Alexander Smith, Queering the Gothic (Manchester University Press, 2003). 186 At least no open criticism exists in the finished films, since an earlier draft of Mirror could be the most
critical of Soviet daily life in the scene with the Spaniards discussing their day-to-day reality. See more on the
scene in chapter 1.
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I aim to show, Tarkovsky’s duality as an artist and director fits into his overall concerns with
intimate relationships via discussion of ghosts and the gothic.
187
Tarkovsky’s continued use of the eerie other lies in the atmosphere of ruins and
untamed nature which surrounds Tarkovskian kinship, a kinship which requires physical
proximity, especially touch. One theoretical approach to discussing this touch as a form of the
gothic comes from the writer Lafcadio Hearn. In his essay titled ‘Nightmare Touch’ (1900)
Hearn uses an evolutionary and poetic framework to come to the simple conclusion that the
divide between the living and the dead is via sleep and affects the fears of the waking world:
“…the imagined supernatural is dreaded mainly because of its imagined power to
touch[,] not wound or kill. But this dread of touch would itself be the result of
experience […] like the child’s fear of darkness. And who can ever have had the
sensation of being seized by ghosts? The answer is simple: – Everyone who has been
seized by phantoms in a dream.” 188
This notion of being touched by or conversing with ghosts in dreams comes
frequently in Tarkovsky, usually in the form of a character remembering a deceased loved
one or close family member such as in Mirror where both Aleksei’s mother as a young
187 Soviet suspense and Horror films were not very common at the time, but the few examples that did appear
draw from the Russian gothic literary tradition of Gogol and Dostoevsky. Aside from the overtly supernatural
horror of Gogol’s Viy film adaptations of Dostoevsky such as Crime and Punishment emphasized the notion of
dreams as sinister memories. An Entry in the Gothic Encyclopaedia on Dostoevsky justifies his inclusion due to
his focus on the struggle between good and evil “in the form of internal, psychological struggles dramatized
through a doppelganger[,] filled with tortured souls, monstrous nightmares, waking dreams, wild imaginings,
crushing poverty, claustrophobic corridors, shadowy stairways, and unnerving events […] his work is at its most
Gothic where he explores the mind’s most extreme states and darkest recesses. ” (see Hughes et al). One
possible lingering idea in Dostoevsky from the gothic is how the double appears as a phantasm as well as a sort
of desired other. This also applies to Tarkovsky. See Grove’s review article on Tarkovsky as a supposed
Horrormeister and Lev Nikulin’s 2019 web article “No Horror in the Soviet Union?” Nikulin, Lev. “No Horror
in the Soviet Union?” Last modified April 26, 2019. https://jordanrussiacenter.org/news/no-horror-in-the-sovietunion/. 188 Lafcadio Hearn, “The Nightmare Touch (1900),” in The Gothic Reader (Tate pub., 2006), 195.
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woman and Aleksei’s ex-wife are played by Margarta Terekhova. These moments of contact
have similarities to Hearn’s constraints in that the ghosts never inflict bodily harm on the
living person, but instead unnerve them by their mere presence which goes beyond
understanding. Such moments of encounter pair with the conception of the gothic as a space
exploring extremes of experience.
189
Besides ghostly communion and atmospheric, irrational dread, another reoccurring
idea in Tarkovskian gothic is that of the double. This double appears in many forms, from the
protagonist seeing their own doppelganger to characters being likened to painted doubles (ex.
Stalker, Solaris, Mirror, Nostalghia, etc.). In these examples the double is either of the self
(exclusively male) or the beloved (almost always female). An extended example of these
various types of unusual doubles appears throughout Tarkovsky’s filmscript to Hoffmaniana.
“The Silent, Secret Life”: Hoffmann’s Gothic Tale
The Hoffmaniana script, completed in 1974 for production in West Germany but
never filmed, follows a fantasy biography about the European grotesquerie writer E.T.A.
Hoffmann. Overly dark, gothic elements appear throughout Hoffmaniana amidst subtle hints
of subversive desire with intimate character interactions as the focus of Tarkovsky’s personal
writings on the story. In fact, the very act of keeping a secret diary crept into the script as a
major point where Hoffmann’s wife confronts him about the secret names he uses in his
personal writings. Natasha Synessios mentions in the introduction to the published screenplay
that the plot contains many insertions of Tarkovsky’s own thoughts on art, music, and life, as
well as more than a few biographical sketches.190 Most noticeable and pointed in the
189 Emma Dee, “Hauntology and Lost Futures,” SFRA Review (2022): 32.
https://sfrareview.org/2022/07/18/hauntology-and-lost-futures-trauma-narratives-in-the-contemporary-gothic/. 190 In addition to personal insertions the script shows possible affinities to Dostoevsky such themes as the
shadowy double. As seen in these episodes, Dostoevsky’s “Dvoinik” with its psychological, fantasy horror
appears most readily in the plot elements, and even in how Dostoevsky’s main character received a prescription
to ‘seek human company.’ Whereas the attempts at forming bonds in Dostoevsky’s story act as a biting
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screenplay is the strained relationship between the ailing Hoffmann and his nagging, longsuffering wife, as well as the secret love he has for the much younger Julia Mark who visits
him and listens to his stories.
On the character of the protagonist, Tarkovsky makes notes in his diaries of the
process of writing Hoffmaniana as a difficult one that focused on both Hoffmann and the
world of his fantasies:
[Hoffmann] seems to escape into his fantasies. More than that: they are his home, his
castle, his citadel. He is not made for this world, he does not need it.
There must not be too many characters (in line with Hoffmann). They must not dictate
their own plot, but be there as the starting point of the fictional characters; the cause
of the condition of which those characters are born.191
This entry includes Tarkovsky’s interpretation of Hoffmann the artist surrounded by
examples of doubling. These magical doubles appear seen, or even unseen, in mirrors as well
as in imaginary characters resembling real characters. From the beginning of the script
Hoffmann enters everyday spaces in phantasmagorical ways, such as entering a pub
supported by disembodied hands holding his shoulders in a floating carriage. Later outside
and on the street, he approaches the shadows towards a voice and a figure he thinks he
recognizes but finds that no one is there.
192 This figure is later revealed to be his double. At
one point in a tavern drinking alone, Hoffmann sees this double appear in a gold embroidered
tailcoat and asks to join his discussion with his other (imaginary) friends. The double displays
commentary on attempted social mobility, Tarkovsky’s script sees human bonds as being pursued and desired
for their own sake.
191 From July 3, 1975 entry in Tarkovsky, Time within Time, 111. 192 Synessios et al, Collected Screenplays, 329-330.
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another gothic trope of losing sanity as he says that going mad is his greatest fear.193 These
occurrences of the double and imaginary friends never receive a logical explanation, nor does
Hoffmann question their existence. This shows that the line between the real world and the
otherworldly does not exist for the artist, despite the appearance of madness to others.
The most obvious juxtaposition of characters comes between Hoffmann’s spouse,
Frau Mischa Hoffmann, and his secret object of desire, Julia Mark. Along these same lines of
going against common sense the script makes frequent insertions of imagined and largerthan-life historical figures visiting Hoffmann, such as his visitation by Donna Anna from
Mozart’s Don Giovanni the night before the actress’s death.
194 In this way, Hoffmann’s
visitations include both imagination and ghosts among the reoccurring motif of Hoffmann not
able to see his own reflection in the mirror. His string of visitations runs parallel to the
opposition between Frau Hoffmann and Julia Mark established as womanly ideals of Eve vs
Psyche.195
Through the eyes of Hoffmann comes both doubling and desire for connection, most
notably in his gaze of the physical body. When Hoffmann attends a production of Mozart’s
Don Juan the script directions remark on the beauty of Donna Anna. The description
continues by commenting on the seductive qualities of Don Juan himself with features of
‘manly beauty’ and a ‘noble nose, piercing eyes, softly outlined lips,’ and eyebrows that give
a ‘Mephistophelian expression' causing an ‘instinctive shudder’ in the viewer.
196 Here we see
193 Hoffmann’s double is a “chinovnik” or civil clerk, the epitome of ‘zdraviy smysl’ as well as a further allusion
to Dostoevsky. Hoffmann himself jokes of dropping his artistic career to become a chinovnik with qualities such
as a ‘sleeping conscience, dull punctuality, and no faith at all in the miraculous’ (see Synessios introduction to
Hoffmaniana in Collected Screenplays). 194 Synessios et al, Collected Screenplays, 333. 195 Cf. Larisa Poluboiarinova, “Gofman v zerkalakh Andreia Tarkovskogo,” in Gofmaniana (2021), 38.
The script describes Frau Hoffmann as “blue eyed…in a plum-colored dress” a subtle note to Tarkovsky’s diary
entry about how Dostoevsky often dressed his heroines in ‘sea-colored’ dresses (see Tarkovsky, Time within
Time, 42). The character of Frau Hoffmann by and large imitates Dostoevsky’s Nastasia Filippovna who is
alluring, inscrutable, and emotionally volatile, though with her unexpected displays of care and anxiety around
Hoffmann’s health.
196 Synessios et al, Collected Screenplays, 332.
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an insertion of Hoffmann’s gaze into the virile, youthful, and even sexually vital body of the
actor playing Don Juan which contrasts to Hoffmann’s own sickly body. This insertion also
implies his desire for the Donna Anna who looks like Julia.
197
The girl Julia Mark often appears in Hoffmann’s fantasies as a figure of tragic
innocence with some of his reveries including her dying in increasingly romanticized ways.
Most pointedly her juxtaposition with Frau Hoffmann comes in a scene of Dostoevskian
scandal at a breakfast party celebrating Julia’s engagement to the merchant Graepel. On the
way to the party Frau Hoffmann puts a hand to Hoffmann’s forehead, and he kisses her hand
“passionately, like a lover,” then has a vision of Julia entering a lake to drown ‘like Ophelia’
but laughing.
198 The moment of touch between them is not enough to quell the desire for an
imagined touch of an impossible future. As they enter the hall of mirrors, a drunk Hoffmann
shouts that pretty women always marry ugly men at which point Mischa’s eyes multiply and
‘form in a row, like a necklace made of precious stones.’199 This doubling of his wife’s
physical image leads Hoffmann to an imagined doubling of himself and Julia as tragic lovers
in his story of Kleist. After this point the scene descends into chaos.
200
Despite this point of view focused on the sensual body, Hoffmann himself
experiences no physical intimacy as he and Frau Hoffmann sleep in separate rooms, but at
one point when he cries out for help, he asks her to sit next to him, but he then makes no
reply when she suggests he lie down, hinting at the stalemate of no sexual relationship
between them and adding to her flirtations with the doctor. As a female character outside of
male kinship Frau Hoffmann shows little to no sympathy with her husband’s creative pursuits
or imagined visitors. When Hoffmann tries to tell his wife a story he came up with, she
confronts him about the name he keeps writing in his diary: Katchen (his secret name for
197 Ibid, 336. 198 Ibid, 341. 199 Ibid, 342. 200 Ibid, 344.
101
Julia). As Frau Hoffmann rages, Hoffmann notices how old she has become. She storms out
of the room with his diary, but the figure of Gluck the composer wanders in like a mime and
places the key to the wife’s dresser on the table. Hoffman is left in the middle of his darkened
room standing stiff and in pain with a ‘poisonous smile.’201 This final image of a scene
centered around double infidelity and marital strife comes across as particularly gothic in its
shadowy interior and a mix of the grotesque and the sinister.
The most subtle and perhaps the most subversive pairing comes in the master-servant
dynamic of the Baron and Daniel in Hoffmann’s tale of the Baron’s castle. This male-to-male
pairing acts as the dark inversion of Hoffmann and his controlling great-uncle who are
visitors to the castle, revealing things done in secret ‘not intended for the eyes of
outsiders.’
202 Though here Hoffmann refers to dark magic, one can read into the Baron’s
treatment of Daniel, and Daniel’s reception of said treatment, with sado-masochistic intent.
Hoffmann’s tale of the castle—the story within the greater narrative—acts as both an
aside to the plot as well as a center piece of the script’s gothic drama. Its insertion is both
disruptive to the story of Hoffmann’s present reality and a bringing forth of the ghostly
themes integral to the story; it reveals the parts of the story which constantly come under
suppression in the daylight of society through the artist’s nocturnal speeches. Hoffmann tells
this story as he reminisces with his school friend Hippel. They begin to talk philosophically
on the nature of impermanence and passing time, to which Hoffmann mentions a desolate,
ancestral castle he visited with his great-uncle. He describes its surroundings in an overtly
gothic way:
201 Ibid, 339-40. 202 Ibid, 347.
102
“Its environs are bleak and deserted. Only solitary blades of grass grow here
and there amongst the bottomless quicksand. Instead of a park, a withered pine forest
adjoins the naked walls. Its eternally twilit attire could grieve even the motley
costume of spring…I was seized by a disturbing foreboding…everything was black
and gloomy in this place.”203
Already from the outset of the story appear the conventional trappings of gothic
storytelling such as the first-person narration, the unsettling landscape, and the intangible
sense of the spooky supernatural. These descriptors mark Tarkovsky’s conscious playing with
the tropes of the gothic genre common to the writer Hoffmann as elsewhere in the script.
Character-wise, Hoffmann’s tale includes a central sado-masochistic male
relationships to the Other and the self in the form of the castle’s Baron and his bailiff Daniel.
Both men live on the margins of society in a ruined castle which only becomes more
dilapidated as the story progresses. Hoffmann says the face of Daniel was ‘pale and
emaciated, but always ready to twist into a false smile’. This physical description adds to the
grotesque imagery in the script of faces, facelessness, unsettling smiles, and emotional masks
by which reality prove less true than fantasy. Hoffmann continues to describe the place as one
fit for people who practiced dark magic and astrology; he also describes how the Baron of the
castle and the Bailiff had a strained relationship, enough that the Baron once struck his
servant with a whip, calling him a dog.
204 Despite this physical and verbal abuse, Daniel
continues to stay with the Baron, and even goes mad after the Baron’s death caused by
pushing him down the tower. The Baron never truly dies, though, as his presence still lingers
203 Ibid, 345. Russian text: Okrestnosti ego surovy i pustynny, lish’ koe-gde na bezdonnykh, zybuchikh peskakh
rastut odinokie bylinki, i vmesto parka k golym stenam zamka primykaet toshii sosnovyi les, chei vechno
sumrachnyi ubor mog opechalit’ dazhe pestryi nariad vesny. […] menia pronizalo kakoe-to nepriiatnoe
predchuvstvie. […] Vse bylo mrachnym I neuiutnym v etom meste.
204 Ibid, 346.
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in the place in the form of nightly apparitions and in Daniel’s ravings. This unholy push and
pull between the two men only shows their ambivalence towards each other which death
itself cannot stop.
Phantom doubling in inanimate objects appears as Hoffmann goes on to tell how he is
convinced of the Baron’s powers of black magic. He tells of a supernatural series of events
taking place late at night in the old castle. One evening he notices the lights are lit in the
baron’s tower and goes down a dark corridor holding a candle to the tower’s door. He feels a
figure in the hall, and mistakes the baron’s cloak on a chair for someone sitting there. He
looks in a mirror and sees a vision of himself walking down the hall a few moments earlier,
and then sees himself in the future ascending the tower, then fleeing it before seeing it go up
in flames.
205 Time becomes a continuous single point in the world of the mirror as later the
events Hoffmann saw in the mirror come true, leading to the demise of the baron.
Manifestations of the dark depths of the relationship between the two men as madness
and haunting shows when Hoffmann and the others hear footsteps in the hall, and the new
baron loads a silver bullet in his pistol to ‘kill a ghost’. Instead, he shoots Daniel who stands
‘moaning and scratching at the blocked-up doorway to the tower,” causing the mirror to
shatter.
206 Everyone leaves the castle the next day after the funeral, never to return. The sight
of Daniel clawing at the door to the Baron’s burned down tower becomes the image of the
darkest reaches of the unconscious that Hoffmann allows himself to see, and the servant’s
death by the new owner who ultimately rejects the castle shows how those of the genteel
society close off any discussion or sight of unspeakable, twisted desires.
Mirroring of this sado-masochistic Baron-Bailiff comes in the dynamic of Hoffman
and his great-uncle. Later Hoffman and his great-uncle show signs of their own
205 Ibid, 347-48. 206 Ibid, 356.
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disagreements in their dynamic. Once the two men start seeing apparitions with candles in the
hallway, they confront Daniel the servant who gives cryptic answers to their questions. Once
the Baron’s son and his wife appear they all eat a wake dinner together with the baron’s
corpse still lying in state in the next room. Hoffmann plays the harpsichord to calm himself,
which moves his uncle emotionally but prompts him to say out of common sense it would not
suit the profession of a lawyer to play music. This in turn prompts the new couple to
speculate about Hoffmann’s future career and how great talent leads to poverty. This point of
quiet tension over the subject of art as a profession shows Hoffmann at some odds with the
great-uncle he claims to love. Such a tension manifests as the very corpse of the baron to
which Hoffmann is irresistibly drawn.
207 As he visits the room where the body lies in state,
Hoffmann looks in the same mirror as he did before, and sees a vision of the butler Daniel
pushing the baron down the gaping abyss of the tower left by the fire. “Inside the mirror the
silent, secret life continued to flow, speaking of things which no one apart from me will ever
know” (v zerkale zhe prodalzhala tech’ besshumnaia tainstvennaia zhizn’,
rasskazyvaiushchaia o veshchiakh, kotorye nikto, krome menia, tak nikogda I ne uznaet).
208
This ambiguous sentence in the context of seeing Daniel and the baron in the mirror could
speak of the unmentionable acts in the relationship between the two men. Plus coming
immediately after a discussion of Hoffmann as an artist destined for poverty this shows the
baron and Daniel as the unconscious doubles of the artist and his male relative caught in a
codependent relationship of sadism and possible masochism.209
207 Ibid, 354-55. 208 Ibid, 355. 209 The intersection of queerness and the gothic comes in the symbiotic, even parasitic, relationship between
mainstream and margin, and how the one defines and even breaks the mold of the other. It is in this meeting
place of the abnormal and marginal that the dead, or the spectral past, may become the bridge for queer
relationships and the relationship between the dead and the living. As seen in classic works of Gothic horror,
repressed desires and sexuality manifest as the undead or as monsters outside of societal norms while at the
same time reflecting society’s unspoken parts. As noted by Emma Dee:
“The Gothic becomes a hauntological metaphor for collective anxieties—repressed and dangerous
sexualities[,] grief, and the taboo. It is for this very reason that members of the LGBTQ+ community
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For Hoffmann the antidote for this tortured form of relationship is friendship of
equals, but it is an antidote he never manages to take. After his tale to his friend Hippel,
Hoffman brushes off the drama and severity by saying he should have the story published
then says he will go out to drink with his ‘friends’, a flourish not uncommon among artists of
the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century in putting up a dilletante persona. Much in
keeping with Tarkovsky’s obsession with irrationality and his character’s own rejection of
‘zdraviy smysl’, Hoffmann chooses to leave to the world of his fantasy and not remain with a
real-life friend, further speaking to the severity of the story he just told. The revelation of
seeing his dark other in another person is too strong even to tell a close friend.
Tarkovsky’s script pays attention to the chaotic nature of initial creative inspiration
that can trace a line of thought on a single theme as the sum of the artist’s feelings and mood,
as seen when Hoffmann makes some notes on a piece of paper with bits of words, sketches,
and even musical notes.
210 In this moment in the tavern Hoffmann drunkenly greets his
friends who turn out to only be in his imagination. His ‘friends’ congratulate him on his
musical success. As Hoffmann gives a speech on the frailty of superficial connections and
deep inner anguish each of the apparitions disappears.
211 The one friend who remains,
Cavalier Gluck, engages in a discussion with Hoffmann on the nature of memory in art, as
well as the qualities of a true friend. Tarkovsky considered later in his 1984 notes to amend
Hoffmaniana that this, the central scene of the film, should be filmed in one take until the
conversation with Gluck.
212
(Hughes and Smith), people of colour (Taylor), women (Anderson), and other marginalised folk are
drawn to the Gothic, for its depictions of alternative realities and ways of being.” (see Emma Dee,
“Hauntology and Lost Futures,”(2022): 233. https://sfrareview.org/2022/07/18/hauntology-and-lostfutures-trauma-narratives-in-the-contemporary-gothic/)
Susanne Fusso also discusses queerness in Dostoevsky’s portrayals of men, especially adolescents in Podrostok
and the Russian literary tradition of two men desiring each other via the proxy of a woman (triangulated desire.
For more see Sussane Fusso, Discovering Sexuality in Dostoevsky (Northwestern University Press, 2006), 51. 210 Synessios et al, Collected Screenplays, 358. 211 Ibid, 359. 212 Ibid, 370.
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When Hoffmann tries to explain his illness, Gluck interrupts him with his definition
friendship:
“…Friends are those who will sacrifice everything for you. And do so secretly,
without parading their friendship; so that no one would ever know of this sacrifice,
the recognition of which could darken our existence […] Well, what if we don’t ask
too much of friendship? Perhaps the simple possibility of pouring out one’s heart is
enough?”213
This speech from an impassioned ghost of the mind speaks to what Hoffmann truly
longs for but will never attain in his life as the script ends with his deathbed scene. Even in
his final moments Hoffmann sees an apparition he thinks is Julia but cannot make out its
features or its gender. This shows his final giving over to the irrational and the secret life
which runs contrary to the rational society he escapes from into his fancy.
The Elegiac Ghost: Photography as Memorial Space of Encounter
Tarkovsky’s early short story about seeing his parents’ photographs shows an
unsettling moment of the revenant ghost. Thematically in-between Hoffmaniana and Mirror,
this lesser-known story shows Tarkovsky’s creative versatility as well as his obsessive
themes of the artist’s memory, family tension, and dream sequences. The story titled “I live
with Your Photograph” (1962) deals with describing in full detail the beloved’s images to the
near exclusion of the beloved themselves via encountering specters of simulacra in haunted,
imagined spaces, in this case photographs. Tarkovsky’s story acts as a test piece for what
would later become Mirror with its preoccupation over the photographic image and intimate
213 Ibid, 361.
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family dynamics. Besides the story’s focus on time collapsing in on itself in nostalgic spaces
comes the blurring of relational categories. Here the poetic trope of romantic love object
comes placed onto the longing of a child for their parent, a point which Tarkovsky would
explore again in Mirror but never explain. This overlapping of relational categories comes as
a given to the story without the speaker’s surprise or shock at his own emotions towards his
parents; here we see a gothic subversion of the socially acceptable via ambiguity of emotion
and intent. Among the story’s lyrical descriptions appears a ghostly disruption via an elegiac,
ominous image of Stalin’s portrait and an unknown figure.
Tarkovsky’s story shows a speaker resembling Tarkovsky himself on a visit to his
childhood home where he looks at photographs of his parents. The title of the story comes
from Pasternak’s poem “The Substitute” (Zamestitel’nitsa). Pasternak’s poem depicts a longwinded first-person description of a female beloved, the substitute of the title, through her
actions and surroundings incited by seeing her photograph. This speaker only discusses being
in the presence of the physical photograph as if he were in the actual presence of the beloved.
In this way, the desired object stays with the item associated with the prototype rather than
the prototype itself. This turns the photograph into an obsessive (possibly fetishistic) object
and memento in place of an absent person as if to ward off the reminder of death inherent in
the photographic image.
According to Susan Sontag all photographs act as a reminder of death, or memento
mori since “to take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality,
vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs
testify to time’s relentless melt.”214 Likewise, Roland Barthes links photography to death by
its likeness to the origins of theater among death cults whose rituals imitated life:
214 Susan Sontag, On Photography (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977), 15.
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We know the original relation of the theater and the cult of the Dead: the first actors
separated themselves from the community by playing the role of the Dead: to make
oneself up was to designate oneself as a body simultaneously living and dead: the
whitened bust of the totemic theater, the man with the painted face in the Chinese
theater, the rice-paste makeup of the Indian Katha-Kali, the Japanese No mask ... Now
it is this same relation which I find in the Photograph; however "lifelike" we strive to
make it […] Photography is a kind of primitive theater, a kind of Tableau vivant, a
figuration of the motionless and made-up face beneath which we see the dead.215
Tarkovsky’s story bears a similar connection to memento mori while taking
Pasternak’s obsessive love poem and placing it in the context of a parent-child want for
connection. The story begins with a description of the street from the perspective of
Tarkovsky himself on a visit to his mother. The street is now named Arsenievsky, which the
speaker supposes, is due to his father the famous poet, which shows the haunting presence of
the father on the locale itself, despite only the speaker and his mother as the two characters
physically present in the story. The speaker muses on time in the repetitive action of looking
at and describing the details of old photographs of himself and his parents. By this repeated
action and lingering details, sometimes describing the same photograph repeatedly, the
speaker enacts a communion with the past via looking, naming, and touching since it is
implied that he is holding each photo as he examines it. The subversion of emotional and
familial categories comes in the form of the speaker’s kindled desire to meet his mother as a
young woman and how the young mother resembles his wife. The speaker never questions or
examines his comparison or his emotion. The photo in question shows a gothic, eerie interior
215 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (Hill and Wang, 1981), 31-32.
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of his mother alone in a room, adding to the dissonance that the person the speaker longs for
is a specter of the past trapped in an unsettling space.
The speaker goes on to describe another photograph of his mother twice in two
different places, both times emphasizing the mother sitting on a fence with an empty sky
above her. This image of the mother on the fence and another photograph of his mother
gathering potatoes would later enter the final cut of Mirror. In yet another photo of the
mother, the speaker describes how through her fingers ‘time flies like golden hair’, giving the
texture of time. This verbal utterance of ascribing touch to an intangible phenomenon could
be a form of substitution, how the speaker wishes he were time and had time’s fingers.
But the central photograph of the story shows a portrait of the dead Stalin and
unknown figures in an empty half-lit room:
“And here is a room, in the Gorchakov farm, rather a corner of this room. On
the right, the sun shines through a window that has remained out of the Photocor's
field of vision. Its light falls on a large gleaming wardrobe, on the chair placed next to
it, on the box-like dresser or on a chest-like box. This is also next to the cupboard,
covered with a mountain of rags, cushions, a basket made with wicker branches and a
white balloon bathed in the sun filtering through the window. The walls are probably
made of half-planed beams, yellow as honey; on the left there is a seated portrait of
Stalin, dressed in a white linen tunic, holding a cigarette between the fingers of his
hand which rests quietly on his knee. He is tanned, booted, and sits like a sphinx,
staring at you – good, simple, and only understandable to a Russian living in 1936.
The portrait is printed on paper and lit by diffused sunlight…
Below the ceiling is a lamp, or rather its lampshade, flat, with a dark top and a
white underside, in enamel, but without the kerosene lamp which has not yet been
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unpacked. In the corner, another portrait of similar workmanship, but in the
photograph, it has been scratched with a razor. One cannot see who is represented.”216
The photograph emits an atmosphere of menace common to the gothic and holds a
destabilizing presence in the unknown human figure lurking in its corner. Stalin died in 1953
and stands staring at the speaker ‘like a sphynx’ and mentioned in the context of 1936, the
year the Great Purge reached its peak. With this note to the contextualizing of the image, the
speaker also decontextualizes it as he describes the portrait starting at him as if it were a
present creature. Alongside this portrait is a photo within the photo of someone else in the
corner of the room, but the face is scratched out, making it a ghostly, wraith-like presence of
an almost human. The way the speaker describes this photo is as if he himself is a ghostly
presence visiting the room in this photograph; a ghost encountering ghosts of the dead,
unknowable figure of patriarchal authority and an unknown specter.
Such a disruption can be explained with the possible use of a repressed memory and
its defamiliarization caused by its surfacing to consciousness, what Freud calls the Uncanny
or ‘Unheimlich’ as the weird, frightful, or eerie. Scholarship on Tarkovsky and surrealism
can be found in Daniel McFadden’s article “The Uncanny in Andrei Tarkovsky” (2012).
According to McFadden, Tarkovsky’s films feature the home as “the base image of a
216 My English translation of the French edition of the story, the only available edition. Here is the original
French text: Et voici une pièce, dans la ferme des Gortchakov, plutôt un angle de cette pièce. À droite, le soleil
brille à travers une fenêtre restée hors du champ de vision du « Photocor ». Sa lumière tombe sur une grande
armoire luisante, sur la chaise placée à côté, sur la commode semblable à une caisse ou sur une caisse semblable
à une commode. Celle-ci se trouve aussi à côté de l’armoire, couverte d’une montagne de chiffons, de coussins,
d’une corbeille confectionnée avec des branches d’osier et d’un ballon blanc que baigne le soleil filtrant à
travers la fenêtre. Les murs sont probablement constitués de poutres à moitié rabotées, jaunes comme le miel ; à
gauche il y a un portrait de Staline assis, vêtu d’une vareuse en toile blanche, tenant une cigarette entre les
doigts de sa main qui repose tranquillement sur son genou. Il est bronzé, botté, et trône tel un sphinx, en vous
dévisageant – bon, simple et ne pouvant être compris que par un Russe vivant en 1936. Le portrait est imprimé
sur du papier et éclairé par la lumière diffuse du soleil...
Sous le plafond, se trouve une lampe, ou plutôt son abat-jour, plat, avec un dessus sombre et un dessous blanc,
en émail, mais sans la lampe à pétrole qui n’a pas encore été déballée. Dans le coin, un autre portrait de facture
similaire, mais, sur la photographie, il a été rayé à l’aide d’un rasoir. On ne voit pas qui est représenté.
See Tarkovski, Récits de jeunesse, 51-52.
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familiar/foreign dichotomy”217 and the focus on half-recollected memories is “borne from a
state of repression; thus inherent in each of these characters is a desire that is manifest in the
surreal presentation of memory.”218 Indeed, dreams and memory for Tarkovsky do have an
irrational nature, but Tarkovsky chooses to leave them without control by not imposing a
single interpretation. Tarkovsky values faith and the irrational and is very wary of technology
and reason and the fragmentation that comes with scientific examinations of the parts and not
the whole in phenomena. It is this loss of the greater whole that Tarkovsky chose to fight
against in his use of long takes and minimal editing, increasingly more so in his mid to later
career. At the same time Tarkovsky also take great pains in his interviews and even some of
his personal writings to reject theoretical and artistic movements that try to rationalize the
inexplicable such as Freudianism, surrealism, the subconscious, and even symbolism.
Freudianism, and likewise Surrealism, attempts to explain the psyche in a premeditated
irrational way which ends up being cerebral and too highly categorizable. In this sense
Symbolism also reduces the inexplicable into direct correlations of meaning between signs
and symbols.
Though Tarkovsky vehemently denied any surrealism or even symbolism in his work,
the notion by Andre Breton of selfhood applies very clearly. In the opening to “Nadja”,
Breton equates the question “Who am I?” to the question “Who am I haunting?”, thus placing
the self outside of the self.
219 The central leitmotif of Tarkovsky’s story can be distilled as
such: who we were is haunted by who we are via the meeting place of photos and memories.
This notion would appear more explicitly in Hoffmaniana before the castle story as
Hoffmann reminisces that his memory may be tricking him into mistaking the past for the
217 Daniel McFadden, “Memory and Being,” Germanic and Slavic Studies in Review 1.1 (2012): 45. 218 Ibid. 219 See Andre Breton “The Haunting,” in The Gothic Reader, 29.
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present.
220 Likewise this short story shared themes with Mirror in obsessing over the memory
of intimacy and avoiding the prototype, making for its own form of haunting.
After more photo descriptions, the story ends with a final moment of unreciprocated
touch between mother and child as the speaker walks his mother to work: “I embrace her, and
she walks away…for now, she feels young.”221 The final moments of a scarf disappearing
into the printing press office acts as a depersonalized image of the mother leaving for work.
In this way the story shows more clearly than any other Tarkovsky work the elevated status
of the image of the beloved rather than the beloved themselves. This coincides with the
constant theme in Tarkovsky of characters touching images of people and figures more
overtly than characters physically touching each other.
Andrei Tarkovsky’s short story takes the ideas of the photograph from both Pasternak
(dynamic motion), Tsvetaeva (elegy), and combines it with his father Arseny Tarkovsky’s
focus on the past interacting with the present as questioning the life-death binary. In this story
as in his most personal film, Tarkovsky essentially distills the huge societal scope of
intergenerational trauma into an interpersonal family drama.
The Haunted Psyche: Gothic Relationships Through Poetry in Mirror
Both haunting and character doubling bleed into the complex picture of Mirror. Much
of the film deals with inter-generational collective memory and how it influences personal
memory. Like Tarkovsky’s earlier short story, Mirror shows photography as a space for
elegy which here coincides with Tarkovsky’s own elegiac monument to his childhood dacha
and his relationships with his own mother and father. Elegiac spaces also appear in dreams
and memories that flash before the viewer with little to no explanation of chronology or
220 Synessios et al, Collected Screenplays, 345. 221 Tarkovski, Récits de jeunesse, 53.
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context. This spectral display of images acts much like remembering vivid scenes from one’s
childhood in the process of the unconscious becoming conscious. In this film the relation to
the self is the primary point of exploration, with family ties radiating outward from the
protagonist Aleksei’s psyche. One other meeting point for these connections comes in the
four poems recited by Arseny Tarkovsky throughout the film.
Tarkovsky went to great lengths during production to reconstruct his haunted
memories, even reconstructing his childhood dacha and dressing actress Maria Terekhova
according to photographs of his mother. This doubling of the mother and actress becomes
further complicated as Tarkovsky cast his real life mother as Aleksei’s old mother in the
present alongside Terekhova’s other role as the ex-wife Natalia. Tarkovsky was just as eager
to soften, or even hide, the personal side to the film in later interviews. He originally wanted
to show his face on camera as the protagonist Aleksei but cut the shot after observations that
it would have made the film too overtly autobiographical. There remains, though, a brief shot
of the director’s bare chest and arm as he releases a bird into the air on Aleksei’s deathbed.
222
Tarkovsky himself said that since the inception of the idea for the film, he had a reoccurring
dream of his dacha. When work on Mirror ceased, so did the dream of the dacha, perhaps
signaling a peace made through creation of the film.
223
Continuing the idea of the Uncanny and Tarkovsky, McFadden uses the image of the
dacha in Mirror as a manifestation of the self and its fragmentation: “Tarkovsky constructs
Aleksei’s character in fragments, fragments that are in tension with one another due to the
temporal distances of different memories […] If each memory is a room, then his entire life is
the house itself, a structure that embodies these experiences.”224 While McFadden says it is a
film of fragmentation, such an idea goes against the very attempts of the film to bridge
222 Johnson and Petrie, A Visual Fugue, 115. 223 Ibid, 136. 224 McFadden, “Memory and Being,” 52.
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temporal-relational gaps to become indistinguishable and bleed into each other as seen in its
doublings as hauntings. Tarkovsky’s narrative structure has an inner and outer world, much
like Henri Bergson’s notion of time (called Duration). This notion does not give way to
fragmentary parsing of time for sake of the whole. This applies to Tarkovsky’s film editing
choices as a “cutting and narrative style that does not call attention to these shifts in time and
realms of reality.”225 Additionally, the mixing of cinema and poetry recitation, of public
archival footage and private family memories, calls on the topic transmediation of media to
be interpreted as a breaking of genre categories much like spirits crossing the life-death
divide.
Mirror merges collective memory and intimate act of memory into a longing for a
return to childhood. Such an idea seemed to plague Tarkovsky in his other works. In the
script to Hoffmaniana, for instance, the apparition of Cavalier Gluck compliments
Hoffmann’s latest prose as a mystical theory of love, to which Hoffmann answers, “…I was
merely seeking to transport you to the world of your childhood impressions, and to see
whether you can perceive a tale as a tale. To do this it is necessary to become a child again.”
Gluck asks what good a return to childhood is if the memories are ones of pain. Hoffman
replies “…Heart wounds received in childhood do not heal, and never become the property of
the grown-up.” He concludes that, whatever the price, one must simply live.
226 As shown in
Tarkovsky’s Mirror, that price to live by returning to an innocent childlike perspective
through art ironically can include a physical death, a turning away from reality. What keeps
the artist alive is the art that inspired the creative output and the memory left by such art free
of presupposition. This ties Tarkovsky’s most personal film to the idea of memory linking
225 Donato Totaro, “Time and Film Aesthetics of Andrei Tarkovsky” Canadian Journal of film Studies vol. 2.
No. 1 (1992): 26. 226 Synessios et al, Collected Screenplays, 361.
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photography as elegiac and haunted by literary influence i.e. the voice of the father and the
touch of the mother.
In Tarkovsky’s short story, photos of the speaker with or without his parents present
display the ambivalent dynamics in the ghostly images of the past which haunt the present.
One photo of the mother and the speaker drenched in sunlight juxtaposes with a photo of the
father standing with a frozen, sad expression next a dead tree; here the two photos show a
physical closeness to the mother and an emotional distance from the father. Another photo
shows father and child together with the speaker remarking how his own ‘tense and confused’
expression sitting on his father’s lap with two children in the background ‘envious’ of being
in physical proximity to the father.
227 Yet another photo is of the father and child swimming
together, an image used in Andrei Andreevich Tarkovsky’s documentary Cinema Prayer
(2019) which shows those early years as ones of a closeness that slowly deteriorated.
Tarkovsky’s films focus on this sense abandonment and esteem of male characters
which, says scholar Helena Goscilo, “overrides all social and political issues.”228 Goscilo’s
essay links the use of poetry in Mirror to the father-son relationship, but puts an even
weightier emphasis on a psycho-oedipal thirst for relationship. This emphasis makes Andrei
Tarkovsky appear to be using his father’ poetry as a means of further connection, which
ultimately fails to connect either of them or flush out the personal trauma of the father leaving
his family. The male figure personified the unknown, a lack/absence, and even an object of
both desire and fetishization.
229 Goscilo, in bringing up the point of this separation, sees the
tone of the poems, mostly loving and ‘exultant’, as undercutting the film’s familial scenes of
resentment and separation.
230 I argue that they in fact show a what is left unsaid in the film,
that the dead and estranged will return to haunt you.
227 Tarkovski, Récits de jeunesse, 50. 228 Goscilo, “Fraught Filiation,” 250. 229 Ibid, 252. 230 Ibid, 263.
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Alongside the centrality of Arseny Tarkovsky’s poetry, the film hosts a wide variety
of literary apparitions: Akhmatova, Pushkin, Rousseau, Dante, Chekhov, and Dostoevsky are
only a few of the illustrious names referenced or mentioned in the fragmented narrative. Most
explicitly these apparitions appear in the scenes of Aleksei’s dark apartment such as when the
mysterious woman resembling Akhmatova commands Ignat the son to read Pushkin’s letter
to Chaadaev aloud, as well as in the argument scene between Aleksei and Natalia with the
following exchange: Aleksei asks, “What does he [your new boyfriend] do?” “He’s a writer.”
Natalia responds. “Not Dostoevsky by any chance?” “Yeah, Dostoevsky.” Though in sharp
jest the two discuss Dostoevsky as if he were alive and a failed writer, and Dostoevsky is one
of the literary ghosts along with Akhmatova and Arseny Tarkovsky’s voice.
Parallels between Tarkovsky the director and Tarkovsky the poet include common
themes of nature as sensual and profound, transcendent potential of the inner self, and
meditations on life beyond life in regard to humanity’s imprint on time. Furthermore, while
they in equal turns focus on the pain of life, they are just as apt to finding ‘sheer happiness in
being alive and being an artist’.
231 In examining all four of Arseny Tarkovsky’s poems used
in the film and their adjacent scenes, one can trace the following poetic images throughout
them: nature (especially the four elements), music (sometimes synonymous with nature),
ordinary life (such as objects or the household), spirituality/transcendence, movement, time
or timelessness, relationships (especially love and family), the figure of the madman (and
iurodivyi), and clothing and/or the naked body. Such images will prove helpful to analyzing
their use in Andrei Tarkovsky’s film.
The only sources available in which Andrei Tarkovsky himself speaks of his father’s
poetry are his published diaries.
232 While he is systematic and eager to discuss the filming
231 Hunter-Blair, “I. Affinities/II. The Poet’s Voice,” in Poetry and Film (Tate, 2014), 34. 232 The translated English edition also contains some of Tarkovsky’s published interviews.
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process in chapter 5 of Sculpting in Time, Andrei Tarkovsky appears more strident and
evasive in his 1975 interview. He decries the claims that his film contains symbolism and
surrealist themes, and makes the claim that the purpose of Mirror is primarily an
autobiographical homily. There is no mention of his father’s poetry.
233
One direct example that Andrei Tarkovsky has left of his process of bringing a poem
to the screen lies in an unfinished idea for a short film. This short film outline, published in
Sculpting in Time, centers around his father’s poem “I Became Ill in Childhood…”, a poem
describing a childhood memory of a hospital. The outline consists of five scenes and five
primary shots. The shots are mostly outdoor and do not directly correspond to the action of
the poem. The only actors are an angel, a father, a son, and a grandson. The poem’s recitation
(by the author himself) is confined to be heard from the beginning of the third shot to the end
of the fourth. The rest of the scenes are enveloped in the finale to Haydn’s Farewell
Symphony.
234 Here appears a sketchpad view of what elements and techniques Andrei
Tarkovsky utilized in dealing with the potential problem of adapting his father’s poems,
including a translation of mood rather than image for image.
Central to each scene/poem is the discourse, and occasional dichotomy, between
poetic speaker and addressee. The lyric “I” has no bounds, but while Arseny Tarkovsky’s
voice acts as a type of omnipresent narrator, the driving characters of speaker and addressee
form an anchor for more complete and concise analysis. Further, Skakov proposes that the
voice of Arseny, while disorienting and purposeful, fulfills its cohesion as the ‘disembodied
voice’ of the film.
235 Furthermore, Arseny Tarkovsky’s voice acts as a disembodied presence
to the drama of the story told in the aftershocks of war.
233 Tarkovsky, Time within Time, 367. 234 Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, 91-93. 235 Skakov, Labyrinths of Time and Space, 108.
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In general, the four poems are elegies in tone but lack any trace of the maudlin or
sentimental usually associated with the genre and instead read as sober, meditative, prayerful,
exultant, and rich in visuals. In addition to the use of these four unabbreviated poems in
Mirror, it is Arseny Tarkovsky himself who recites them. Since these recordings exist thanks
to the film, they are invaluable to analyzing the verses. The disregard or adherence to the line
breaks, the use of enjambments, and the author’s pauses all add an effect and purpose to the
texts. Such effects and purposes reveal their naturalism as well as their quiet depictions of
heightened senses.
Touched in dreams by the ghosts of literary fathers expressed through the queering of
genre. Upon this deeper analysis, one sees that Mirror is an artistic dialogue between father
and son. Several questions arise, then, in relation to the idea of dialogue: why did Tarkovsky
choose this cinematic medium for expressing this dialogue with his father, that is, at the point
of the lyric speaker, the “I” in the poems and film? Why does art enable Andrei Tarkovsky to
speak with (or to) his father? What makes this artistic dialogue different from a face-to-face
conversation?
The point made in the poem “Eurydice” of going from non-being to being also applies
to the visualizations of memory as presented by both Arseny Tarkovsky and Andrei
Tarkovsky. Andrei Tarkovsky does not make his father’s poetry historical like the newsreels,
but collaborative in the sense of seeing his father’s work as contemporary to his own. The
words of the father are given life by the son. Andrei was even more revealing about his own
life and creative process on this film than perhaps he himself realized. Art being the product
of an imperfect world is an idea directly from Dostoevsky.
Under this analysis, Mirror becomes a film of sinister memories during a childhood in
the shadow of War. One succession of cuts reoccurs several times: child at the door, door
creaking open, a disembodied hand almost touching him, a sudden shot and noise of a
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chicken breaking through a window. The ghostly flights of tablecloths and shawls as items
moving of their own volition. The horror and suspense come in not knowing the origin of a
sound or image. This sequence can be further described as uncanny memory, as put by
McFadden: “What Tarkovsky says with these half-memories is that each of them is borne
from a state of repression; thus, inherent in each of these characters is a desire that is manifest
in the surreal presentation of the memory.”236 All four poems have elements of ghosts and
haunting in interpersonal relationships, similar to the romantic trope of embracing the ghost
and rejecting the logical, waking life.
“First Meetings”
In the first scene of the film after the opening credits is already a sense of suspenseful
haunting. As the doctor walks away, Maria looks longingly in his direction, and a gust of
wind blows through the wheat field, resembling an unseen, ghostly presence rushes toward
the viewer. Both this gust of wind and the ensuing poem act as an initiation, as crossing over
into the poetic dream world.
237 Maria turns away from the stranger and the possibility of an
empty tryst. As Maria walks toward the dacha, “First Meetings” rises organically with
Arseny’s recitation, blurring onscreen and off-screen action.
238 As Maria turns to the dacha,
we see in the distance something fall from the windowsill. This falling object is matched later
by a reoccurring black-and-white ‘dream sequence’ of the wind blowing in the forest. In said
sequence there is a disorienting shot of a chicken knocking a piece of glass from a window.
Nature, then, appears in connection, or conjunction, with the sublime (ex. water, birds, skies,
woods), along with the modernist theme of transformation and life-creation through love and
236 McFadden, “Memory and Being,” 45. 237 Skakov, Labyrinths of Time and Space, 111. 238 Hunter-Blair, “I. Affinities/II. The Poet’s Voice,” 38.
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poetry. One may cite references to Pasternak’s poetry, that of lyric nature and human
suffering, or even personifying humanity through melancholy nature: a jug, eyes, mirages,
birds, ‘hard, thick water’.
239 The movement of the speaker and his beloved match the slow,
languid movements of the camera, with the image of the beloved, lighter than a bird’s wing,
slowly becoming the poem’s heralding birds that escort the two lovers and the chicken in the
window.
The elegiac form and content of the poem comes from some added personal
information. The poet’s daughter, Marina Arsenievna, claims the impulse to write “First
Meetings” and some twenty other poems came in 1932 when Arseny Tarkovsky heard news
of the death of his former sweetheart, Marina Gustavovna Faltz.
240 When going through her
father’s archives, Tarkovskaya found a thin notebook titled “As Forty Years Before (1940 –
1969)”. The notebook contained eight handwritten poems in memory of Faltz, among them
“First Meetings” and “Eurydice”.
241 Tarkovskaya elaborated that Marina Faltz was a widow
of an officer who died in the Russian Civil War. Arseny Tarkovsky was passionately in love
with this older woman, despite being many years her junior. They eventually parted ways for
unknown reasons, but Faltz continued to be one of Arseny’s muses for the rest of his life,
even more so after her death from tuberculosis.
242 If the poems are indeed dedicated to Faltz,
then “First Meetings” can be considered an elegiac piece.
Otherworldly in its exposition, the first poem wanders through a semi-dreamed
description of seeing the beloved in various settings and movements: rushing down a flight of
stairs, sleeping on a throne, and awakening before his eyes. As the beloved, she transforms
the world around herself and the speaker, setting them at the forefront of creation in a
239 Alexander Smith, “Andrei Tarkovsky as Reader,” Russian Review (2004): 51. 240 Marina Tarkovskaya, “Arsenii Tarkovskii: Kratkaia biografiia,” in Izbrannaia lirika (Feniks, 1998), 8. 241 Marina Tarkovskaia, Oskolki zerkala (Vagrius, 2006), 272. 242 See Marina Tarkovskaya, “Menia shokirovala nadpis’” Moskovskii komsomolets (2004). These dedications
to Faltz are also supported by scholar Kitty Hunter-Blair (see introduction to Poetry and Film).
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fantastic procession reminiscent of Botticelli or Da Vinci. Fate, however, steals in at the end,
‘like a madman with razor in hand’. In terms of literary influences, “First Meetings” has a
few echoes of works by Arseny’s contemporaries, most notably Pasternak’s “The Meeting”
(1949), a poem about a male speaker marveling at his lover during a snowstorm, and
Mandelshtam’s “an inexplicable sorrow…” (1913), where sorrow opens its eyes and splashes
the room with its crystal.
A ghostly memory from childhood appears after “First Meetings” to a shot of child
Aleksei sleeping in bed. The wind blows through the trees and the color changes to black and
white. This specific shot repeats three times throughout the film, each time getting longer and
longer. He sits up and whispers the word "Papa!" He jumps out of the brass bed as the scene
changes to the husband pouring water over Maria's head. Her hair, like the roots of a tree,
spreads out on the surface of a basin of water, concealing her face. She slowly rises and
shakes her hands, as behind her the walls run with rain and the ceiling plaster slowly crashes
to the floor, signaling the transfiguring of object by the beloved. For Andrei Tarkovsky,
female sexuality is often linked with long, loose hair.
243 Is this a fetishism of the beloved? Is
it a child-like voyeurism?
In terms of the scene and ghostly doubling, as the rain falls inside the room, Maria
walks slowly past a watery mirror and stone wall and looks off screen, curiously. A mirror is
now in the center of the room, reflecting both a translucent landscape and an old woman
approaching it. Is this the landscape of the poem’s penultimate stanza, now visited only by
the beloved, Maria? The woman (played by Tarkovsky’s real life mother Maria
Vishnyakova) reaches out her hand and sweeps over the reflection. An immediate cut goes to
a fading picture of a hand in front of a fire, illuminated red, the warm hand of the beloved.
243 Johnson and Petrie, A Visual Fugue, 220.
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Like a literary father to the literary father, references to the works of psalmist King
David appear in a few other of Arseny Tarkovsky’s poems.
244 Likewise, veiled sexual/erotic
images run parallel to liturgical references, such as the opened altar gates which suggest a
woman’s open thighs. There is mention of nakedness ‘inclining in the dark’ and the beloved
sleeping on a ‘throne’. The line ‘And—righteous Lord!—you were my own’ suggests the
breathtaking moment of arousal leading to the next image of the beloved awakening and
transforming the everyday, as in the hypersensitivity of the torrid moment. Johnson and
Petrie cite this poem as being about the ‘joys and transforming power of love and sexual
passion’.
245 While this poem relates to sexuality as well as spirituality, the speaker is never
explicit about a moment of touch between himself and his beloved. In fact, the only explicit
image of touch is from the second stanza, when the lilac strains to touch the beloved’s eyelids
‘with the cosmic blue’. Arseny Tarkovsky’s reading does become more impassioned as the
poem goes on, culminating at the last full stanza “and the skies unfurled before our eyes”,
then slowing down in the last couplet, matching the subtle dynamics of a sexual encounter.
Ultimately, the poem’s jubilant tone leads to a final turn in a couplet of sober remembrance,
ending the speaker’s visual journey: While behind us fate tread on our heels/Like a madman
brandishing a razor246 (Kogda sud’ba po sledu shla za nami,/kak sumasshedshii s britvoiu v
ruke). ‘Idti po sledu’, a fixed phrase in Russian meaning ‘to go in step’ or ‘to pursue’, bears a
sinister connotation. Therefore, there had to be a phrase in English for this trailing with
harmful intentions, such as ‘to tread on someone’s heels’, a more exact, though not literal,
translation. In the end, it is the appearance of the madman’s razor that reigns most sinister.
The shot of an illumined hand leads to Aleksei’s dark apartment bedroom with the sound of a
phone ringing. Aleksei answers it and begins an off-screen conversation with his mother,
244 Hunter-Blair, Poetry and Film, 222. 245 Johnson and Petrie, A Visual Fugue, 117. 246 All English translations of Arseny Tarkovsky’s poems are my own.
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Maria. He tells her he just had a dream from his childhood, when the neighbor's had a fire
explaining the previous segment as possibly being part of Aleksei's dream. Maria says the fire
was back in 1935, the same year Aleksei's father left. This connection of events and dream to
waking life creates a curious sense of haunting as the camera slowly works its way from
empty room to empty room with the off-screen voices having a telephone conversation like
disembodied ghosts returning to a familiar place. The further connection between childhood
memory and the father’s abandonment places a weighted emphasis on the father’s absence in
the mother-son conversation which reveals itself to be a strained one as it goes on.
“Since Morning I Waited for You Yesterday…”
The printing press sequence accompanying this poem is prompted by the mother’s
phonecall with Aleksei telling him of her colleague Liza’s death. Here Dostoevsky and
doubling by way of resembling literary characters shows itself as a starting off point for
characters conflict amidst a gothic Soviet setting: in the flashback, at their claustrophobic and
dimly lit office, Lisa comforts Maria, then comments that she looks like Maria Timofeyevna
Lebyadkina, a character in Dostoevsky's Demons. In said novel, Maria is an invalid who
orders around her alcoholic brother, Captain Lebyadkin, who in turn beats her. Lebyadkina is
considered by some scholars to be one of Dostoevsky’s iurodivyi (holy fool) characters due
to her simple-minded intuitiveness.
247 Lisa launches into a criticism about Maria's marriage,
how she ordered her ex-husband around, and how he was lucky to escape. At the onslaught of
Liza’s criticism, the camera shoots a close-up on Maria’s shocked face, her tearstained eyes,
and her twisted, gaping mouth. A reverse shot goes to Liza, who takes out a handkerchief as
her eyes well with tears at the mention of Maria’s children. The final, puzzling line of the
247 Hunter-Blair, Poetry and Film, 43.
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poem, with its futile word and handkerchief, finds its way into this outburst brought about by
shot nerves. Maria, now emotionless, goes to take a shower, telling Liza to stop playing the
fool (the verb she uses—iurodstvovat’—comes from the same root as iurodivyi, the holy
fool).
248 Maria takes a shower, adding a visual nakedness to the nakedness of the beloved in
“First Meetings”. As she does so the pipes shut off, contradicting the hair-washing scene in
being unable to bathe without her husband.
249 She laughs and cries all at once. An immediate
cut to color shows a bonfire in the middle of the field as the screen goes black.
The figure of the madman, as argued by Hunter-Blair, is elusive and inconclusive
looking at the poem alone, which leads one to see Maria as in the Tarkovskian mold of
‘iurodivyi’ characters.
250 This characterization of the iurodivyi can be both speaker and
addressee, that is, the voice of Arseny (the real-life absent husband) and Maria (in the film).
A subtle connection to this idea of the female holy fool occurs in a later scene, when the son,
Ignat, looks at an old art book of Leonardo Da Vinci prints. He stops at a page depicting a
female ascetic being borne into the air by angels (apparently St. Mary of Egypt). The music
of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater hums quietly in the background.
Character doubling appears in the real life of the narrative between mother and exwife: The bonfire shot which appears to interrupt the scene hearkens back to the fire of “First
Meetings”, and links to the Old Testament images of the burning bush appearing to Moses.
This biblical reference is found in a later scene (though it is phrased as an Angel appearing to
Moses, mixing with the New Testament annunciation). In this later scene we witness an
argument between Aleksei and his ex-wife, Natalia, over custody of their son, Ignat. Natalia
(also played by Terekhova) hangs her head and wonders why such an appearance of burning
angel never happens to her. If we take Maria as the iurodivyi, then she, not Natalia, has seen
248 Ibid, 43. 249 Skakov, Labyrinths of Time and Space, 118. 250 Hunter-Blair, Poetry and Film, 44.
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both this burning bush and this messenger angel in her own life, within the confines of her
country dacha. This supplanting of biblical iconography to a familiar landscape appears in
other Andrei Tarkovsky films (most notably the crucifixion scene in Andrei Rublev).
As intuited by Johnson and Petrie, the printing press scene captures well the Stalinist
atmosphere of ‘suspicion, terror, mistrust, and repression’, especially in depicting the
psychological strain and mood swings of the proofreaders.
251 Thus the insertion of Arseny
Tarkovsky’s poem, tied by the idea of the madman/iurodivyi, acts as an incomprehensible but
effective oasis of memory, and a specter of intimate words which haunts Maria through the
halls.
In stark contrast to “First Meetings”, the second poem is untitled and consists of
only nine lines split into two stanzas of four and one separate final line ending with an
ellipsis. The subject centers around a speaker quietly describing how his beloved and he
could not meet when the weather was good ‘like a holiday’, but only when it was overcast
and rainy. The meter is in near consistent amphibrachic lines of three feet each (˘¯ ˘˘ ¯ ˘˘ ¯ ˘˘
¯ ). ‘Near’ consistent due to the pattern break at the seventh line phrase ‘late hour/pozdnii
chas’, showing special attention to the disruption of the meter coinciding with the disruption
of the speaker’s ideal meeting.
252 The raindrops through the tree branches mark both the
weather and the sensual touching of objects in the last line, neither of which can erase the
poor feelings of the thwarted ideal moment.
The mysterious last line, similar to the unsettling end couplet of “First Meetings”,
hints at a pessimistic turn of thinking, further fragmented by Arseny Tarkovsky’s recorded
pause: “No word can stop it, / no kerchief can wipe it away…” (Ni slovom uniat’,/ni platkom
uteret’…). The haunting otherworldly comes in this use of ‘they’ is especially ambiguous and
251 Johnson and Petrie, A Visual Fugue, 121. 252 Skakov, Labyrinths of Time and Space, 230.
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ominous due to its function as an ‘anaphoric pronoun’. In Russian, pronouns can be omitted.
Thus, if a pronoun is explicitly used (as it is in this poem), it denotes something or someone
known by both speaker and addressee. This double use of pronouns is virtually impossible to
translate. In the case of the poem, there is an inherent madness to the use of ‘they’ by the
speaker who assumes that the ‘you’ he speaks to is aware of the identity of ‘they’. Such
linguistic ambiguity adds another dimension to Arseny’s remark that the speaker is a
psychiatric patient. Arseny Tarkovsky recites all nine lines of “Since Morning I Waited for
You Yesterday” As Maria walks down the hallway in the printing press sequence.
Skakov cites this shot as neither action nor inaction since its ‘laconic qualities’ match
the brief poem and place it past diegetic interpreting.
253 Smith in turn has very little to say
about this poem, but cites the poetic images of rain, weeping, and failed meetings. Nature
appears in the descriptions of weather, and music as the raindrops running through the
branches, like the rain throughout the scene. The line, “…I went out without a coat”, refers to
both the coat of the speaker and Maria’s rain-soaked coat. It also hints to the recurring poetic
image of the body disrobed. Maria’s rain-soaked hair finds its link with the hair-washing
scene from scene 1.
254 The movement of speaker and addressee toward each other is being
blocked by the ambiguous ‘they’. Time is a force against the speaker, just as time has Maria
in a vice-grip. There is a timelessness of a psychiatric ward and perhaps a commentary of the
timelessness in the endless work of the Soviet machine. The poem centers on a failed but
hoped for meeting, the scene centers on a failed but dreaded catastrophe.
255
The personal circumstances surrounding its inception, however, remain unknown.
Arseny Tarkovsky himself briefly mentions this poem in his posthumously published prose
253 Ibid, 118. 254 Ibid, 115. 255 Hunter-Blair, Poetry and Film, 44.
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piece “What Constitutes My Understanding of Poetry” (c.1940s-1950s, published in 1991),
mid-discussion of a poet’s peculiarity:
The ancient idea "the poet is a prophet is a madman," is based on the fact that the
poet is peculiar, like a madman, and an exceptional choice. Consider this type of
story: "In the morning I was waiting for you yesterday" A phrase of a patient in a
psychiatric clinic is simply translated in this poem, similar to a translation from a
foreign language into Russian—something already given is rendered in verse.256
The above comment makes the poem even more mysterious, raising more questions
than providing answers. Who, then, could be the female recipient of these ghostly lines? If
the speaker of the poem is a patient in a psychiatric ward, is the female ‘you’ his memory or
his hallucination? Are ‘they’ the doctors and other patients, telling him she won’t come?
Such images call to mind Gogol’s “Diary of a Madman” or Chekhov’s “Ward Six” (a story
mentioned in the first scene Mirror) with a figure of a poetic and dreamy man put in an
institution. This poem emerges as a shard of the past as well as the present, reminiscent of the
Romantic fascination with the idea of the fragment text as well as the modernist fixation on
the esoteric.
“Life, Life”
The third poem is the most philosophically dense of the four and the only one to deal
directly with war as a subject matter. Along with a consistent “walking” rhythm of iambic
256 Arsenii Tarkovskii, “Chto vkhodid,” in Sobr. Soch. (1991), 201: Starinnoe predstavlenie: “poet — prorok —
bezumets” stroitsia na tom, chto poetu svoistvenna, kak i bezumtsu, iskliuchitel'nost' vybora. Takova istoriia: “S
utra ia tebia dozhidalsia vchera” (fraza bol'nogo v psikhiatricheskoi klinike v etom stikhotvorenii prosto
perevedena, podobno perevodu s inostrannogo iazyka na russkii, — nechto uzhe dannoe izlozheno stikhami).
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lines and an array of technical vocabulary, the poem holds themes of a more overt dialogue
with the Second World War. Older more renaissance images and allusions appear alongside
contemporary war images, giving the speaker a historical command and a point of view as
from eternity. With Arseny Tarkovsky’s rhythmic reading, these verses become a war ballad,
a poetic monologue, and a rumination on the span of the centuries. The poem speaks of war
memories of marching with comrades and the meeting of generations under the declaration
that death does not exist’ the divide between life and death is no more, echoed in the use of
archival footage of WWII soldiers crossing the Sivash River.
Alongside this poem come Aleksei’s memory of cadet school: The shot of the redhaired girl and her bloody lip suddenly switches in and out of Soviet news reels of soldiers,
both clothed and naked, trying to cross a river. The sounds of feet wading in the river
combine with timpani beats and a hushed choir. The newsreels are of the Lake Sivash
crossing of 1943. Arseny Tarkovsky’s begins to recite his poem on the interconnections
between earthly life and immortality, and the span of time. These themes contrast with the
war footage commonly associated with death, suffering, and the brevity of time. Andrei
Tarkovsky himself stated that “Life, Life”, with its images of immortality, acted as the
consummation of the newsreels because it ‘gave voice to its ultimate meaning’.257 Skakov
calls this sequence, the ‘most remarkable combination of Arseni [sic] Tarkovsky’s poetry and
Andrei Tarkovsky’s cinematic techniques’. Preexisting footage is made fresh and living by its
careful matching with the contemporary recitation. Furthermore, the topic of human suffering
is shown to be general due to the displacement of the newsreels from their historical context
(the audience does not immediately know the when, where, or why). These newsreels also act
as a ‘collective memory’ which contrasts to the subjective memories of Aleksei and Maria.
258
257 Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, 130. 258 Skakov, Labyrinths of Time and Space, 122.
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Indeed it is startling to imagine how the soldiers who wade the Sivash couple so well with
Arseny Tarkovsky’s poem of those who are at the shores, net in hand, waiting for the shoal of
immortality.
This scene appears the most removed from the "storyline" of the family as it deals
with the undercurrent of military history. However, after the long interlude of war footage,
we go, quite unexpectedly, to a scene were Aleksei’s father returns. After a shot of Maria
(Terekhova), looking off camera then turning away, we see Aleksei, his sister, Marina, and
the father embracing in tearful silence. We hear a loud recitative from Bach's St. Matthew's
Passion, told at the moment of Christ’s death: "And behold, the curtain in the temple was rent
in two, and the earth shook, and the rocks split..." We see a close up and zoom-out of
Leonardo De Vinci's painting "Genevra de Benci" (c.1474), a portrait of a woman who bears
an uncanny resemblance to Maria and her complex stare of resentment and regret. Andrei
Tarkovsky, in his discussion of the use of this painting, calling it “at once attractive and
repellent” and a good introduction of a timeless element and a juxtaposition of portrait and
heroine, “to emphasize in her…the same capacity at once to enchant and repel…”259 At the
beginning of the discussion, Tarkovsky also mentions the ability of Da Vinci’s portrait, like
the works of Bach or Tolstoy, to examine an object from outside and above. These austere
principles of observation apply to his view of Arseny Tarkovsky’s “Life, Life”. It is a poem
that looks down on the ages as well as inward, forming the perfect complement to the
newsreels, the orphaned Afasiev, and the father’s jarring return.
Despite the frigid climate coupled with Aleksei’s youthful longing of the training
scene, the poem that complements it is not even subtly sexual. The only anatomical terms,
such as ‘clavicles’ and ‘putting on an epoch’ as one chooses and puts on a coat and raising
one’s five digits, are all on a displaced set of descriptions across the stanzas of the poem. If a
259 Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, 108.
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body appears in this poem, it is one that is active and linked to the support of humanity as a
whole, not reclining or inclining as in “First Meetings”. “Life, Life”, which couples with the
movement of the troops and the newsreel footage, also speaks of time and timelessness,
humanity’s relationship to mortality and transcending mortality. Hunter-Blair finds a rhythm
to the subject of specific lines and the cuts of the newsreel shots. For example, when the
poem speaks of clavicles as prop-ups the news reel shows men marching with heavy loads in
their backs.
260
Concerning death and its non-existence, “Life, Life” begins by playing on a strict
confinement of words, such as in the lines “There is only reality and light, / no darkness, no
death at all on this earth” (est’ tol’ko iav’ i svet,/ni t’my, ni smerti net nae tom svete.) The
Russian word ‘svet’ is a homophone for ‘light’ and ‘world’ and has phonetic similarities to
the word ‘death’ (smert’). The speaker also plays off an idea similar to the Orthodox
theological point of death as not an entity on its own, for death was not in the world before
the fall of man, and is no longer in the world after Christ’s incarnation. More relevant to
Tarkovsky, death is only a transformation into another world that comes to the living in
dreams and memories. In connection to Hoffmaniana, at one point the real Hoffmann says
that he fears death, to which his double replies, “there is no reason to fear death.’261
As the poem meanders from the trumpet calls of the first stanza, its next two
sections burst with unexpected complexity and technical terminology not commonly used in
poetry. The second section goes into the speaker’s declaration of generational and human
solidarity, where ‘great-grandfather shares a table with grandson’. This reference to a shared
table also comes from the psalms, specifically the 127th: “Thy sons [shall be] like young olive
trees round about thy table”. This solidarity which revolves around the speaker, regardless of
260 Hunter-Blair, Poetry and Film, 49. 261 Synessios et al, Collected Screenplays, 365.
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century, is also the hearth that ensures the security of the house, making the meal shared a
communion of fire.
One stanza, in need of both untwisting and explanation, is a good example of
‘unpoetic’ words: Every day of the past, like shoring,/ I propped up by my clavicles,/I
measured time with a geodesic chain/And passed through it, as through the Urals” (Ia
kazhdyi den’ minuvshego, kak krep’iu,/kliuchitsami svoimi podpiral,/Izmeril vremia
zemlemernoi tsep’iu/i skvoz’ nego proshel, kak skvoz’ Ural.) Architectural and anatomical
terms in this section include a ‘geodesic chain’ (zemlemernaia tsep’). This word is an actual
eighteenth-century land surveyor’s instrument, and ‘krep’ ’ is a term for shoring or timber
scaffolds. Later enters the phrase ‘vse piat’ luchei’ containing the word ‘luch’ which can
mean either ray (of light), radius (of the arm) or even digits (of the hand) thus adding to the
multiplicity and ambiguity of the ghostly image of the speaker’s morphing hand.
The third and final section seems to telescope the action from the monumental to the
individual. The beginning section’s declarations against death have led to a passage on a
more personal and quieter musing, as if in a memory:
I put on an epoch, according to my height.
We were marching south, kicking dust over the steppe;
The wild grass fumed; a grasshopper played around,
Touched some horseshoes with his antenna,
and prophesied, threatening me with death, like a monk.262
262 Ia vek sebe po rostu podbiral./My shli na iug, derzhali pyl’ nad step’iu;/Bur’ian chadil; kuznechik
baloval,/podkovy trogal usom, I prorochil,/ I gibel’iu grozil mne, kak monakh.
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Transmutable gothic forms of the Other link in a sidewise manner to Dostoevsky.
The second line ‘My shli na iug, derzhali pyl’ nad step’iu suggests a memory of an army
marching since the verb of motion used here denotes being on foot (this allusion could be the
memories of Arseny Tarkovsky’s wartime fighting at the front bleeding into the text). But the
strange appearance of a grasshopper playing around and transforming into a prophesying and
doom-saying being brings in an element of the supernatural, the otherworldly. The
grasshopper is traditionally associated with music, poetry, and the Greek god Apollo,
263 but
one can see in this insect an air of the iurodivyi. The iurodivyi, or holy fool, is a prominent
figure in Russian devotional culture, with erratic actions and spiritual insights. One could say
that the iurodivyi acts as the court jester in the heavenly order of saints, with strange riddles
and blunt sayings. This bluntness was directed to the ungodly, usually the noblemen and
rulers of the Russian lands. This character of the holy fool finds itself in Russian literature as
well, most notably in the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Arseny Tarkovsky himself wrote a
poem titled “The Iurodivyi in 1918” (1962), a deceptively nonsensical speech from a holy
fool about the executed Tsar Nicholas II. Likewise, Andrei Tarkovsky incorporated the holy
fool into the heroes of his late films, such as Stalker and Sacrifice.
The speaker counters the grasshopper’s prophesying by holding onto his epoch’s fate,
‘standing, like a boy, in the stirrups’. He then decides ultimately that, despite outward signs
of death and displacement, his epoch measured to his height is the one he can bear best. The
finishing couplet takes the trumpeting out of the previous two sections by expressing the
speaker’s longing for stability: If only life’s flying needle didn’t take/me, like a thread, across
the world (kogda b ee letuchaia igla/Menia, kak nit’, po svetu ne vela). Similar to “First
Meetings” and “Since Morning I Waited for You…”, “Life, Life” ends in an ironic turn,
263 Hunter-Blair, Poetry and Film, 209.
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delivered subtly and gracefully without imposition. Despite its gracefulness, the ending has
an entrapment that contrasts to the freedom and expanse at the poem’s beginning.
The poem’s dedicatee, according to writer-poet Evdokiya Olshanskaya, is the Russian
poet Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966); Akhmatova and Arseny Tarkovsky were close friends
since 1946.
264 The historic command present in “Life, Life” is matched and surpassed in
Akhmatova’s poetry, most notably in “Requiem” (c. 1935-1940). Although he would later
write a poetic cycle in memory of her, Arseny Tarkovsky appears to pay homage to her work
in this poem. He even stated that her later poems were a prophetic vision of the future.
265
“Life, Life” reflects Akhmatova’s vision in the breadth of knowledge and experience it
instills upon the reader and its shifts between the historic and the personal.
At the poem’s description of the prophesying grasshopper, the shot changes to a
composed panorama of the snow-covered hillside dotted with children at play, reminiscent of
the painter Pieter Brueghel the Elder.
266 The mood, however, is not innocent. The orphan
Asafyev stumbles uphill in the foreground, and approaches the camera into a close-up. He
whistles with tears in his eyes then looks away. A newsreel shot of an explosion follows. The
figure of the madman, in the form of the grasshopper prophesying death, is further amplified
by the images of war and their damage to the young psyche.
“Eurydice”
“Eurydice”, the last of the four poems, is again dedicated to Faltz, as attested by
Marina Tarkovskaya. While Arseny Tarkovsky appears to be mourning the loss of his first
love, he hides the fact excellently by tying the verses with a broader concern.
264 Evdokiia Olshanskaya, “Dvukh golosov pereklichka,” Zerkalo nedeli (2002). 265 Hunter-Blair, Poetry and Film, 30. 266 Johnson and Petrie, A Visual Fugue, 125.
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“Eurydice” is the most formally conventional: five stanzas of eight lines each and a
strict iambic tetrameter with alternating rhymes (save four lines in the second stanza). These
narrow confines carry a weighty concern for metaphysics and lyrical descriptions. Along with
the classical Grecian imagery as hinted at by the title comes imagery of the late nineteenth
century, such as the last stanza’s ‘copper hoop’ which children would chase with a stick as a
game. All of these structural and thematic elements, topped with the classical Greek
connotation, make the poem a bit esoteric. When read by Tarkovsky himself, however, the
elusive text of images and ideas sounds simple and airy, almost like a folk song. Ultimately
this poem focuses on ghosts and transformation, even transmutation, of forms as inanimate
objects move in the accompanying visuals. Romantic language becomes encoded in the
language of the spectral as the Eurydice of the title hearkens back to the archetypal story from
classical antiquity of lost love. From the poetic speaker, be he Orpheus or otherwise, comes a
plea not to feel nostalgia for lost identity: “run, child, and do not lament over poor Eurydice”.
Johnsons and Petrie claim that Andrei Tarkovsky makes no effort to match the poetic
images of the final poem with its cinematic presentation but focuses on similar ideas of the
soul being trapped in an indispensable body.
267 The circular images of a wheel and a copper
hoop signal a continuation and even a back-looping of the poems to the narrative of the film.
Smith states that in the poem creativity becomes the fluidity of identity and life’s perpetual
renewal. Skakov calls this sequence, as well as the accompanying poem, a simultaneous
celebration and lament which expounds on the centrality of childhood and death for the film,
with the unconventional sequence of shots as a way of touching the infinite.
268
“Eurydice” introduces in its first stanza the relationship between the soul and the body. The
word ‘odinochka’ derives from ‘odno’ or the neuter term for ‘one’, thus it refers to the body,
267 Ibid, 259. 268 Skakov, Labyrinths of Time and Space, 130, 132.
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not the man. ‘Man has but one body’, and the soul can no longer bear the state of its partner:
scarred skin on bones. In the second stanza the soul appears to momentarily find respite from
its confines, flying through the cornea of the eye into the fantastic (or as the poem calls it,
‘the icy wheel spoke of the bird-drawn chariot’). The third stanza further elaborates on the
tension of the body-soul relationship in citing the paradox of the soul being incomplete, even
useless, without the body (a point echoed by Orthodox theology). Then the poem poses a
‘riddle without a key’: Who will return again/having danced on that stage/Where there’s no
one left to dance? (Kto vozratitsia vspiat’, spliasav na toi ploshchadke,/gde nekomu
pliasat’?). This riddle is also linguistically ambiguous in the last line, where the use of dative
is either the recipient of the dance or the dancer himself. There is a desolation of the spaces
that are no longer filled with people, and the keyless riddle, the speaker’s echoed quandary,
goes unanswered.
Haunting and mutability come in the poem’s fourth stanza which presents a sudden
turn of thinking: the speaker dreams of ‘another soul in other clothing’. This enigmatic soul
erupts in the imagery of transitory fire which both purifies and destroys, ‘flickering from
timidity to hope’. Before it departs it leaves as a souvenir ‘lilacs on the table’, as a fire leaves
scars or burns. The beginning is the speaker’s address to a nameless child: “Run, child, don’t
lament/Over poor Eurydice,/And with a stick/roll your bronze hoop around the world…”
(Ditia, begi, ne setui/nad Evredikoi bednoi/i palochkoi po svetu/goni svoi obruch mednyi…).
The ironic turn of losses, so subtle in the denouements of the three previous poems,
are now the centerpiece of this poem. This centralization of loss and elegy is especially felt in
its title of the tragic heroine Eurydice, who was separated from her husband Orpheus when he
tried to free her from the underworld. The last image, of the earth sounding in the ears of the
boy, suggests the beginning of music. Since Orpheus was so grand a musician he could hear
nature’s music. This sound of the earth, then, means being alive and of the living, whether
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one knows it or not, unlike Eurydice who now resides in Hades or Orpheus who was, for a
time, separated from the realm of the living.
Touch and haunting memory trigger a scene of gothic haunting and even sensual
escapism: after killing the rooster from the doctor’s wife, Maria smiles slightly, then looks
straight at the screen, the lighting cast from underneath and water cascading down the wall
behind her (Andrei Tarkovsky said that this was the only shot he regretted leaving in the final
cut as it was ‘too obvious’).
269 Water runs down the walls, similar to the hair-washing scene.
As if in a sudden reverie, a shot/reverse shot changes to a black-and-white close-up of
Maria's husband shirtless. He looks directly at the screen, then turns to stroke the hand of a
sleeping Maria. The shot draws back slowly to reveal Maria floating above her bed, her long
hair flowing, hearkening back to both the hair-washing and the beloved of “First Meetings”
sleeping on a throne. Her off-screen voice mentions how she only sees her husband whenever
she is not well (a reference to the second poem’s non-ideal meeting). A dove flies above her,
her soul flying to the well of heaven (as in “Eurydice”). Her husband's voice calls to her, as
she is in a feverish sleep. "Don't you understand," answers Maria’s voice, "I love you."
This segment of fantasy acts as the ripple of the previous poems as well as to the
poem about to come. Maria appears ghostly, almost dead, and echoes the plight of Eurydice
in Hades. Her husband calling to her acts as the attempt of Orpheus. Previous references to
desires, such as the red-haired girl in Aleksei's thoughts from scene 3, become amplified by
the appearance of the absent husband in Maria’s reverie. Both are distant dreams that will
never be realized but forever remembered, and are called to mind either in preparation of
killing (training scene) or after (the rooster’s off-screen decapitation). The final statement of
love Maria preceeded by asking if her husband understands also points to the subtle theme of
269 Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, 109.
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the gulf of unknowability between men and women (a theme given more centrality in
Nostalghia).The dream ends as Maria and Aleksei hurriedly leave Nadezhda’s dacha.
The shot lingers on Maria before the poem continues in the third stanza with the
appearance of its ‘riddle without a key’. The black-and-white dream of the wind blowing
through the trees and knocking items off the table appears for the third and final time in a
slightly modified version (there are more items on the table and a bird is seen flying among
the trees). The flowers left on this table links back to “First Meetings” as well as the dream of
wind and the table. Music as the trumpets of the seven seas and the earth sounding in the
boy’s ears now manifest as the lasting sounds of wind after the poem’s recitation.
What ends the recitation of the poem can be considered one of the most eerie and
breathtakingly beautiful moments of Tarkovsky’s haunted picture of childhood. The last shot
in the sequence shows the child Aleksei entering the dacha. Inside white illuminated linens
hang on clotheslines and billow in the dark. Such billowing makes the sheets resemble spirits
of the dead where Orpheus entered in search of Eurydice. The shot weaves through the linens
to a mirror, which reflects Aleksei as he drinks tentatively from a pitcher full of milk. A dog
barks, and young Aleksei pauses in remembrance of the bark coming before the fire in scene
1.
Hunter-Blair says that “Eurydice” is about poetry itself. It is a reflection on human
limitations and the power of the imagination to escape them. The ‘stage’ for dancing
mentioned in “Eurydice” is the place where poetry comes into being, which lies in non-being.
Like Orpheus, only those who are willing to take poetry from non-being to being are those
who return. There is a further paradox: the only way Eurydice will come into the realm of the
day is by Orpheus’ descent into the depths of night. Orpheus, however, longs for her in that
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darkness in which he himself cannot stay. Ultimately, what Orpheus brings back with him is
not Eurydice herself, but his memory of her as she was in that darkness.
270
The poetic addressee of the speaker, though, is neither Eurydice nor poetry itself. It is
the boy who runs off from lamenting over Eurydice. If the speaker is Orpheus, or someone
familiar with his story, then his instruction to run through the earth and abandon lamentation
resembles a poet instructing the young not to write poetry for fear of having to go to that
place of non-being, of darkness, and losing the sound of the living earth. This poet, though he
be adamant that none follow his example, possesses a subtle wisdom that if one follows him
and succeeds in bringing poetry into being, one will hear the earth more fully and love it even
more after a long separation. The boy as poetic addressee is also matched in Andrei
Takrovksy’s shift of focus which travels from young Maria (Terekhova) to child Aleksei to
elderly Maria (Vishnyakova). Much like the framing of his father’s poetry within the scenes,
the appearance of Aleksei is framed within Maria’s past and present. At the end of the film,
which is the true end scene 4, past and present converge as Vishnyakova walks with the child
Aleksei and his sister through the countryside of their past as the young mother and husband
are together at the dacha and the abandoned Maria stands smoking in the distance. The last
childhood dream begins with a mother’s feverish reverie and ends with her wrinkled reality.
Conclusion
If we recall how Andrei Tarkovsky had wanted to write a letter to his father
explaining his grievances (see chapter 2), the film acts as an extension of that letter since
montage is writing ‘in cinematic terms’.
271 Mirror is Andrei’s letter to his father, as well as a
‘poetic tribute to his [father’s] founding influence’.
272 The terror and wonder of childhood
270 Hunter-Blair, Poetry and Film, 55. 271 Smith, “Tarkovsky as Reader,” 51. 272 Ibid, 59.
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filters through an adult perspective by means of poeticism and the lyrical “I” of father and
son alike. Arseny and Andrei Tarkovsky had marked difficulties in prompting an honest
conversation about their shared grievances. The meeting place of their dialogue is found in
their work, in the lyrical “I” of the poems and the subjectivity of the film. Andrei himself said
in an interview that if the world were perfect art would be of no use. Man would be living in
harmony, not striving for it.
273 Art, then, allows memories and dreams to be seen, since
memory is the thing in between realities and dreams.
274 Art enables one to see the world
through another’s eyes and express the world’s imperfection and ultimate perfection.
In bringing attention to the otherworldly in Tarkovsky’s gothic, Hoffmaniana and
Mirror show the eerie, elegiac doubling and haunted encounters in Andrei Tarkovsky’s
conceptions of space and relationships. Of their many similarities, both Hoffmaniana and
Mirror end with a deathbed scene. The final scene of Hoffmaniana, for instance, is
Hoffmann’s deathbed, surrounded by the doctor and Frau Hoffmann. They press heated rods
to his bare back, but he has lost all sensation. Hoffmann brings his final moments into the
topic of transcending gender and reality as he mentions weakly that he did not give his
reflection to a woman, but ‘to her’. The doctor asks perplexingly “to her, but not a woman?”
then children’s voices come from another room, and Hoffmann cannot distinguish between
girls and boys. Hoffmann exclaims as his last line, “…Now I understand who I am…At
last…”275 after being told that the children have come to hear one of his stories. As the room
darkens, he turns to see his imaginary friends in the mirror, then sees a woman with dark hair
and a ribbon, but he cannot tell who it is. “He merely feels that he never knew a face that was
nearer and dearer to him, more kind and more beloved than her in his entire, destitute, short,
mad life.”276 In Mirror, Aleksei dies surrounded by the visions of the two unknown women
273 Un Poeta Nel Cinema, 1983. Accessed 2022. 274 Skakov, Labyrinths of Time and Space, 102. 275 Synessios et al, Collected Screenplays, 368. 276 Ibid.
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and a doctor who says that he is prematurely dying from guilt. At his last breath Aleksei’s
bare body comes into the camera. He clutches a dead bird in his hand, which revitalizes it,
and he exhales as he throws the bird in the air.
Both these scenes show the artists giving into his calling to create even at the final
moments when all appears lost. But in either case the artist has won, for they live on and
haunt whoever sees their work. Aside from the dark woods, empty interiors, disembodied
voices, body parts out of nowhere, edits that startle amidst atmosphere of dread, Tarkovsky’s
gothic is ultimately about breaking conventions, breaking expectations, and about
resurrection in the Other via creation.
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Chapter 4: Nostalghia, Female Kinship, and The Gaze
Like other Tarkovsky films, Nostalghia (1983) focuses on doubling between
characters including between its two male protagonists Andrei Gorchakov and Domenico.
This thematic doubling combines with a slyly consistent female agency that includes
intimacy and autonomy away from a male perspective. In examining this agency Nostalghia
offers a crucial discussion of the fear and fascination around the unknowable and disruptive
female presence alongside the film’s often-studied dream-like atmosphere and themes of
displacement and aimlessness. Important moments of intimate touch appear within this
context of looking, i.e., The Gaze. Be it among men (Gorchakov and Domenico), women
(Eugenia and Gorchakov’s wife), or men and women (Eugenia and Gorchakov), these
moments of touch and looking are highly controlled and come as culminations of scenes that
involve a sense of voyeurism. Nostalghia develops and ponders on these acts of looking as
they differ between men and women and how the attempt to control through these acts
ultimately fails when the gaze is reciprocated due to the indeterminacy of desire.
Laura Mulvey, in her now leading work on gender studies in film called “Visual
Pleasure in Narrative Cinema”, stated that women in cinema traditionally appear is objects of
a male erotic gaze, and by extension the object of the audience, thus stopping the progression
of the film. However, Mulvey’s article lacks discussions of female desire and female
spectatorship.277 Indeed, in Tarkovsky’s film there is an unsubtle way the camera focuses on
women from a male perspective, and this perspective matches that of the audience as
viewfinder. This perspective also comes without any dreams or flashbacks afforded to the
women. Such a position is not unique to Tarkovsky’s oeuvre. Though not exclusive to one
character or group of characters, the gaze in Nostalghia appears at various points specifically
277 Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema,” in Film Theory and Criticism (1999 edition). Since its
original publication in 1975 Mulvey’s article has drawn some criticism from some scholars on its limitations in
terms of female agency. This criticism also extends to the article’s narrow definition of a woman to the
exclusion of Trans and non-binary folks.
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from a male or female perspective and not exclusively from the director of photography,
Giuseppe Lanci. I argue both female desire and spectatorship appear in Tarkovsky’s film
despite the director’s misogynistic views.
Tarkovsky and Women
Tarkovsky’s diaries famously include comments on the nature and purpose of
womanhood that come across as regressive and misogynistic, such as: “What is a woman’s
driving force? Submission, humiliation in the name of love” (v chem organika zhenshchiny: v
podchinenii, unizhenii vo imia liubvi).
278 Some scholars have already commented on the
troubling topic of Tarkovsky’s depictions of women in his films. Johnson and Petrie
summarize the consensus on the subject: women are seen primarily in relation to men and
family as moral and emotional stability if they successfully fill the role of wife and/or
mother.
279 In some moments, such as in the early draft of Solaris, the female character
strongly ties to a Mother Earth figure, a comforting and healing source (see chapter 2).
Women who are physically present (i.e., not apparitions or memories of the past) appear as
problematic, with female sexuality as a threatening element to the largely homosocial
atmosphere of Tarkovsky’s stories. Positive moments of female sexuality are only hinted at
and shot as ‘levitation’ scenes (as seen in the films Solaris, Mirror, and Sacrifice). Women
appear as unchanging, self-contained, even mysterious ‘ideals’ who are not given the spiritual
transformation arcs of male protagonists.
280 In this way Tarkovsky saw heterosexual love as
not of equals but of complementary members.
Tarkovsky himself stated in an interview that Nostalghia is a “simple love story” of
two people unable to live together due to closeness.
281 The remark may in fact be a tongue-in278 See January 3, 1974 entry in Tarkovsky, Time within Time, 89. 279 Johnson and Petrie, A Visual Fugue, 243. 280 Ibid, 246. 281 Redwood, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Poetics of Cinema, 196.
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cheek explanation to deflect probing questions as Tarkovsky would further mention the intent
behind making the film as an exploration of ‘Russian nostalgia’.
282 He would express similar
thoughts linking nostalgia to homesickness in his personal writings as shown from the
published diaries.
283 Tarkovsky never mentions the film’s dedication to his late mother, nor
how the film showcases motherhood. Popular opinion on the film sees it as an example of
anti-feminist rhetoric.
284 Some scholars take a more nuanced approach to the film, even
looking at ‘redeeming’ its status such as in Dan Jones’ article. Jones argues that Tarkovsky
gives the female actors space to be women rather than an assignment to play the role of a
woman, as evident by their range of emotions and the aloof, unattainable status they bear in
relation to the men in the film. This dedication to leaving the film with a roughness around
the imperfections in the characters, especially the male protagonists, makes the film as more
of a self-critique of the director as exiled artist rather than an indictment against the modern
feminist as some have argued the film to be.
Taking a cue from Jones, what is more of interest in this study is less of what
Tarkovsky has his characters say than how he has them look at and interact with each other.
For instance, many shots in Tarkovsky’s work depict women facing away from the camera
with only the back of their heads visible. This creates a sense of someone looking without
being looked at in return, the male gaze according to Mulvey. With this gaze comes an
anxiety at the reciprocal gaze, an aversion of the eyes when women look back. Vision and
watching in Tarkovsky’s world are as intimate and revealing a thing as touch, and they
intertwine into the discussion of the gender binary and doubling.
282 Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, 202. 283 see June 14, 1980 entry in Tarkovsky, Time within Time, 259. 284 Such as this short DVD release review from 2014 which describes the film as antifeminist:
https://cinapse.co/tarkovskys-nostalghia-beauty-in-maddeningly-antifeminist-visual-poetry-172c7f31b32a
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Female-to-Female Intimacy and the Male Gaze
On a verbal as well as a visual level the men in the film wield much power in creating
their vision of the world. In one of the opening scenes of the film Gorchakov begins his
dialogue with Eugenia, his Italian translator, by speaking to her in imperatives. As soon as
they arrive at the Madonna del Parto chapel and Eugenia begins to speak in Russian,
Gorchakov immediately tells her to speak in Italian. In this first scene he says he does not
want to go see the Madonna despite traveling so far, playing on another of the film’s themes
of unfinished action. Instead, Eugenia enters the chapel anyway, even though, as we learn
later from Eugenia’s complaints, Gorchakov never goes inside.
This idea of control and the gaze becomes even more apparent in the lobby scene
immediately following. It begins with a closeup of Gorchakov and Eugenia’s faces in
shadow. Establishing shots with Eugenia against a dark background create a sense of intimate
entrapment in a dark, displaced realm. It frames her thus as an enclosed portrait, much like
the Madonna fresco in the shadowy chapel enclave. What further entraps Eugenia here is
verbal expression by Gorchakov as he orders her to throw away her book of poems when she
tells him it is a translation. In their following discussion about literature and translation,
Eugenia mentions reading Pushkin and Tolstoy as well as Dante, Petrarch, and Machiavelli,
all male authors. Again, there is an emphasis on the verbal as the domain of the men while
leaving the possibility that Eugenia’s subtle act of reading provides her with some respite to
this male control.
This idea of men creating the world of Nostalghia also includes the act of looking and
juxtaposing images, in this case of two women. In this lobby scene, for instance, Gorchakov
turns to look at Eugenia which results in a sudden and quick cut to a black and white shot of
the back of Gorchakov’s wife’s head as she cleans a glass at their family dacha. A dog barks,
which leads to a cut back to Eugenia tossing her long, blond, and wildly curly hair. This
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sequence, very brief but very telling, shows that there is already a comparison in Gorchakov’s
mind between the two women in his life. Eugenia’s light locks contrast with the dark, coiled
bun of his wife’s hair. This is similar to the close up of Eugenia in the church as it switches to
a close up of the Madonna’s face. This comparison runs parallel to the unanswered question
throughout the film of whether or not Gorchakov and Eugenia intent to embark on a romantic
affair.
In this way of sensual doubling Eugenia becomes the surrogate wife in Gorchakov’s
present reality as opposed to the wife who remains in Gorchakov’s dreams. One of the
original versions of the script had Gorchakov intermittently calling his wife in Moscow on
the phone, only to have them argue.
285 These arguments shifted from between Gorchakov and
his wife to Gorchakov and Eugenia, thus highlighting and tightening her place as surrogate.
Another draft explicitly had Gorchakov compare the Madonna del Parto fresco to his wife,
though he tells Domenico that his wife is prettier.
286 This direct comparison becomes blurrier
in the final filmed version as both Eugenia and Gorchakov’s wife have moments that recall
the Madonna image, the longed-for ideal.
The concept of doubling only applies to characters with the same gender, with even
hints at imagery denoting secondary sex organs (the woman opening the folds of the
madonna statues’ skirt, Gorchakov’s upright empty bottles, Domenico’s lit and unlit candles,
etc.). Doubling between the two leading men suggests parallel stories as well as the reflection
between the exile in a foreign land (Gorchakov) and the exile in his homeland (Domenico).
When the two men look at each other, their gaze is as one man looking in a mirror at his
reflection. The meeting between these two reflections of the same exile unfolds into a
labyrinthian dance between Gorchakov and Domenico that culminates in their embrace.
285 Synessios et al, Collected Screenplays, 467. 286 Ibid, 491.
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After food and the exchanging of a candle with a promise, Domenico follows
Gorchakov out and they stand in the same frame. Then Domenico asks if Gorchakov has any
children. “A boy and a girl,” Gorchakov answers, his face lighting up as he talks about their
height. “And your wife? Is she pretty?” Domenico asks. Gorchakov says she looks like the
Madonna del Parto but all black haired (tutti piu negra). He grins, chuckles, and taps
Domenico on the sides. It’s the first time they touch, in a setting of male camaraderie over the
topic of female beauty and family. Of particular note here is that when Gorchakov pats
Domenico on the sides when talking about his wife, he actually is wiping his hands after
getting them wet with the rain. Ergo, Domenico hugging Gorchakov at the end of the scene
shows Domenico takes this touch more seriously than Gorchakov. What this complex scene
tells the audience is that the relationship between Gorchakov and Domenico, the two male
protagonists of the film, is one of absorption, doubling, and proximity. These qualities are
lacking in the male-female relationships in the film, though the female-female bonds of the
film feel more conspiratorial and inaccessible to the largely male perspective of the film.
Domenico becomes an explicit example of the attempt to entrap women. In his past
looms the attempt to keep his wife and children locked up in their house. On his wall is a
picture of three women. Domenico even orders Eugenia to remember what God told St
Catherine the martyr who suffered under torture. In a relater manner, Gorchakov has his own
way of entrapping women via his gaze through his imagination and dreams. As stated earlier,
Gorchakov draws a connection between his wife back in Russia and Eugenia, a connection
further heightened by his dream of the two women embracing. This embrace comes within
the confines of his male imagination and under his gaze. What can this dream tell us of the
director’s own thoughts of female-to-female intimacy?
Tarkovsky left a possible comment concerning touch between female characters
through analysis of another film. In Sculpting in Time, the director’s compiled notes
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published in English in 1987, Tarkovsky comments on a scene from Ingmar Bergman’s Cries
and Whispers (1972). The film focuses on a disintegrating family, namely three sisters and
their servant; this film captures a display of physical affection between two of the sisters,
Karin and Maria, after the death of the third sister, Agnes. The comments by Tarkovsky are
an extended analysis of the scene which comes unexpectedly midst discussion of the artist’s
search for the ideal. However, the central concerns of Cries and Whispers he mentions are
clearly those of a family falling apart as well as the use and misuse of touch among family
members:
“In Bergman’s Cries and Whispers there is one particularly powerful episode,
perhaps the most important one in the film. Two sisters arrive in their father’s house
where their elder sister lies dying. The film develops out of the expectation of her
death. Here, finding themselves alone together, they are suddenly and unexpectedly
drawn together by their sisterly tie and by the longing for human contact; they talk
and talk...they cannot say all they want to...they caress each other...the scene creates a
searing impression of human closeness...fragile and longed for...and all the more so
since in Bergman’s films such moments are elusive and fleeting. For most of the film
the sisters cannot be reconciled, cannot forgive each other even in the face of death.
they are full of hatred, ready to torture each other and themselves. When they are
briefly united, Bergman dispenses with dialogue and has a Bach cello suite playing on
a gramophone; the impact of the scene is dramatically intensified, it becomes deeper,
reaches out further. Of course, this uplift, this flight into goodness, is patently a
chimera--it is a dream of something that does not and cannot exist. It is what the
human spirit seeks, what it yearns for; and that one moment allows a glimpse of
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harmony, of the ideal. But even this illusory flight gives the audience the possibility
of catharsis, of that spiritual cleansing and liberation which is attained through art.”287
In some ways Tarkovsky misremembers the scene in this commentary on
Bergman’s film, and thus inadvertently reveals more about his own perceptions than he does
about the Swedish director. The appellation of ‘their father’s house’ is used while the father is
not even mentioned directly in the actual film. The mother, however, is given an extended
flashback narration by the dying sister Agnes who put a hand on her mother’s face as a child
in a silent moment of understanding. This moment of touch between women extends to Karen
and Maria who embrace and caress each other to the point of giving fleeting kisses on the
lips. The longing for human contact is just as much present in Tarkovsky’s films as it is in
Bergman’s, and just as elusive and fleeting as he describes here. He could very easily have
said ‘it is what my human spirit seeks, what I yearn for.’ The centrality of the touch of the
hand and the kiss of the lips would appear in Tarkovsky’s own films, such as Sacrifice.
In Sacrifice during Adelaide’s hysterics scene, the daughter Marta kneels and
reaches out a hand and tugs at her mother’s sleeve asking her to calm down. Julia the maid
stares at Adelaide and Marta. The three women of the household contrast to Maria the ‘witch’
who lives away from the house and is never afforded the same company as the rest of them.
All four women, however, in turn show mistrust and even sexual jealously towards each
other. This overall tension between the women later bursts in an embrace similar to the one in
Bergman’s film. Later, in reaction to Victor’s departure, Adelaide harshly orders Julia to
wake Little Man for dinner, looking at the camera the whole time. Julia refuses with tears in
her eyes, saying it is better that the boy knows nothing. “If you must torture someone let it be
Mr. Alexander, or me. Choose whoever you will since you can’t do otherwise.” Adelaide
287 Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, 189, 192.
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slowly approaches her and draws her to herself calling “my poor little girl,” Julia rests on
Adelaide’s shoulder, eyes closed, releasing tension. Adelaide asks for forgiveness, her eyes
open. Alexander, Adelaide’s husband, looks away from them, and reaches into Victor’s
doctor bag to pull out a gun.
Even more explicitly in homage to Bergman’s film comes the first dream scene in
Nostalghia as imagery of thoughts about women to women touch. In Gorchakov’s dream,
Gorchakov’s wife walks over to Eugenia, who is facing away from her and the camera. The
wife touches Eugenia’s shoulder. Eugenia turns around to her with tears in her eyes. Her hair
is tied up. They face each other, Eugenia puts a hand on the wife’s shoulder as the wife runs
her hand through Eugenia’s hair. They embrace, and the wife looks off screen, hiding
Eugenia’s face from the camera. All to the sound of water dripping and a woman humming.
The dreamworld envisioned by Gorchakov is one of silent harmony, away from his physical
presence but all the while under his wishful gaze.
The next shot is of Eugenia bending over Gorchakov on a bed, muttering and gripping
the bed with a dirt-stained hand. The med is different from the hotel bed, and Gorchakov is
facing the opposite way from where he was when he lied down. This shot, like others in this
sequence, has a multiplicity of interpretive potential. Is it a scene of Eugenia birthing him? Of
sex? Taking care of him? The stained hand recalls Solaris scene of the mother washing Kris’
hand, and the draft in which Kris smells his mother’s hands dipped in earth. Returning to the
shot of the wife and Eugenia, Eugenia looks at the camera as the wife strokes the side of her
head with her hand. Quiet weeping in the soundtrack. Next is a shot of Gorchakov’s wife
lying in bed with a pregnant womb. Same direction as proceeding shot with Eugenia and
Gorchakov. This dream sequence brings together many influences in the one gesture of the
two women embracing. Thoughts go to the Renaissance frescoes of Mary and Elizabeth, two
mothers who conceived under miraculous circumstances and often depicted in art as greeting
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one another. Another influence is that of Ingmar Bergman, whose scene of two women
embracing each other Tarkovsky wrote about in Sculpting in Time. The curious facet of this
sequence, though, is that this encounter of touch and tacit understanding between the women
who have and will never meet takes place in the subconscious of a man. It is through his eyes
using his psyche that the audience sees this embrace which almost seems too tender to look
at. And it is Eugenia’s gaze that returns the male audience’s gaze in the final glimpses of this
embrace.
Female Community and the Madonna del Parto Scene
Women hold a position of emotional or amorous authority in relation to men
throughout the film, especially in the moments when they interact with each other.
Throughout the trip Eugenia freely talks to the women she and Gorchakov encounter, but
hardly any of the men. At the end of the lobby scene the female concierge arrives in the foyer
and talks to Eugenia about getting them their keys, which reminds Gorchakov of his own
dacha keys, causing him to daydream about his dacha. The visuals are of the misty dacha
while the audio is still the conversation between Eugenia and the concierge. The lady
mistakes Gorchakov for Eugenia’s boyfriend and says he must be sad because he is in love.
“No, I think his mind is on other things,” Eugenia answers. Earlier in the first lobby Scene a
lady hotel guest passes in-between the two with a lapdog by her side and greets Eugenia, but
not Gorchakov. The lady appears with her dog again after Gorchakov spanks Eugenia and
gets a nosebleed. He answers her question of concern in Russian, knowingly or unknowingly
choosing to exclude her from communication.288
288 Perhaps these appearances of the Chekhovian lady with a lapdog suggest parallels to a failed affair between
Gorchakov and Eugenia, and an undoing of the supposed ‘narrative’ of romantic stories of infidelity. Adding to
this would be the mentions of female agency and action to escape the supposed narrative.
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The scene involving the most potent sense of female community comes in the
Madonna del Parto fresco scene which involves Eugenia, the old male sacristan, and the shots
of praying women. Inside Eugenia asks the sacristan, “Why do only women pray so much?”
She asks him because he has ‘seen many women.’ The sacristan then focuses on the role of
women as mothers to raise children ‘with patience and sacrifice.’ What seems to be the
primary focus of the scene in both visuals and dialogue is the glorification of motherhood, an
intermediate area supposedly devoid of eroticism. What surrounds this focus, however, is the
constant back and forth of looking at women. The first actual instance of touch in the film
comes at this point and suggests that such intimacy occurs more naturally among women and
does not include the participation of men other than their voyeuristic habit of looking and
interpreting.
James MacGillivray makes a compelling case that in this first scene are two different
moments in time overlapping one another.289 The moment of female worshippers holding a
procession and the opening of the statue’s garments as a projection of the sacristan’s memory
and what he sees when birds come out of the ‘womb’ of the Madonna statue. Interspersed
with these moments is Eugenia’s visit in the present and the conversation she has with the old
sacristan about men and women. A woman touches the statue first by opening the folds of the
statue’s gown. This first instance of touch in the film is woman to woman contact with the
gaze of a man from afar, a continued theme that becomes undone.
A description of the scene from Tarkovsky’s diaries likens the pregnant women
worshipers to a crowd of witches “to ask the Madonna to ensure them a safe delivery, and so
on. The mist lies in layers around the church.”290 Comparisons to the furthest available draft
of the screenplay show how the idea of drawing distinctions between women-women and
289 James MacGillivray, Andrei Tarkovsky's "Madonna del Parto.” (2002): 82-100. 290 See May 3, 1980 entry in Tarkovsky, Time within Time, 245.
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men-men relationships appeared even more accentuated. The script describes the fresco of
the pregnant Madonna as a woman touching a gaping wound. The procession of praying
women ascends the steps until one woman calls out, ‘The terror of the knife!’ Outside the
church the husbands and male relatives of the women inside wait silently. When Eugenia
confronts them the only one to look back at her is a little girl standing next to her father.
Eugenia angrily accuses the man with the girl of making his wife pregnant then forcing her to
come to the church to pray against having another child. The man does not answer as the
sounds of women praying and weeping continue inside the church.
291
This scene as written is entirely from Eugenia’s perspective, a marked difference from
the final cut which, according to McGillivray, includes shots from another time as seen by the
male sacristan. This difference shows the meticulous way in which the perspective becomes
entirely from the men in the film, with women as subjects for their gaze.
Female Desire and Eugenia’s Monologue
As noted in Jones’s article on a reappraisal of Nostalghia and its relation to feminism,
the depth of Eugenia’s character lies in allowing the actress Domiziana Giordano to fill in the
gaps. He gives Eugenia space to ‘be a woman,’ an emotional range not given even to the
main character of Gorchakov. Jones examines the scene in which Eugenia goes back and
forth between Gorchakov and Domenico before being frustrated enough to walk away. When
visiting Domenico Eugenia begrudgingly mediates between Gorchakov and Domenico. but
when Domenico shoos her away Eugenia walks off annoyed. Gorchakov grabs her arm
asking, “Have you offended him?” In his mind she is at fault. “You’ve offended me, not I
him!” she scoffs, “And not only am I a good translator, but I improve on the original.” She
puts on a hat to hide her hair and leaves to the hotel to return to Rome. “The entire
291 Synessios et al., Collected Screenplays, 472-74.
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exchange,” Jones writes, “happens with the camera focused on Eugenia’s face with only the
back of Andrei’s head intruding occasionally. Again Eugenia, not Andrei, and her emotions
are the subject of the scene.”292 This approach could use more room itself to develop what
makes Eugenia a character of interest, but Jones at least attempts to understand Eugenia’s
character beyond a one-dimensional stand-in for the director’s take on feminists or women.
She is portrayed as a woman, not all women.
Eugenia often displays an unspoken, ambiguous desire. While waiting with
Gorchakov in the lobby, Eugenia gives an unexpected aside to their conversation: A woman
set fire to her employer’s house because she was homesick for her home in Calabria. “She
burned the thing that stopped her from going back,” she says. Eugenia then asks why
Sosnovsky, the eighteenth-century exiled composer, went back to Russia if he knew he would
go back to slavery. Gorchakov is silent. “Why don’t you confide in me? I don’t understand.”
In response to her exasperation Gorchakov gives her a letter written by Sosnovsky, which she
eventually reads and gives back after her monologue. Once in Gorchakov’s room a shot
lingers on a bible on the mantle with a comb full of hair similar to Eugenia’s. Next is a shot
of Eugenia waiting outside the door, holding Arseny Tarkovsky’s poetry book, smirking.
Gorchakov asks if she knocked, she says no. Eugenia offers to call Moscow, “You haven’t
talked to your wife for two days.” She playfully taps the book on her thigh, impatiently,
beckoning. He takes the book out of her hand and goes back inside his hotel room. Another
touch of humor appears as Eugenia slips and falls in the hallway when trying to run up the
stairs. The hallway lights which Gorchakov turned on go off as soon as she stumbles. Along
with ambiguity of desire comes ambiguity of action.
The second lobby scene shows more examples of how Gorchakov interacts with
Eugenia which begins and ends with communicative ambiguity on both sides. Back in the
292 Dan Jones, “A Second Look: Tarkovsky and Feminism,” Cineaste vol. 31 no. 4 (2006): 98.
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hotel hallway from their visit to the baths, Gorchakov plays with lighter, Eugenia approaches
him, her cleavage showing. He tells her to stop. “You’re prettier in this light,” he remarks,
“Such a red-haired woman…” (Ryzhaia, ryzhaia…). She smiles, fidgets, looks down. He
cannot look back at her. She stops smiling. The shot has him in the foreground, mostly in
profile and in shadow. She is in the midground, in the light he admires her in. Gorchakov
suddenly switches to talking about Domenico, asking why Domenico locked his family up.
Eugenia grows visibly angry and walks off. This little moment shows another example of
Gorchakov’s unconscious attempts to control Eugenia, looking at her, but unable to take her
looking back. The gaze of a female will ultimately coincide with his personal undoing at the
end of the film.
Eugenia’s monologue can be taken as what Johnson and Petrie call a justifiably long
segment in contrast, they say, to the continuous penultimate shot of Gorchakov with the
candle.
293 The actions and reactions appear as if at the end of a relationship.
This confrontational scene in Gorchakov’s hotel room appears as a rare moment in
Tarkovsky’s filmography of the female monologue. Other examples include Liza’s outburst
against Maria in Mirror and the wife’s confession in Stalker. Despite her status as one of the
main characters in the film, Eugenia remains an elusive presence. Her story is not as
immediately defined as Gorchakov’s, and yet her emotions are on fuller display than that of
his or Domenico’s. The back and forth between her and Gorchakov culminates in what can be
called her monologue scene.
294
293 Johnson and Petrie, A Visual Fugue, 170. 294 This scene comes at the halfway point of the final cut. It is not clear yet when Eugenia’s character or
monologue scene came about in the writing process of the film. Tarkovsky and poet Tonio Guerra worked
together for several years on the script which would eventually become Nostalghia. Twelve different versions
survive, most of them unpublished. They are all typescripts with corrections in pen, all numbered and ordered in
the house archives in Florence. Drafts 001 to 007 are in Russian while drafts 008 to 012 are in Italian. They are
often undated or have incorrect chronology and page numbering. For more see Matteucci, “Lo jurodivyi,” 89,
91.
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In the ‘penultimate’ version of eugenia’s monologue Gorchakov’s reactions are made
clear, with indications such as confusion, delight, shock, and being stunned. This version also
indicates c that Eugenia is mentally going in and out of the present moment: “She has
forgotten that she is in someone else’s room.” She visibly experiences powerful emotions,
‘hurling herself at Gorchakov’ and switching from detachment to impassioned rage. These
emotional movements carry with them as sense of dealing with someone out of their mind, as
Gorchakov does not interrupt her speech but is marked as being in distress over it. He even
tritely asks her to repeat what she said once she is finished, either from genuine
misunderstanding of a foreign language or an inability to say anything else.
Here Eugenia’s dream unfolds as a very sparse description:
‘The first time I saw you, that night I dreamt about a soft maggot…with legs…it
dropped on to my head, and began biting me, here…I shook my head, until this
monster fell to the floor…I wanted to crush it, but it scuttled off under the cupboard
and vanished…thank you, God, that there was nothing between us! The very thought
of it makes me want to vomit!
Eugenia then begins another train of thought, recalling a former amorous encounter.
This insertion is cut from the final version: “Once…a conductor last spring…that was really
something! A real lionheart! Oh God! Why does it always happen so rarely? His hands were
amazing…” 295 Here in this version it makes it more explicit that Eugenia is transported into
another place when describing her dream. The biggest difference in this version lies in the
way the scene ends. Here Gorchakov still spanks Eugenia but then follows her back into his
room to find her crying, then he strokes her hair and kisses her:
295 Synessios et al, Collected Screenplays, 493.
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“Eugenia is sitting in an armchair, curled up and crying bitterly. Gorchakov
approaches her, sits down cautiously on the arm, and looks at her long and
sorrowfully.
Eugenia senses his gaze upon her, and gradually subsides. He smiles bitterly, and
strokes her hair as though she were a child. Then he leans over her and kisses her
tenderly on her wet eyes. He stands up and walks out into the corridor without looking
back, firmly closing the door after him.”296
This version has Gorchakov touching Eugenia beyond just spanking her, and
describes the kiss as one of a father to a distraught child. The dynamic of the scene thus
changes to place Gorchakov in emotional authority over Eugenia, his simple response to her
tour de force fit. This response recalls the kiss from Alyosha to Ivan in Brothers Karamazov
after Ivan’s longwinded grand inquisitor story. Gestures outweigh speech, and Gorchakov in
this moment physically expresses an attempt at connection he was unable to express before. It
comes, however, too late for reconnection.
The final version in contrast ends with Eugenia leaving as well as a voiceover reading
of Sosnovsky’s letter, which in this version takes place earlier at the Bagno Vignoni. The way
this scene is ultimately shot strikes the delicate balance between choreographed and
spontaneous movement. The monologue comes across as an unexpected outburst while being
strategic in its placement as well as how it recalls previous scenes and shots.
297 One example
of this choreography is in Eugenia’s unconscious movements becoming explained later in the
scene. Each time Eugenia repeats “basta, basta, basta/enough, enough, enough,” She tosses
296 Ibid, 494. 297 For an extensive list see Redwood, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Poetics of Cinema, appendix.
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her hair and walks across the room. She then states, in her recollection of the dream of the
worm touching her head, that since that night she cannot stop shaking her head. This calls
back to the moment in the earlier version when Gorchakov tries to comfort Eugenia by
stroking her hair, as well as the shots in the final version of hair in the comb among the pages
of the bible. These images of hair contrast with the image of the Madonna whose head is
covered. Perhaps the images and signs of long, unkempt hair show visual markers of desire
and passion, similar to Pre-Raphaelite ideal women. For indeed, Eugenia’s desires rise to the
surface in this scene. The presentation, however, does all it can to contain said desires and not
take away from the overall pace of the film.
The film is so calm and dreamlike in its overall tempo that any close ups act as
punctuations to key moments since the shots are usually composed in a way that the entire set
or location is still visible. Here, the camera remains unmoving in its placement, only
swiveling left or right to follow Eugenia as she paces and speaks, as if the camera were from
Gorchakov’s point of view for the entirety of this long take. Eugenia in turn moves
throughout the scene, unable to escape Gorchakov’s line of sight. It’s only when Eugenia
becomes the most impassioned that the camera finally cuts back to Gorchakov’s face as
Eugenia weeps off camera. Such stability and cutting away at the crucial moment minimize
the emotional tone of her outburst back to the original pacing of the film. Even the exchange
in the hall does all it can to look unswervingly at its subjects in order to minimize the impact
of the emotion.
The aimlessness of the main characters, both as ‘ambiguous agency’ and ambiguity of
power, appears most prominently in the final version of the scene. The monologue of Eugenia
changes direction and focus, and Gorchakov offers no feedback or response other than
dismissal. As if the characters feel something, are wanting something, but have no knowledge
of how to say it to their satisfaction or even to clarify it for the other. The only decisive
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actions come from the peripheral characters, one who listens to music, the other who goes
along her way, and ultimately Sosnovsky’s letter expressing his homesickness. The
communication face to face between Eugenia and Gorchakov appears inert and full of
unspoken expectations that have not been met. They interact more as a tense couple than a
researcher-translator duo.
When Gorchakov first enters the room his banter with Eugenia is equally intimate, equally
distant. Eugenia sits in the center of the bed with her legs spread apart as Gorchakov
tentatively sits on the edge. When he shows her the candle, he places it on the bed between
them, closer to her. After a moment Eugenia turns the hairdryer back on and gets up from the
bed. Her actions and pursed lips give off a spitefulness and a frustration that Gorchakov is
still obsessed with his own pursuits in Italy. These pursuits apparently have no room for any
intimacy with Eugenia. At the window she hints at her past experience with (possibly
Russian) men and how one tried to keep her locked up (a possible subtle mirror to
Domenico’s family). Yet her slights and apparent frustration all appear to be superficial,
showing the end of her compliance to aimlessness more blatant in Gorchakov, an aimlessness
or even an obscuring of motives.
Eugenia’s dream gives a more honest glimpses into her inner world, more so than her
accusations. She continually mimes seeing the worm by pointing to the corner out of frame,
as if the dream were real. Pointing to that spot reveals more to the scene than speaking. This
out-of-frame corner is the same location for the rectangular mirror and naked lightbulb seen
earlier at the start of Eugenia’s monologue. The place is again brought to subtle attention
when Eugenia storms into the bathroom. She flings her comb into the corner, followed by an
unmistakable breaking sound. The shattered object(s) never appear on screen, but it is most
likely the mirror in question.
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The physical spot where the dream, the memory of the dream, and reality come
together appears in Eugenia pointing to the spot of the broken mirror during her mime of her
dream. Eugenia looks and points it out to Gorchakov beseechingly, trying to convince him of
the presence of the worm she cannot kill. Unsuccessful in her desperate revealing of her
vulnerable dreamworld, Eugenia states her personal attacks anew at saying how nothing was
ever between them. The worm, then, can be taken as a manifestation of a hope for
connection, a dangerous hope for her that never leaves her alone. Her desperate attempts to
show Gorchakov where the worm scurried off to show her call toward him for an answer at
the ‘irrefutable’ created space for connection and dialogue. Eugenia fails to see how
Gorchakov tried to do the same at the beginning of the scene by placing Domenico’s candle
between them.
Other scholars have attempted to explain Eugenia’s behavior in the scene. For
example, Robert Bird considers Slavoj Žižek’s explanation of the long take in Nostalghia as
surrender to the earth’s inertia. For Bird as well as Žižek, Eugenia’s monologue is an attempt
to break from the static distance of the established long take, thus creating a tension and
agitation that destabilizes the scene.
298 The mercurial tirade of Eugenia’s monologue in fact
acts to disguise inner disappointment at attempts to create connection through material
objects brought to reality from the dreamworld. The hotel room, used before as the site for
Gorchakov’s dream of his wife and Eugenia meeting, is one of many loci in the film which
can be classified as a liminal space.
The continuation of the scene into the hallway resumes the inner prejudices of each
character towards each other. Eugenia calls Gorchakov a hypocrite after taunting him for
‘nearly cheating on his wife’. Gorchakov answers this quip by spanking her. She lets out a
startled cry before going back into the room while Gorchakov sits out in the hall, overcome
298 Bird, Elements of Cinema, 204-205.
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by a sudden nosebleed. His action, or rather reaction towards Eugenia, has a multiplicity of
meaning. It is one of the only times in the film where we see any physical connection
between the two. In other instances, Gorchakov touches her elbow when trying to visit
Domenico, as well as in the dream sequence where Eugenia leans over him letting her hair
fall. The action on his part in this instance appears disciplinary, as if he were her father
correcting her for being disrespectful, or if in fact he were her husband. But by his very
action toward her he contradicts himself and for a moment aligns to her projection of their
relationship and his character/actions. His momentary act of engagement brings to reality
what may have only been dream and fantasy. This momentary summoning of the dreamworld
yet again startles Eugenia by its veracity. The poisonous worm has appeared again to bite her,
but rather than face the sliver into the dreamworld, again she runs. Gorchakov in turn recedes
back to reality as his body rejects his own actions by showing himself to bleed. An inner,
unspoken or suppressed tension causes the body itself to become undone. At this precise
moment the camera slowly moves backward away from the bleeding Gorchakov, and the
chanting from upstairs begins.
Continuing in this scene is a non-diegetic reading of Sosnovsky’s letter. The letter is
about the homesickness the eighteenth-century Russian expat experiences. Included in the
letter is a dream: acting as marble statues for a patron in a garden of other men and not being
able to tell the difference between sleep and waking life even upon exiting the dream.
Eugenia’s dream of a worm falling on her could indicate a rejection of unwanted contact, a
distorted annunciation, as well as the Greek myth of Danae when Zeus impregnated her in the
form of golden rain.
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Female Spectatorship and the Gaze Returned
Alongside ambiguity of desire comes ambiguity of gaze when from the perspective of
the women. In the scene of the Madonna del Parto the old sacristan inside asks Eugenia a
question with only two possible answers: “Did you come here to pray for a baby? Or to be
spared of one?” “I came here to look,” Eugenia replies. Eugenia’s reply is an example of
wonderful indeterminacy, not subscribing to the two options given to her by the male
sacristan. The men in the film attempt to box in Eugenia, but she answers with an assertion of
her own will, her own power to look. He tells her to kneel, she starts to after looking around
at the other women kneeling but stops herself. “Look at the women,” the sacristan replies,
giving her a command to look, but only at the other women who have faith. Eugenia lets her
gaze wander, eventually resting on the face of the Madonna fresco. Here a woman looks at a
woman without the interferences of the male perspective.
Besides this moment are three clear instances of the reciprocal female gaze with men
as the object of looking. The final two scenes involving Eugenia show her away from
physical proximity with Gorchakov, as well as her proximity from the narrative. One scene is
a telephone conversation with Gorchakov from Rome within earshot of her ‘lover’ Vittorio.
The final shot of her is a wordless moment at the square where Domenico sets himself on
fire. Eugenia’s final moment involves her act of looking as she stops at the middle of the
steps and covers her mouth in shock. Both are wide vistas of a given scene, one interior, the
other exterior, from Eugenia’s female perspective. And both have a male as the central
subject, one seated and aloof, the other crying to the people before immolating himself.
Another telling instance of specifically female spectatorship is during Gorchakov’s
drunken monologue at the ruined church and the appearance of the little girl Angela. This
monologue comes directly after the long sequence containing Eugenia’s monologue. In many
ways, it is the denouement and reversal of the growing emotions in the previous scene, and
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marks a point of humor. For all its serious high art and drama, Nostalghia is the most
humorous out of all Tarkovsky’s films, not comedic, but humorous in how objects do not
work the way they should (ex. the hotel lightbulb and Domenico’s record player). Most often
the humor is at Gorchakov’s expense. As Gorchakov inspects his hotel room he turns the
lights on, it flickers and makes a noise. He turns it off then goes to the bathroom and
mistakenly places his left hand out to feel for the switch which is on the right. After visiting
Domenico and returning to the hotel, Gorchakov catches his arm in the hotel foyer doors. In a
later scene Gorchakov gives a monologue to a little girl while standing half submerged in a
dilapidated building, drunk, and cracking himself up with his own joke.
This scene with the little girl Angela links her to the other angels in the film: the angel
circling the Russian dacha in Gorchakov’s dreams, the angel statue in the water, the angels
around the Madonna del Parto fresco. The role of angels as asexual, genderless beings in the
Madonna mural here is aligned with the feminine. In the earlier version of the screenplay, the
little girl Angela was a little boy named Marco. Simultaneously the gaze of Angela on
Gorchakov as an instance of the female gaze reciprocating the male gaze, in an unwavering
stare. This reciprocation is both inscrutable and unbearable to Gorchakov, forcing him to
move away into another area of the dilapidated church. From a visual perspective the scene
cuts back and forth between a shot of Gorchakov from Angela’s perspective and a shot of
Angela from Gorchakov’s. The shot of Angela is angled higher up, while the main shot of
Gorchakov is angled down to denote Angela’s higher elevation as well as her feminine
authority in the scene. After Gorchakov extolls the pure love of older times, he asks Angela
her name and if she is happy. When she replies that she is happy, the shot slowly focuses in
on her but never reaches a closeup. The shot of Gorchakov does likewise, but the slow zoom
ends on a much tighter close-up of his face, as if to signal his awareness of someone watching
him and his growing discomfort of being trapped himself.
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The final most important moment of reciprocal female spectatorship is during the
famous candle sequence at the baths under the watchful eye of the woman cleaner. Even this
final candle scene has an irony to it in the multiple attempts and wordlessness of Gorchakov’s
growing frustration to keep it lit. Gorchakov walks with a lit candle across the baths. He
makes three attempts, then collapses off camera at the end. During his second attempt he
holds the candle in her coat close to himself to protect the flame from the wind. But curiously
he keeps looking off screen and around as if he were hiding the camera from someone else’s
gaze. When he walks back a third time, Gorchakov clutches his stomach, pants, wipes his
forehead, sniffles, and stumbles. He holds the candle in one hand and his coat in the other,
making the flame visible to the camera. The worker’s broom is in the background, giving a
clue as to who it is that is watching. When Gorchakov collapses the shot immediately cuts to
a reverse shot of the edge of the baths where a crowd has gathered as medics race toward
him. Panning right the camera shows a closeup of the female worker’s face, looking directly
at the camera. Gorchakov is at last the subject to the gaze he cast onto others, and he could
not stand it. This contrasts with Eugenia’s monologue, as she moves in and around the room
until finally facing Gorchakov looking at her.
Conclusion
Nostalghia takes great pains to create a very controlled and deceptively organic
environment. What cannot be controlled, however, are the female subjects or their
expressions of connection. As stated earlier, Eugenia acts as Gorchakov’s double to his wife
back in Russia. Doubles in Nostalghia take on a life of their own by the end of the film.
However, the fate of the male protagonists is purposefully ambiguous and strange. This
surrogation, or the act of replacing one thing or person with another, appears as characters
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often act toward each other in a way of projecting someone else onto the listener. A desired
loved one, an invested audience, a place of familiarity and connection.
Desire plays a huge part in surrogation. Desire for the immediate surroundings or
people to be what one hopes them to be. Alongside the desire is for places, people, or acts the
one desiring already knows, or has left behind is the desire for the ideal, such as painting or
even the statue of the angel underwater. Even the final shot of the film concentrates this
theme of surrogation and doubling to a single image: Gorchakov’s dacha inside the ruins of
an Italian basilica. He longs for home, for family, but even his projection of his desires
cannot go beyond the bounds of reality. And while this shot pulls back the wailing of
women’s voices can be heard. The next to last shot shows Gorchakov’s son facing the camera
while women’s voices cry. The mother places her hands on his shoulders, her face is not
visible. The female presence is what ultimately takes control of the film in its final moments.
Alongside female desire and spectatorship, Nostalghia constantly explores a kind of
tacit rapport and camaraderie that exists among women, which does not exist comfortably for
the men in the story and contrasts with the ‘main’ plot of a solitary man in exile. Women
speak to each other with ease in the film, they can read moods and needs, they are in tune
with their emotions enough to express them. Thus, they appear as more than mere objects of
male desire, while remaining complex and elusive figures that continually thwart the apparent
narrative of the film through female community, desire, and spectatorship.
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Chapter 5: Face Touching Face: Kurosawa’s The Idiot and Tarkovsky’s Sacrifice in
Dialogue
Throughout his diaries Tarkovsky expressed his desire and failed attempts to adapt a
Dostoevsky novel to the screen. Despite never fully realizing his wishes for adapting The
Idiot, Tarkovsky expressed admiration for the 1951 Japanese adaptation by one of his favorite
directors, Akira Kurosawa. As seen in each director’s respective remarks on the novel, an
aspect important to both Tarkovsky and Kurosawa was how to portray the relationship
between the two lead characters Rogozhin and Prince Myshkin. Both directors placed a
curious emphasis on retaining the fraught, unusually close interactions between the two men
that make their scenes so memorable in the novel, most notably the final scene between them
keeping vigil over the body of their mutual love interest, Nastasia Filippovna. Kurosawa
called this scene ‘hallucinogenic’ and his film displays it as a tender yet harrowing
interaction. Although Tarkovsky never managed to film his own adaptation, or even make a
fully realized screenplay, echoes of Dostoevsky’s novel appear in his final film, Sacrifice,
most notably in the main character Alexander. I argue that the scene in which Alexander and
Otto show a kind of tense intimacy in dire circumstances has direct links to the characters The
Idiot and even Kurosawa’s film. This intersection of Kurosawa, Tarkovsky, and
Dostoevsky’s novel provides deeper insights into Tarkovsky’s often downplayed themes of
community between men, intimacy, physical proximity, and theatrical blocking.
By comparing the scene in The Idiot to its corollary adaptation in Kurosawa and its
spectral presence in Tarkovsky, this chapter also challenges the notion that Tarkovsky’s
conception of male characters lies in spiritual isolation. The image of a ponderous martyrartist protagonist appears quite frequently in the director’s works and is often compared to the
persona Tarkovsky himself presented in his interviews and theoretical writings. Very often
the discussion only focuses on the concept of humanity or the singular ‘man’ and the
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relationship to external things such as nature, life, time, or morality to name a few. Such an
approach misses the more covert images conjured of two men sitting or standing close to
each other in an ambiguous display of vulnerability and exchange of feelings, quite often on
display in Dostoevsky’s work as well.
Another relevant question in exploring these auteurs and their approaches to adapting
Dostoevsky’s male character interactions can be phrased as, “What are the spaces and
circumstances for this intimacy?” that is to say, “Where and how does intimacy occur?” Both
Kurosawa and Tarkovsky choose interiors for these scenes between men, often in a theatrical
manner. This notion of theatricality and space also brings up questions on Tarkovsky’s
inclusion of Japanese culture in Sacrifice which shows an affinity for Nōh and Buddhist
religious space in Kurosawa’s films.
Tarkovsky and Japan
In terms of Tarkovsky’s own relationship to Japanese aesthetics, some scholars, such
as Nariman Skakov, make minor comments likening the director’s compositions and pacing
to ‘a haiku’ or ‘Zen meditation’.
299 Though the materials are still a bit scattered, documents
and accounts attest to Tarkovsky’s lifelong fascination with Japan of the past and present.
While Tarkovsky wrote a few notes here and there, and even included some subtle references
in a few of his films, much of what we know about Tarkovsky’s ties to Japanese culture
comes from the people that knew him, the people that continue to shape the narrative of his
legacy.
According to Soviet actor and director Shavkat Abdusalamov, the sense of Japanese
culture stayed with Tarkovsky and his cohort all throughout their years at VGIK: such figures
included in Tarkovsky’s reading list were the Edo period haiku poet Basho, the twentieth
299 Skakov, Labyrinths of Time and Space, 85.
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century short story writer Akutagawa, author of “Rashomon” (which Kurosawa adapted to
film); the eighteenth century author Ueda Akinari who wrote Ugetsu monogatari (the basis
for Kenji Mizoguchi’s film); and the Chinese philosopher Confucius. Abdusalamov further
observes, in quite poetic language, how Tarkovsky absorbed the Japanese way of thinking as
not just some exotic touch. This way of thinking elevates the mood of his scenes by the
removal of all things accidental, allowing for characteristic things of each player to appear
most prominently. He says, “The Eastern worldview is not founded on sudden changes of
emotion (vostochnomu mirooshchushcheniiu ne svoistvenna rezkaia smena chuvstv). In its
religious and aesthetic teachings are always a specific norm of behavior, a norm of
compassion.”300 This idea comes from Buddhist tenets of dispassion and compassion, and
Abdusalamov goes on to connect these points with how ‘Eastern thought’ connects opposites
into a harmonious whole (old and new, beautiful and ugly, etc.).
There is currently no evidence to say that Tarkovsky was influenced by Buddhism
directly. But Tarkovsky’s hinted preoccupation with Japan becomes especially evident in the
way he talks about his cinema. In his earlier writings we see that there is a preoccupation with
Japanese culture and especially literature. In his late 1960s article when he was still a film
student, Tarkovsky references Japanese haikus in the examples he gives of film composition
as well as pacing. He also gives the example of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and
describes it as pure cinema that is free of symbols. Reading between the lines in this essay,
we also see that Tarkovsky takes these examples of haikus directly from an earlier article by
Sergei Eisenstein, in which Eisenstein discusses his theory of montage in relation to Chinese
characters and writing and even Japanese. Tarkovsky went against the formal montage
tradition of Eisenstein, therefore he utilizes these examples as more of a way of looking at
300 Shavkat Abdusalamov, “Obratnye sviazi,” in O Tarkovskom (Dedalus, 2002), 298.
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cinema from the natural point of view; he especially saw the Japanese haiku as being the true
example of this naturalism.
In 1967, Tarkovsky published an essay-article in the magazine Iskusstvo Kino titled
“Zapechatlennoe vremia”, the same title used in the Russian version of what would later
become the chapter “Imprinted Time” in Sculpting in Time.301 In the article, Tarkovsky
outlines the intersecting place of film and art connected to non-Russian literature appearing
throughout his early treatise on filmmaking. Among his examples Tarkovsky uses the haiku
to describe ideal cinematography, particularly in the same section as his discussion on
Eisenstein’s quotations of these haikus.302
In his own analysis of the four haikus Tarkovsky mentions such qualities as ‘purity’,
‘subtlety’, and ‘a merging of observations about life.’ In contrast, Eisenstein would see these
same haikus as desperate elements coming together to form a new quality, much like his
editing technique of montage. In this statement Tarkovsky engages with Eisenstein’s reading
of a Japanese poetic form as it applies to film, thus showing how he tries to differentiate
himself from the other director. Tarkovsky concludes in this section that the poeticism of film
is “conceived by a direct observation of life” (rozhdaetsia iz neposredstvennogo nabliudeniia
nad zhizniu), an approach which he calls the way of cinematographic poetry.
303 To further
drive his point, Tarkovsky examines Eisenstein’s Ivan Groznyi as an example of the opposite
to ‘direct observation of life’ in that it works on the same highly symbolized system as
‘hieroglyphs’. The specific use of this word ‘hieroglyphs’ by Tarkovsky covertly takes aim at
Eisenstein’s use of the word in his article when he discusses the Chinese pictograph system
and how it relates to cinema.
301 Andrei Tarkovskii, “Zapechatel’noe vremia,” Iskusstvo Kino, volume 4 (1967): 68-79. 302 Eisenstein writes about the haiku as linked to his use of montage in such works as “Cinematographic
Principles and Japanese Culture” Transition mag (June 1930): 90-103; and “The Cinematographic Principle and
the Ideogram” in Film Form: Essays in Film Theory (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1949). 303 Ibid, 72.
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Later in his 1967 article, Tarkovsky mentions a scene from Akira Kurosawa’s Seven
Samurai as one free of symbol-making: in medieval era Japan a fight breaks out between
horsemen and the samurai on foot. One samurai dies and the rain washes away the mud on
his bare leg, leaving it ‘white like marble’. For Tarkovsky this fleeting moment of a dead
man’s body half-naked in traditional garb, is ‘a fact. It is innocent of symbolism, and that is
an image.’304 Portions of this article would later become a chapter in Sculpting in Time. In
fact, later in that book we see more mentions of Japanese culture and aesthetic ideas:
Tarkovsky recalls an account of Japan by Soviet journalist Ovchinnikov who discusses
(wabi-) sabi (which he calls “saba”) or finding a charm in the marks of old age on an object.
According to Tarkovsky: “…the Japanese could be said to be trying to master time as the
stuff of art.” After this comment comes a comparison to Proust’s description of his
grandmother giving gifts that looked old “as if these [objects]…were able to tell us how
people had lived in the old days, rather than serve our modern needs.’ Cinema becomes for
Tarkovsky the ideal manifestation of Japanese ‘saba’ in its attempt to subjugate time as a
workable material.305
Tarkovsky and Kurosawa
The choice of comparing these two directors is long overdue. Scholarship already has
an abundance of works comparing Tarkovsky to other European and Soviet directors such as
Bergman, Bresson, or Parajanov. The connection between the Russian Tarkovsky and the
Japanese Kurosawa has an abundance of scattered material spanning the entirety of
Tarkovsky’s career. In 1963, one year after the release of Ivan’s Childhood, a young
Tarkovsky held a brief interview with Kazuo Yamada for Japanese Weekly Sunday Mainichi
304 Ibid, 75. 305 Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, 59.
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titled “Promising Russian Movie Director is Kurosawa’s Biggest Fan.” The article mostly
asks about Tarkovsky’s early life and the recent success at the Venice Film Festival, but after
these questions the director changes the topic to Kurosawa as an inspiration to moviemaking:
“I was truly fascinated when I saw Kurosawa's movies: The Idiot, Seven Samurai,
Rashomon. Kurosawa gave me a joyful surprise by showing his wonderful
comprehension of the characters of Ragojin [sic] and Muishukin [sic] in The Idiot,
and I found Seven Samurai very impressive because it was a truly beautiful "people's
movie," by making full use of Japanese people's traditions. Because the most
important problem for the cinema artist is to create a "people's movie."306
At the end of the article Tarkovsky asks the interviewer what Kurosawa was working
on and to “give Kurosawa his heartfelt love and reverence.”307 Tarkovsky’s focus on
Kurosawa’s adaptation of Dostoevsky first comes across as unexpected for such a brief
interview meant for a Japanese audience. However, these comments fully align with the
director’s lifelong love for Kurosawa’s films, his own unrealized aspirations of adapting The
Idiot, as well as concerns regarding the characterization of male relationships and making a
‘people’s movie’.
Tarkovsky’s admiration for Kurosawa’s adaptation is not an isolated aside. In another
interview given to Maria Chugunova for The Screen in 1966, the same year as the initial
release of Andrei Rublev, Tarkovsky praises Kurosawa’s adaptation while also indirectly
criticizing previous adaptations of Dostoevsky by other Russian directors:
306 see Kazuo Yamada, “Promising Young Movie Director” (1963).
http://www.nostalghia.com/TheTopics/Yamada.html. 307 Ibid.
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What do you think, have there ever been any successful screen versions of
Dostoievsky [sic]?
No.
What about Kurosawa?
His Idiot is a wonderful film. Setting the film at the present time and on his own
national soil makes a very interesting film version. It's on quite a different principle,
and actually very exciting. […] I would definitely set it in its own period, but I would
write a completely new screenplay. I would probably include in the action the things
that Dostoievsky puts into his extraordinarily profound descriptions. They are almost
the most important thing, they carry the weight of the whole idea of the book.308
Here Tarkovsky also focuses on the adaptation’s transposition to Japan in a
contemporary ‘foreign’ setting, an aspect which some scholars consider mark the film as
Kurosawa’s weakest. These qualities, however, are the ones that make the film ‘exciting’ for
Tarkovsky, who goes on in the interview to talk about his own wishes for an adaptation of the
author’s work.
At the time of the 1966 interview, Tarkovsky already had a long acquaintance with
Japanese cinema. During his time at VGIK, he saw many non-Russian films, among them the
films of Kurosawa and Kenji Mizoguchi. Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu would go on to be listed as one
of Tarkovsky’s favorite films, as would Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. Kurosawa, however, had
a deeper impact and even became a peripheral player in Tarkovsky’s personal life. Over the
lifetimes of Tarkovsky and Kurosawa, one can see various convergences of meeting and
filmmaking between the two. The two directors meeting in person also furthers the curious
308 Tarkovsky, Time within Time, 357-358.
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question of how the two auteurs may have been inspired by each other’s work. Tarkovsky
may have not had any plans to film an overt Japanese subject but features of Japanese cinema
and culture appear his last film, Sacrifice. As will be shown, these points of Japanese culture
more often relate to aesthetics and theater (such as nōh and kabuki), and reflect Tarkovsky’s
own preoccupations with making The Idiot as well as a dialogue with his artistic
predecessors.
In looking further at comments made by one of Tarkovsky’s colleagues, we see that
some fans did notice a connection between the two directors. Abdusalamov recalls an
anecdote when a fan said that Andrei Rublev came from Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. Though
he takes issue with any direct links to this comparison due to lack of direct evidence,
Abdusalamov does acknowledge Tarkovsky’s affinity for Japanese culture. In the case of
Andrei Rublev, the images of a burning cow and a warrior riding a horse into a cathedral
become key moments for Abdusalamov’s argument in that these displays of violence and
vandalism in medieval Russia appear antithetical to the more eastern harmonious images of
nature and being. He ends his thoughts on the subject by acknowledging that there may have
been some form of abstract influence on Tarkovsky rather than visual, which is a lot harder to
prove or quantify. His reasoning comes from the idea that the artist absorbs influences from
everywhere if said artist already has an inner freedom. With these Buddhist concepts in mind,
he says that Tarkovsky learned from the Japanese ‘artistic thinking’ to fill in the gaps of his
understanding. “What is important is not probability, but truth” (Vazhno ne pravdopodobie, a
pravda).309 Abdusalamov calls into question, however, if there can be any one-to-one
correlation between the imagery of Andrei Rublev and Japanese cinema. Truly, making oneto-one correlations with Kurosawa would not be possible. However, no one can doubt the
admirations Tarkovsky had for the Japanese director.
309 Abdusalamov, “Obratnye sviazi,” 298.
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Kurosawa himself wrote three separate essays on Tarkovsky over the course of his
career.310 As noted in his 1977 article, Kurosawa was invited to the Mosfilm studio lots to see
production of Solaris, where he met Tarkovsky for the first time. Kurosawa was very
impressed by Tarkovsky’s talent as well as the film set for the rocket in Solaris and he made
a note in his article that when he saw a screening of Solaris cut in the Mosfilm studios, he
said it was a great film but also a terrifying one. As one can see in the following quotation
from Kurosawa’s article, he uses the words ‘horror’ and ‘nostalgia’ multiple times, especially
when he states that each time he looks at this movie, he feels a nostalgia for returning to
earth. Kurosawa ends with a humorous anecdote of drinking and singing with Tarkovsky the
main theme to his film Seven Samurai. Kurosawa would later mention in his article that he
would always watch Solaris for inspiration in his own films as a ‘return to earth’. This dual
grounding of dream and reality in Kurosawa’s inspiration from Tarkovsky also comes with
these memories of brotherhood and camaraderie. In 1999, Kurosawa’s memoirs were
published posthumously, and in them are recollections of his encounters with Tarkovsky,
which he remembered fondly, calling him a ‘little brother’. This aspect of filmmaking and
siblinghood is one of the many things connecting the two directors, which overlaps with how
they both approached the philosophical humanism displayed by Dostoevsky.
Tarkovsky, Kurosawa, and Adapting Dostoevsky
Time and again Kurosawa was drawn to adapting Russian literature, which he saw as
the most human and psychologically astute. Kurosawa characterized Dostoevsky in particular
as compassionate, empathetic, and unflinching to suffering, “the gentleness that makes you
want to avert your eyes when you see something really, really tragic.311 Tarkovsky’s own
310 All three Kurosawa texts are posted on Nostalghia.com in English translation. 311 Akira Kurosawa, Interviews (University Press of Mississippi, 2008), 183.
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lifelong love for Dostoevsky never became explicitly explained even in his diaries, other than
the fact that he read not only the author’s fiction but also his letters and biography.312
Tarkovsky would even at times find parallels between Dostoevsky’s fiction and his own life,
most poignantly in fraught familial relationships.313 Tarkovsky’s aspirations to adapt classic
Russian literature run parallel to his admiration for Kurosawa’s own adaptations into a
Japanese setting of such classics as The Lower Depths (Donzoko in Japanese) and Dersu
Uzala. Tarkovsky’s admiration for Kurosawa’s literary films is as deep as Tarkovsky’s
expressed animosity towards the Soviet adaptations of Dostoevsky, such as Crime and
Punishment (1970) by Lev Kulidzhanov314 and the first part of The Idiot (1958) by Ivan
Pyrev. Tarkovsky never fully explains his dislike for these adaptations, and one can assume
either he lumps them into his general distrust and overly critical comments for films from
other Russian Soviet directors, or perhaps he considered that none of them had the same
characterizations present in Kurosawa’s adaptations.
One comment Tarkovsky makes in the written proposal for adapting The Idiot,
however, can give a glimpse to the director’s thoughts on other adaptations. Tarkovsky
complains that the overall impression of Dostoevsky adaptations comes across as not realistic
because of the overemphasis on the ‘infernal’ nature of the characters, the focus on despair,
alienation, and ‘substitution of supernatural miracles for the laws of nature and society.’315
Indeed, Pyrev’s adaptation shows these ‘infernal’ aspects Tarkovsky talks about. The
characters often appear in uplit close shots of faces with light sources from fireplaces or
candles. Interiors contrast between inky black shadows and blood red wallpaper or furniture.
The frantic cuts of shots in enclosed spaces add to the hellish, claustrophobic chamber piece
312 Tarkovsky, Time within Time, 3. 313 See Chapter 2 for discussion of The Adolescent and its theme of father-son relationships as related to
Tarkovsky’s own relationship to his father. 314 Kulidzhanov was especially vocal in calling Tarkovsky’s films ‘elitist’ as seen in Tarkovsky’s diary entries,
which may have soured Tarkovsky’s attitudes towards the fellow director’s films.
315 Tarkovsky, Time within Time, 374.
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of a narrative focused on a child-like protagonist used and pulled in opposing directions by
money-hungry people around him. The Rogozhin character, played by Leonid Parkhomenko,
comes across with particular swagger much like a Soviet soldier in the mold of Chapaev or
even Toshiro Mifune, Kurosawa’s favorite lead actor. Though the adaptation was only of part
one of the novel, various hints appear scattered as to the fate of certain characters in part two,
such as a red wine bottle spilling over when Prince Myshkin says Rogozhin would cut
Nastasia Filippovna up if he married her, preceded by the horrified face of Ganya Ivolgin.
Such displays of overt drama, symbolism, and even a forcing of emotional cues onto the
audience are aspects Tarkovsky vehemently said he was against; his treatment proposal
makes it very clear how he would focus more on his signature style of presenting a mood
rather than a driving story of theatrics. Yet, while Tarkovsky was against theatrics, he was not
opposed to a mise-en-scène similar to a theater stage, which, as will be shown, was also a
feature of Kurosawa’s cinema.
Tarkovsky’s written proposal for The Idiot is, of course, an official document with the
assumption that certain phrases are very guarded and intentionally vague. The document even
appears to contradict itself by saying that a serial adaptation of the novel would be untrue to
its spirit since the novel works on a series of explosive episodes leading up to various
climaxes, split into two sections as one story overlapping another. Indeed, the treatment
proposal document shows the culmination of Tarkovsky’s reading on Dostoevsky’s own
personal writings as well as what other writers of his time were writing about and in response
to him. Tarkovsky also mentions how the two parts of the novel should have some instances
of chronology switched to keep the overall integrity of the two halves without explaining
further. However, he insists that the plot should lead to the apocalyptic climax of Rogozhin
murdering his beloved in his ‘dead house.’ Going back to Tarkovsky’s comments on
adaptations, the implicit focus remains how characters in the novel come across to the
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audience, or rather, if the director’s own interpretation of these characters can come across to
the audience.
Tarkovsky goes on further to explain how the four protagonists—Myshkin, Rogozhin,
Nastasia Filippovna, and Aglaya Epanchina—strive for a spiritual expectation of happiness in
contrast to the worldly concerns of the environment around them.
316 This, explains
Tarkovsky, is the inherent contradiction of Dostoevsky: he rejected the natural school of
writing but could not escape depicting the power of the milieu over the individual, a common
trope of the natural school. This portrayal of power, according to Tarkovsky, became all the
more frightening the more deeply Dostoevsky tried to distinguish himself from other writers
of the natural school.
317 Thus, the persona of Dostoevsky and his contradictions in his writing
become linked to the contradictions in his characters who are simultaneously drawn to and
repulsed by one another.
These comments within the film proposal show Tarkovsky’s research into the
historical and literary context of Dostoevsky as well as his own preoccupations with
characters above all. In one diary entry Tarkovsky maps out preliminary thoughts on adapting
Dostoevsky’s novel keeping in mind other things outside of it:
31 December, Moscow 1973
My aim is to place cinema among the other art forms. To put it on a par with music,
poetry, prose, etc.
There must be nothing slavish in our treatment of The Idiot. It must not be a literal
reproduction of the details of the plot. We must body forth [sic] in the real world the
ideas, stage directions, author's (director's) thoughts.318
316 Ibid, 376. 317 Ibid, 375. 318 Ibid, 85. The final sentence reads in Russian: “I materializovat’ v deistvitel’nuiu real’nost’ idei, mysli,
remarki, avtorskie soobrazheniia (rezhisserskie).”
177
This entry comes immediately after an entry describing having dinner with Kurosawa
and how the crew the Japanese director was given in the Soviet Union is full of incompetent
liars. Tarkovsky’s comments in his proposed treatment on adapting The Idiot come almost in
conflict with this earlier diary entry which adheres more to the faithful adaptation by
Kurosawa in terms of chronology, characters, and dialogue. One primary point of
convergence in these two directors over this one aspect of the work in terms of
characterization and the use of actors.
Concerning Tarkovsky’s relationship to actors, discussions around the topic always
make it clear that the director worked more intuitively than analytically. He never explained
character motivation but would rather talk about the environment they would be working in.
More theatrically trained actors such as Demidova or Banionis found this method difficult,
and most actors struggled to keep up with Tarkovsky’s on-set explanations of his
philosophical vision. Abdusalamov says that he and Tarkovsky as VGIK classmates watched
Mizoguchi as well as Kurosawa together, until Tarkovsky discovered Bresson which
Abdusalamov called the ‘first death knell’ (pervyi zov smerti).
319 The use of ‘death knell’
comes across as extreme, and may only make sense in the context of Tarkovsky’s high
opinion of Bresson. Bresson’s method of using actors, or ‘models’ as he called them,
deliberately instructed them to perform actions repeatedly to the point of an emotionless
delivery. He made actors repeat lines of dialogue or certain movements over until they could
do them automatically, leaving it to the audience to place the emotion behind the
performances to make a supposedly transcendent experience. Though not as harsh as Bresson
319 Abdusalamov, “Obratnye sviazi,” 297.
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in his method for working with actors, Tarkovsky could also come across as controlling,
especially in how the actors looked physically.
320
Somewhat of a compliment to Tarkovsky’s relationship to actors was Kurosawa’s
own method of preferring non-professionals or small name actors at the time. Kurosawa and
Toshiro Mifune had a long working relationship in which the fury and instinctual method of
the untrained Mifune met with the director’s own striving to display humanistic stories both
of ancient and modern Japan and beyond. Mifune was especially gifted at being able to
switch emotions in rapid succession with ‘uniquely uninhibited and elemental energy’.
321 It
was this talent for emotional shifting that Kurosawa used for a variety of roles for Mifune
who played leading roles in nearly all of his mature films. This need for shifts in emotion
over the course of one scene would aid in Mifune’s portrayal of Rogozhin. Also, the
emphasis on the physical aspect of acting both directors focuses on portraying the unexpected
closeness and intimacy between male characters, as shown in their attention to Dostoevsky’s
finale to The Idiot.
An applicable note from one of Tarkovsky’s actors themselves comes from Susan
Fleetwood, who was chosen to play Adelaide in Sacrifice for her resemblance to Tarkovsky’s
second wife. She explained in an interview how before they began shooting Tarkovsky sat
down with all the actors and explained to them how they should “be as children, allowing
feelings and sensations to occur to [them] and to free [themselves] to respond to [their
feelings].”322 He also spoke to them about faith and its relationship to mankind, aspects that
Fleetwood explained, were explained with such emotion that she herself felt the ‘atmosphere
and integrity of what he was trying to transmit”.
323
320 Johnson and Petrie, A Visual Fugue, 45-46. 321 James Goodwin. Akira Kurosawa and Intertextual Cinema (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 62-
63.
322 Johnson and Petrie, A Visual Fugue, 47. 323 Ibid, 47.
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Their qualities of childlike responses to sensations and feelings as well as faith could
be argued to come from the description of Myshkin as the most beautiful and perfect man
meant to reflect a Christlike innocence. Thus, in speaking with his actors, Tarkovsky shows a
concern and care in his final film to have the actors in tune with their own vulnerability, and
thus radiate it to their environment. Such vulnerability will be crucial to the way that both
Tarkovsky and Kurosawa show how their male protagonists interact with each other in choice
scenes.
Dostoevsky’s Rogozhin and Myshkin
Despite the overabundance of scholarship on The Idiot in the fields of both literature
and cinema, Dostoevsky scholarship spends little extended time on the relationship between
Myshkin and Rogozhin, and even more specifically on this near final scene in Rogozhin’s
house keeping vigil over Nastasia Filippovna’s body with Myshkin. This scene in particular
shows the focus of the dynamic between the two men that never becomes completely
explained even within the text. The scene in question acts as a culmination to the various
strands of relationships throughout the novel, in which desire and interpersonal constantly
shift. What remains constant and becomes all the more proven in this scene are the character
constants of the two men: Myshkin remains the person of meek goodness whose physical
health and stamina continues to wear down from all the psychological torpor from his adverse
environment; not only are the people around him worldly, duplicitous, and cold, but the harsh
Russian weather he returns to from the Switzerland sanitarium slowly chips away at him.
Rogozhin, meanwhile, remains the passionate pleasure-seeker he was at the beginning of the
novel, with constant mood swings and excesses of feeling both manifesting in generosity and
violence. Such a personality comes clearly and disarmingly at the end scene where Rogozhin
tells Myshkin that they will sit together all night and not allow anyone to take away the body,
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which is met with Myshkin’s repetition of ‘yes’ out of sympathy and bewilderment. In many
ways he is taken as a sketch and early version of the character of Dmitry Karamazov in
Dostoevsky’s final novel. Despite these two very clearly defined characters who interact with
one another, several gray areas in their relationship reappear over the course of their various
interactions. From their initial meeting to their exchange of baptismal crosses to Rogozhin’s
attempted stabbing of Myshkin to their final caress in mutual madness, the relationship
between the two characters comes across as both straightforward and a challenge to interpret.
Eliot Borenstein holds an intriguing discussion of Platonov’s reading of The Idiot in
terms of switching gender roles to reaffirm the male inclusive focus of the Girardian desire
triangles. In short, Platonov sees Myshkin as the masculine (chaste consciousness), Rogozhin
as feminine (earth and unconsciousness), and Nastasia Filippovna as the mutable soul
between the two men as well as a stand in for Dostoevsky himself.
324 This discussion shows
how focused on the relationship between the men in the novel becomes in any discussion
surrounding The Idiot, and this inescapable aspect of the story is what any adaptation must
contend with.
Two scenes from The Idiot offer a good point of analysis for this ongoing discussion
of directors and characterizations of adaptation and intimacy: Myshkin and Rogozhin
exchanging baptismal crosses and the penultimate scene between Myshkin and Rogozhin
near the body of Nastasia Filipovna.325 This scene, as well as the one preceding at, are
arguably the most important points in describing the tortured connection between Rogozhin
and Myshkin. These scenes in particular will prove to be important points of analysis when
discussing Kurosawa and Tarkovsky.
324 Borenstein, Men Without Women, 207-10. 325 The latter text for the penultimate scene comes from The Idiot, Part 4, chapter XI.
181
According to Anna Berman, the scene of Rogozhin and Myshkin’s final embrace is
the result of a failed brotherhood marred by Nastasia Filippovna’s murder. The moment also
acts as a culmination of Myshkin’s inability to distinguish between fraternal and sexual love
in the assumptions of the other characters, often resulting in his indecisiveness when dealing
with either Nastasia Filippovna or Aglaia. Neither woman fulfills for him the brotherly bond
offered by Rogozhin, but this bond cannot be realized with bloodshed.
326
Continuing from this interpretation I argue that the flipside is true for Rogozhin: he is
a man of such overspilling passions that he cannot tell the difference between lust for
possession and genuine feeling. He takes this out on Myshkin in their intimate interactions of
‘brotherhood’, ordering him and calling him terms of endearment. Of course, one should take
into account nineteenth century norms of interaction between men which had more familiar
and even romantic-sounding tones to them which would puzzle a later sensibility. However,
the character drawn out by Dostoevsky is at once recognizably human and purposefully
exaggerated and meant to both contrast with and compliment the timid and meek Myshkin.
Kurosawa’s Akama and Kameda
Kurosawa’s The Idiot (Hakuchi) is often treated as an outlier in his filmography. The
‘failure’ of the film, as Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto puts it, comes from its unerring faithfulness to
its source material. Even though Kurosawa transposes the names and places of nineteenth
century Saint Petersburg into twentieth century Hokkaido, the dialogue and situations at
times never fully break from a superficiality and stilted adherence to dialogue, plot beats, and
the many minor characters running in and out of the main story.
327 The film production
history itself shows a struggle to even make the film as the production company Shochiku
326 Berman, Siblings in Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, 58-59. 327 Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema (Duke University Press, 2000), 190.
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which took the nearly 4-hour original cut and re-edited it down to nearly 3 hours without
Kurosawa’s input or permission. To this day the original footage has not been found. The
resulting film then remains full of peculiar cuts and wipe edits, sometimes within the same
scene, mostly with minor characters and subplots disappearing from the first part of the film.
The second half of the film, however, centers more and more on the overlapping love
triangles between the four characters of Kinji Kameda (Myshkin), Denkichi Akama
(Rogozhin), Taeko Nasu (Natasia Filippovna), and Ayako (Aglaia).
In a 1966 interview for Cahiers du cinema Kurosawa explained his choice for
adapting The Idiot. He paid particular emphasis on the penultimate scene between Rogozhin
and Myshkin:
Cahiers: What made you choose The Idiot among all of Dostoevsky's novels?
Kurosawa: Firstly, I find this novel wonderful. I think it counts among Dostoevsky's
masterpieces. At the end of the novel, Rogozhin assassinates Nastasia and goes mad,
and her other lover, Prince Myshkin, becomes "the Idiot" again--it is this passage, a
cinematographic one if I dare say, which elicited this very beautiful sentence from
Mr. Kobayashi Hideo328: “This novel was not written while observing this room; he
was by living in this very room.” And [the passage] is, in my opinion, the most
beautiful, the most atrocious, the densest, and ultimately the most hallucinatory
sequence in the history of literature. Except there is an important problem in how to
interpret this novel. How can one understand the work of Dostoyevsky? Indeed, each
critic, each artist has given their own interpretation. I gave mine too, and I translated
328 Hideo Kobayashi was an early twentieth century Japanese author and literary critic who serialized
Dostoevsky’s biography into Japanese.
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into images the truth that had interested me. I was criticized for having made a film
that was too difficult and too heavy. I think I just said a very simple truth.329
In this interview excerpt Kurosawa places emphasis on the final scene between
Rogozhin and Myshkin, a remarkable passage for the director who uses such words as
‘beautiful’, ‘atrocious’, ‘dense’, and ‘hallucinatory’. He also highlights the need for each
director adapting Dostoevsky to stand by their own interpretation, citing his own as an
expression of a simple truth.
Kurosawa’s interpretation of the story sets the action in a contemporary 1950s postwar Japan, and makes some necessary character changes because of such a transposition,
most notably in the character of Kameda (Myshkin). In the beginning both Kameda and
Akama are on an overcrowded train as Kameda wakes up screaming from a nightmare.
Kameda is no longer a Prince but a former prisoner of war just released from an American
camp. Kameda’s story mirrors the biography of Dostoevsky in being subject to a mock
execution which triggered his epileptic seizures. Thus the character of Myshkin in the form of
Kameda collapses into the persona of the author of the novel, which may explain more his
place within the film. Though never more explicitly stated as an author, Kameda takes a
largely observational stance to the proceedings of the film, and suffers equally so at the hands
of the various characters trying to persuade him to their individual causes.
329 Akira Kurosawa et al. “Interview”, Cahiers du cinema no. 182 September (1966): 37. Original French text:
Cahiers: Qu'est-ce qui vous a fait choisr "L"Idiot" entre tous les romans de Dostoievski?
Kurosawa: D'abord, je trouve ce roman merveilleux. Je pense qu'il comte parmi les chefs-doeuvre de
Dostoievski. A la fin du roman, Rogojine assassine Nastasia et devient fou, et son autre amant, le prince
Muichkine, redevient "l'Idiot"--c'est ce passage, cinematographique si J'ose dire, qui a fait ecrire cette tres belle
phrase a M. Kobayashi Hideo: Ce roman n'a pas ete ecrit en ebservant cette chambre; il l'a ete en vivant dans
cette chambre meme. --et c'est, a mon sens, la sequence la plus belle, la plus atroce, la plus dense, finalement la
plus hallucinante de l'histoire de la litteratre. Selement,, il y a un probleme important, comment interpreter ce
roman. Comment comprendre l'oeuvre de Dostoievski? En effet, chaque critique, chaque artiste a donne sa
propre interpretation. Je l'ai donnee, moi aussi, et j'ai traduit en images la verite qui m'avait interesse. On m'a
reproche d'avoir fait un film trop difficile et trop pesant. Moi, je pense avoir dit simplement une verite tres
simple.
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In terms of character blocking throughout the film many instances appear of
characters placing their hands on another’s face, be it the temples, the eyes, even the mouth.
This proximity and scenes of wordless touch end up surrounded by other moments of
intimate dialogue. Because of Kurosawa’s close adherence to the dialogue of the novel, the
film contains the novel’s perplexing and enigmatic moments of the story where Rogozhin and
Myshkin express their feelings of love and brotherhood for each other. Like in his novel
counterpart, Akama is constantly ordering Kameda to follow him, sit with him, leave him
alone, or even to hear his love for the man. Kameda’s responses are always timid but earnest.
Unlike the novel, the characterization by Kurosawa of these two characters has some genuine
moments of peace and connection, though like the novel the peace is not lasting and comes
surrounded by violent mood swings and aggression on Akama’s part. Apart from the
attempted stabbing scene is the scene at the night skating rink, where characters are in masks
and a giant sculpture of a demon looms over the crowd in the snowy darkness, and Akama
lashes out at kameda in the frenzy of the festivities.
330 The moment is visually remarkable as
the giant demon sculpture comes visibly between the two men as they wordlessly and tensely
stare at each other.
Two scenes are especially noteworthy between the two leading men. The first scene to
analyze is the scene between Akama (Rogozhin) and Kameda (Myshkin) exchanging
talismans (crosses). Immediately afterwards Akama takes Kameda to see his mother in a
section of the script titled ‘A Buddhist Chapel’ (Butsuma). In Kurosawa’s adaptation the
scene is one unbroken shot of Akama and Kameda sitting in front of a Buddhist altar
(butsudan) as Akama;s mother sits between them and serves them tea and food from the altar
since they are too poor for spare food.
331 This scene differs from Dostoevsky’s original in
330 Akira Kurosawa, Hakuchi, 77-78. 331 Kurosawa, Hakuchi, 64-65.
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which a wild Rogozhin leads Myshkin to his elderly mother to have her bless him after
becoming brothers, after which is a curt goodbye. The setting chosen by Kurosawa, called a
“butsuma”, is a typical feature of traditional old Japanese homes where pictures of deceased
relatives would hang, a setting meant to show Akama’s status as an established member of an
old family lineage in a state of decay. In Kurosawa’s vision the moment the two men in the
small share is drawn out into a timelessness and the usually erratic Akama softens and
becomes pleasant and amiable. This makes it all the more a tragic and sudden contrast when,
a few scenes later, Akama pulls out a knife to stab Kameda.
A shot-by-shot breakdown of the last moments in the next to last scene shows the
heightened sense of theatricality and otherworldliness of the family house while also the
sense of grasping for connection from the two characters. In this scene, Akama leads Kameda
into the maze of his family house where it is cold and dark inside and Taeko’s clothes lie
scattered on the floor, her body hidden off camera behind a folding screen. The men spend
several sense moments throughout the scene in turns facing away from each other, huddled
together under a blanket for warmth, and eventually, like the novel, lying on top of each other
in an emotional exhaustion at the extremity of the situation.
The way Kurosawa handles this scene in his adaptation is somewhat enigmatic,
strange, and even grotesque, as indicated by the post-production screenplay description:
“Then suddenly everything is quiet. Kameda peers intently at Akama’s face that looks
dead. Akama doesn’t notice him and continues staring upward. Kameda reaches out to
him, touching his hair and stroking his cheek. / Tears flow [down] his own cheeks as
he caresses Akama. Suddenly the two men fall down on top of each other. / they both
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breathe very lightly and their eyes are glassy. The sound of the clinging bell
continues.”332
In three successive shots, Kurosawa has the two men kneel facing the camera with
Akama raving in lunacy and Kameda trembling beside him as the light source from the stove
and candles illuminate their eyes. In the first wide shot Akama sits mouth agape, eyes looping
upward. Kinji Kameda (Myshkin) holds Denkichi Akama’s (Rogozhin’s) head in his hands
stiffly, much like a puppet or a doll. The second shot closes in on the two men’s faces from a
lower angle and slightly to the side, further distorting their faces and giving a conflicting
sense of being too close and tenderly so. The third shot begins as a static view of the
darkened floor as the two men fall stiffly into frame, Kameda on top on Akama. Once on the
ground in close up neither man moves again as the shot switches. Akama’s agape expression
of lifelessness does change from this point in the scene, and the way they fall on top of each
other in the end feels more like dolls crumbling to the floor when the puppet master drops the
strings of a marionette. One could place a possible connection to Eisenstein’s fascination with
Kabuki masks and Potemkin shots (see his article with relevant images of mouths agape).
Tarkovsky’s “Prince Myshkin”
While a definitive script draft for The Idiot never came to being, what is left behind
are various notes in diary entries and a proposal for a screenplay adaptation. The reasons for
the eventual abandonment of the project include other projects such as Stalker and Nostalghia
taking precedence, then the director’s eventual emigration outside of the USSR canceled any
plans of proceeding with the project. Despite these setbacks Tarkovsky had the idea of
adaptation in mind of a great many years as seen by his writing on the subject. These
332 Ibid, 102-103.
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mentions have recently been compiled into an article by Tarkovsky’s youngest son, Andrei
Andreevich in 2017.333
The story of Tarkovsky’s private development over a Dostoevsky adaptation comes
across as convoluted and contradictory. Tarkovsky at first wanted to adapt another novel by
Dostoevsky, either The Adolescent, Crime and Punishment, or even Demons. The idea for
adapting The Idiot was initially to interweave a narrative about Dostoevsky’s life into the plot
with Anatoly Solonitsyn in the role of the author. The final document written on the matter in
a full description comes in the form of a proposal for a screenplay. One entry from the
director’s diaries shows the focus of his adaptation much more tellingly than the final
proposal. In the entry Tarkovsky begins discussing his trip to Japan for filming Solaris, then
briefly fantasies about his screenplay adaptation ideas for The Idiot, most notably what scenes
should be included:
19 September, Zvenigorod 1971
We're flying to Japan on the 24th and we still haven't filmed the sun. The weather is
awful. The sun scenes are going to have to be handed over, to be filmed while we're
away.
We have to decide what we're going to film in Japan, and how. The question is—
exactly what?
I am beginning to have the impression that Dostoievsky had an extraordinarily
reserved and pedantic temperament. In fact, looked at from the outside, perhaps
actually dull. It's going to be hard to write a screenplay.
For the screenplay:
333 Andrei Andreevich Tarkovskii and Igor Evamplev, “Materialy iz arkhiva Andreia Tarkovskogo sviazannye s
rabotoi nad fil’mom o Dostoevskom i fil’mom po romanu Idiot.” Zhurnal Zvezda issue 10 (2017).
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The fit on the landing. Reality, intermingled with a scene from The Idiot—Rogozhin
and Prince Myshkin, also . . .
Irritation at Turgenev's Europeanization. The story of an enmity. Letters. Academia.
Karmazinov in The Possessed. Merci.
334
This entry shows that, amidst his plans for Japan, Tarkovsky continued to think of the
adaptation, more specifically the key scenes between Rogozhin and Myshkin. Some scholars
acknowledge psychology in Tarkovsky through characterization. Filimonov, for instance,
mentions Tarkovsky’s unfinished ideas for The Idiot in regards to how characters’ inner
worlds are manifested on screen. The final scene of Rogozhin and Myshkin sitting across
from each other, knees touching, and near them is the corpse of Nastasia Filippovna, their
beloved, shows the outward strangeness of the mise-en-scene. This strangeness encompasses
the absolute truth of the characters’ inner state. Filimonov links this technique to how
Tarkovsky made Mirror and its outward expression of memory.335
In the same article where he discusses haikus and Kurosawa, Tarkovsky takes a
moment to discuss mise en scene in the finale of Dostoevsky’s Idiot, which he numbers as
one of the best literary works:
“[Rogozhin and Myshkin] sit facing each other on chairs in the middle of an
enormous room, so close that their knees are touching. When you picture this it’s
frightening [rus. ‘strashnovato’]. Here the mis en scene arises out of the psychological
state of particular characters at a moment, as a unique statement of the complexity of
their relationship. The director, then, to build up a mis en scene, must work from the
334 Tarkovsky, Time within Time, 43. 335 Filimonov, Andrei Tarkovskii, 123-124.
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psychological state of the characters, through the inner dynamic of the mood of the
situation, and bring it all back to the truth of the one, directly observed fact, and its
unique texture.”336
Elsewhere in Sculpting in Time Tarkovsky also wrote about this scene with just as
ecstatic language and description: “What overwhelming truth in the characters and
circumstances! As Rogozhin and Myshkin, their knees touching, sit there on chairs in that
enormous room, they astound us by the combination of an outwardly absurd and senseless
mise en scene with the perfect veracity of their own inner state. The refusal to weigh the
scene down with obtrusive thoughts is what makes it as compelling as life itself. Yet how
readily a mise en scene constructed without any obvious idea is regarded as formalistic.”337
Like Kurosawa, Tarkovsky here seems to wish to adapt the work in question as a
simple truth, a truth with an inherent contradiction of outward and inward. Eisenstein in his
work Method has a brief discussion of character movement and editing choices and takes a
scene from The Idiot as an example. He says that the moment Rogozhin raises his knife
against Myshkin there should be a contradictory movement from Myshkin towards the knife,
leaning into the action before ultimately hurtling backwards down the stairs in an epileptic fit.
This unintuitive movement according to Eisenstein would highlight further the inner state and
emotion of the moment.
338 Of course, Tarkovsky made it a point of pride to reject the
teachings of Eisenstein’s montage in favor of his long takes and constantly shifting
movement within the shot. What can be gleaned from Eisenstein’s comments to the novel in
relation to Tarkovsky could come in the inherent tension of the relationship between the two
men that comes in the outward ‘strangeness’ of their scenes, strangeness most likely referring
336 Tarkovskii, “Zapechatel’noe vremia,” Iskusstvo Kino (1967): 75; and in Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, 74. 337 Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, 25. 338 Joan Neuberger, This Thing of Darkness (Cornell University Press, 2019), 291.
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to the sudden shifts of emotion, losing hold on a sense of reality, and their ambivalent
connection itself. Despite this strangeness Tarkovsky also points out an inner ‘veracity’
which is disarming and sincere. This aspect must also take place alongside the strangeness.
Thus, Tarkovsky’s response to The Idiot, I argue, lies in his final completed film, Sacrifice.
More than in Stalker or Nostalghia, Sacrifice puts theatricality and close intimacy between
two men on display, though in almost imperceptible ways.
The main character of Sacrifice, Alexander, acts as a fool of sorts to the narrative
surrounding him. As the world descends into war and his family’s dysfunction becomes more
and more apparent, Alexander makes a deal with God to sacrifice all he has for the salvation
of the world. A onetime career actor, Alexander played the part of Myshkin on the stage
before, a fact his wife Adelaide will not let him forget. In fact, the birthday telegram that Otto
reads from his old theater troupe affectionately and playfully calls him “Prince Myshkin”.
Here we see that Dostoevsky’s character is now presented as a reluctant actor, not only on
stage but in the family drama of the seaside house. A vital question arises: If Alexander is be
Myshkin who then is Rogozhin? The answer may be Alexander himself, who plays both
Myshkin, the man of beauty and innocence as well as Richard III, the villainous, crippled
schemer. This notion of the dual nature of a single man also appears in the many instances of
Alexander’s face half in shadow.
The film provides other instances of morally ambivalent characters with no clear
Rogozhin counterpart, in the same way that Alexander never directly quotes any lines from
his performance as Myshkin. However, there are certainly foils created to the character of
Alexander as a supposedly simple and even mad person; one such foil is in the interactions
between Alexander and his wife Adelaide. Sharing a name of a character in The Idiot whom
Myshkin says has the ‘face of a kind sister,’ Adelaide comes across as a composite of the
femme fatales and mercurial women in Dostoevsky’s fiction. According to close friends,
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Tarkovsky’s most autobiographical film was in fact Sacrifice due to the depiction of Adelaide
who bears striking similarities to Tarkovsky’s second wife, Larissa, down to her hairstyle.339
Tarkovsky’s own thoughts about Adelaide in Sculpting in Time consider Adelaide as the
antithesis of Maria, a woman constantly timid, unsure of herself, modest. Meanwhile,
Adelaide is eccentric, at first incapable of confrontation or reflection, self-assertive in her
relationships with people, she has a limited range for understanding others.340 Only when the
war breaks out does an unexpected bond occur between Adelaide and the servant Julia, in a
similar moment of female-to-female touch as found in Nostalghia (see chapter 4) or even
Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers (see chapter 2). If there is in fact a more biographical
dimension to the couple of Alexander and Adelaide, then the ‘Myshkin’ of the film is further
compounded into the figure of the director stand-in, showing the preoccupations of the
director’s previous films as well.
By this, Sacrifice could be in fact Tarkovsky’s most sinister in terms of gender
relations. Amidst the passive-aggressive marital arguments and overt infidelity on Adelaide’s
part, the film becomes a commentary about the subtle, covert, ominous and tacit bond that
men form when discussing sexual matters or matters that attach to ‘being’ a man, and how
the patriarchal system will take care of its own. The minor male characters Otto and Victor in
their own ways try to aid the protagonist Alexander in overcoming his hinted impotence.
Ultimately, though, Alexander would rather burn his house down, give up his place in the
community of sexually active men than remain with everything he ever could want. By this
we also see another foil to Alexander’s Idiot character, that of the male confidant.
When discussing Tarkovsky’s last film, scholar Natasha Synessios makes an apt
remark regarding the male characters:
339 Synessios, “From Wood to Marble,” 451, n. 27. 340 Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, 225.
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“All of these men [in Sacrifice] live in a hermetically sealed reality, prey to their
obsession with the state of the world and their soul. Their reveries, Tarkovsky’s
lyrical digressions, are increasingly private visions of heaven and hell, because their
fundamental ties to the world and to the family of man have been severed.”341
Indeed, the men in this film have no unified ‘community’ as clearly defined by the
previous films. The way they interact also appears more stilted and unnatural, like avantgarde theater performers. The vestures of community and connection are there but appear
hollow and perplexing. As with Nostalghia, Tarkovsky makes character placement in the
shot more and more deliberate in Sacrifice. In this final film, however, Tarkovsky stages
characters in an overly theatrical way, as if each shot were on a stage. The characters
movements also appear more choreographed and signal how the characters relate to one
another. These two facets, namely fragmented male community with a last-gasp of patriarchy
and the film’s sense of theatricality, come in full display when looking at the film’s closest
scene to a Myshkin-Rogozhin exchange between Alexander and Otto the postman.
The relationship between Alexander and Otto appears as the most natural in the film,
where the two of them share their innermost thoughts with each other. At the opening of the
film the two men maintain a constant distance physically: Otto on a bike, Alexander walking.
Their talk is on a closer level of discourse, until Otto stumbles off his bike slowly and sits on
the grass, talking honestly about himself. Alexander stands over him, speaking high concepts
into his personal problems. This shows a complex relationship between the two, one of
assumed closeness and distance at the same time, being present but talking past each other.
As with the rest of the film, this conversation appears more in the realm of avant-garde
341 Synessios, “From Wood to Marble,” 317.
193
theater than ‘natural’ interaction. There does appear a rare moment of humor and joy as
Alexander’s son Little Man ties a rope to Otto’s bike then watches with Alexander as it snags
when Otto tries to bike away. Otto jumps up and down in a mockery of outrage, but tosses the
rope back to the boy without any reproach. All three men have some form of basic unspoken
closeness, as if playing a game. Such closeness, community even, does not appear in the rest
of the film, at least not as playfully and jovially as in this opening.
Concerning Otto’s character, Otto comes across at first as a simple, offbeat postman
who is quite friendly and accommodating to Alexander’s family. The more he talks, however,
the more he reveals himself as a man with a past as well as strange, lofty ideas and an
obsession around the supernatural. In this he contrasts with the world-weary and rational
family doctor, Victor, who is also romantically involved with Adelaide. The two friends of
Alexander seem to vie for validity by at first being at odds with one another.
In one scene, after Otto arrives at the house to give Alexander a birthday present,
Victor starts asking Otto questions about why he is in town almost interrogatingly. Otto says
he moved there two months earlier on pension as a parttime postman when his sister died.
Notice he says sister, not wife, perhaps as a hint to his want for personal freedom. Victor’s
interrogation comes across as unnecessary but seems to be from a place of gauging a threat to
the equilibrium of the household, especially after he himself gave Alexander a present of the
book of icons. This gauging of a threat is ironic and shows Victor’s initial lack of selfawareness as he is also ‘threatening’ the household by his overt advances to Adelaide.
Additionally, Victor and Otto both seem to conspire in their own ways to introduce
Alexander to a kind of sexual opportunism. In the same scene where he is interrogated by
Victor, Otto remarks rather insistingly to Victor that Maria and he are neighbors and have
been ‘acquainted’. “Congratulations,” Victor dryly says. In linking this insistence to
‘acquaintanceship’ with Maria, and in relaying it in hushed tones and physically leaning into
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to another man, with the later conviction of Otto telling Alexander to sleep with Maria to
bring world peace, Otto implies that he himself has been intimate with her.
A tacit understanding between men on sexual matters with women is what prompts Victor’s
sarcastic congratulations. Alexander overhears them and says that Maria is a bit odd.
Adelaide remarks how Maria scares her sometimes, as if she herself senses the notion of her
maid’s magic properties boasted later by Otto.
Otto makes sudden shifts between his emphasis on the physical (touch and material
evidence) as well as his preoccupation with superstition when he tells the family one example
of a mother who saw the image of her dead son in a photograph. This story highlights the
resurgence of the suppressed and forgotten, a theme in Tarkovsky common in such films as
Mirror and Nostalghia. Further emphasizing this Otto suddenly slips and falls. Adelaide and
Victor take their time to go over to him before Victor kneels and hold Otto’s hand,
awakening Otto. When asked what happened, Otto replies “an evil angel passed by, and
touched me.” Victor takes it as a joke, but he unwittingly contributed to the tacit sense of
mutual understanding by reviving Otto with his touch. This comes directly after the ‘angel’s
touch’ Otto intimates, an attribution of his sense of the supernatural that comes into the
physical as well. In addition to showing one character, here we see the triumvirate of
superstition (Otto), reason (Victor), and faith (Alexander) among the three main male leads.
During this whole exchange Alexander is absent, though, which will only highlight his
intimate and exchange with Otto later that exhibits the contrary motions of the entire film.
The scene between Otto and Alexander takes place after the unsettling heralding of
overhead war planes and the news of invasion. Scholar Thomas Redwood calls it scene 7, but
sees it bleeding into scene 12 due to a non-chronological time jump. This scene takes place in
Alexander’s study in a spare number of shots, beginning in close-up, then a full room shot
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that slowly zooms into a close-up of the two men sitting on the floor in front of Alexander’s
couch-bed.
In the lead up to scene 7 Shakuhachi music plays with a shot of Little Man’s room in
the dark. Otto’s voices come from outside asking if he can come in, which the viewer learns
later is Otto asking to come into Otto’s study after climbing the balcony lattice to enter on the
top floor of the house. The boy sits up in bed, leading into a close-up shot of Otto and
Alexander. The two men stand with faces close together, looking at a print of Da Vinci’s
Magi. As Alexander describes the picture to Otto since it’s too dark for Otto to see, their
heads as so close that their foreheads almost touch. “A sinister painting,” Otto finally says
and moves away. He says through the balcony glass looking directly at Alexander, “I’ve
always been terrified of Leonardo,” then climbs down the balcony again. This moment shows
an attempt at and momentary breaking of intimacy as Otto and Alexander share a moment in
close physical proximity looking at a painting. Otto’s proclamation that Leonardo terrifies
him makes the renaissance artist into a person they both know rather than an abstract artist,
adding to the fact of the painting being considered another presence between the two in scene
7.
The way the shot is set up, in thinking of allusions to The Idiot, recalls the moment
when Myshkin sees the portrait of Nastasia Filippovna for the first time. In Kurosawa’s
adaptation Akama and Kameda look at a poster of Taeko the beautiful woman. Her picture is
placed in a public placard on the side of a building, with a glass protective surface that
reflects the two men standing side by side. With their combined reflection Taeko’s portrait
looks as if it is cutting itself in-between the two men, both uniting them in their mutual
feelings for her as well as separating them. The set up for Alexander and Otto in Tarkovsky’s
film is similar in that the two men face the camera when discussing the picture before we see
a shot of Alexander’s face reflected in the casing of the Leonardo print, a print depicting the
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adoration of the magi before the infant Jesus and the virgin Mary. Thus this ‘terrifying’
presence of the painting for Otto as an ambiguous element of either being the presence of the
artist Leonardo or the ideal virgin Mary, since female characters in the film also share a dual
disruptive-salvific function to the apocalyptic world they find themselves in.
But returning to the allusions to The Idiot, there is also the novel’s discussion of a 16th
century painting by Hans Holbein of the deceased Christ Myshkin sees in Rogozhin’s house.
Myshkin interprets the painting as the physical suffering and corporeality of the incarnated
Christ and acts as a disturbing point of conversation for Myshkin who says it could make
someone an unbeliever. The placement of the Leonardo lithograph for Tarkovsky contrasts
with the gift book of Orthodox icons from Victor, which Alexander marvels at being ‘childlike’ in a positive connotation. An added layer to this discussion of Catholic-Orthodox
devotional art and male intimacy is the Japanese shakuhachi music playing during the entire
scene. The music turns out to be playing on Alexander’s hi-fi, he switches it off, and voices
on the TV downstairs talk of war. This touch of the Japanese will appear again.
In scene 12 Alexander wears Adelaide’s shawl over his shoulders as he goes to the
window to let Otto in. They speak to each other through the glass at first, showing a tentative
reapproach to establishing the vulnerability of standing so close before. Alexander says
everyone is sitting around the table downstairs, hinting that this is a scene is from before their
‘earlier scene’, making the film one that is not entirely chronological.
342 This scene especially
displays the theatrical blocking of characters who move and stand in a highly choregraphed
manner. Beginning with a full shot of the entire room the scene shows the two men standing
in Alexander’s study in front of the sofa that Alexander sleeps on alone. Alexander lights a
lamp, but Otto snuffs it out, steps away, then combs his hair. Otto tells Alexander to go see
Maria, prompting a back and forth between them for clarify as they drink. Otto sits on the
342 Redwood, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Poetics of Cinema, 226-27.
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floor, cross-legged. Alexander sits close to him, face to face. Here they reestablish their
positions as vulnerable and intimate with one another, sharing their convictions and deepest
thoughts. Otto tells Alexander to go lie with Maria and wish for all their troubles to be over.
Alexander laughs and cries over this. Otto exclaims Maria being a witch as “a holy truth”. “Is
this a Nietzschean prank?” Alexander asks, bringing in another point of philosophical
existentialism as discussed by them earlier. Once Otto gets up from off the floor the camera
backs up to the full room shot again as Otto leaves with a fright at the sight of the Da Vinci
painting, saying he prefers della Francesca (a reference to Nostalghia). Alexander takes off
Adelaide’s shawl, cut to da Vinci print with a reflection of the outside. Of note here is that
both Otto and Victor have both been with women, while Alexander has not been since Little
Man was conceived, supposedly.
Anxieties over intimacy with women continue even after Alexander goes to Maria and
sleeps with her in the levitation scene. The following dream he has of seeing overturned
norms of behavior from the women in his life leads to a shot of Alexander asleep on his own
coach. The dream included seeing Maria dressed in his wife’s clothing and his daughter
naked and chasing geese with his wife’s shawl. He sits up and the shakuhachi music
continues, which Alexander turns off from the stereo again. After this Alexander calls Martin
his publisher a superficial phone call just to see the phones are working again and which
proves that no one acts as if anything has happened. Alexander puts on a black ‘kimono’
crying, and sets his plan to sacrifice his home in motion. These placements of shakuhachi
music and Japanese cultural artifacts during interior scenes of intimacy and vulnerability may
in fact act as an interpretation of the scenes of male camaraderie in Kurosawa’s films, and
highlight the longing for and lack of such a straightforward and defined community in
Tarkovsky’s film.
198
Victor is overtly tied to phallic objects, such as the gun he keeps in his doctor’s bag or
the syringe he uses on Adelaide and Marta. Alexander later puts Victor’s bag in the car,
moves the car, clears the table, and puts all the chairs on it before striking a match. He turns
on his shakuhachi music for the final time, drinks a glass, then crawls down the ladder to the
main room. All these actions include considerations for the men in his life, most notably the
gun which he pulled out of Victor’s doctor bag. The first sighting of this gun came when
Adelaide holds Julia and asks for forgiveness. At this display of female-to-female intimacy
Alexander looks away from them, and reaches into Victor’s doctor bag to pull out the gun.
Later when he tries to pray he begins as the Our Father but omits ‘forgive us our trespasses’,
perhaps a link to the previous scene where Adelaide asks Julia to forgive her. His unease of
female intimacy prompts a reaction to take possession of Victor’s gun, a sign of power and
potency he lacks in himself. This could be taken as an attempt to reach for further connection,
a connection Alexander could not even achieve with Otto. After burning the house down
Alexander at first tries to tell Vitor something then says “Silence!” and sits in a meditative
stance with his hands together; the attempt at intimacy is thwarted by self-sabotage with
gestures toward Zen meditation.
This call to silence in the face of attempted intimacy shows Alexander’s further place
as a person of monk-like renunciation. Of note should be the wearing of the black kimono, as
if to signal that Alexander’s monasticism is one of Japanese Zen, since after he utters the
word ‘silence’ he places his hands together and sits cross-legged on the ground. The only
other times that Tarkovsky explicitly mentions Japan in his film is in the opening shot’s giant
‘ikibana’ tree, the shakuhachi music in Alexander’s study, and Alexander’s belief that he and
his son were both Japanese in a past life. Here we have a contrary motion of desire and
aspiration from Alexander: he sacrifices material possessions to ensure the world he knows
stays the same, and yet he also shows little markers of wanting to connect to a ‘former life’
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that is foreign to his present reality, thus is attempt at keeping the present and past are not
enough to alter his future which he sacrificed, making for a confusing series of actions as the
audience sees Alexander move around the ‘stage’ of the film.
According to Redwood, Sacrifice uses 4 opening strategies to ‘delimit prominence of
character action’: 1) ‘decentering’ of character dialogue, 2) reducing character’s visual
prominence by staging them in extreme depth, 3) drastic slowing down of dramatic action,
and 4) emphasis on domestic props with formalized and theatrical choreography (especially
in scenes 4 and 5).343 This decentering of each character’s visual prominence into the scene
comes clearing the scenes between Alexander and Otto, scenes that place intimacy as an
interior setting in the meeting place of various differing elements. The reduction of human
element into the wider scene mentioned by the analysis given by Redwood is a common
characteristic of East Asian art, especially Japan, as is the fascination with surface.
Redwood’s subtle discussion of color and costume in the movie includes notes on the
presence of a pale colored shawl which can be linked to the use of desaturated colors in Da
Vinci’s painting.
344
And an opposition and mixing up of Alexander’s jacket and Adelaide’s shawl, as if
the actors switch clothing signifiers for who is male and who is female.
345 The placement of
Adelaide’s shawl in the scenes out of order shows a discontinuity between shots similar to the
technique of bleeding in Nostalghia.
346 This succession of the shawl in Adelaide’s hand,
around Alexander’s shoulders, placed over a chair, or on the floor add to the theatrical
staging, as well as the Japanese touches in the film. The role of the unworn shawl placed on
the floor especially is found in Japanese Nōh theater. A famous example is the Nōh play Aoi
no ue (Lady Aoi). In this play a spurned lady of the Heian court, Lady Rokujo, turns into a
343 Ibid, 209. 344 Ibid, 208. 345 Ibid, 226-27. 346 Ibid, 228.
200
vengeful spirit with a hannya mask to torment the sleeping lady Aoi. the sleeping woman is
represented by a kimono jacked placed on the floor upstage the actors and musicians.
[adaptation in a modern setting by Yukio Mishima]. Here the syuzhet of Sacrifice acts as a
basic classical narrative but with inherent contradictions that make it narratively incompatible
with theatrical structure,
347 and even could find its analogues in Tarkovsky’s knowledge of
Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood and its use of shots that hold stylized movement and wide shots
as found in nōh plays. There is in fact even a precedent for Japanese theater in Russian and
soviet films, beginning with Eisenstein and his work on kabuki.
Conclusion
Both Tarkovsky and Kurosawa place themselves in dialogue with Dostoevsky’s
characters who exhibit a close but indeterminate relationship. By extension they are in
dialogue with one another in their mutual admiration for each other’s work. Their uses of
and adaptations of the Rogozhin-Myshkin dynamic, however, are not a one-to-one
correlation. Both directors use the tropes of the characters rather than their strict selves in
their respective works. Kurosawa may adhere more to the plot and dialogue of the novel, but
he collapses the character of Myshkin into the persona of Dostoevsky. Tarkovsky uses the
memory of the Myshkin persona more so than the actual character in making Alexander a
reluctant actor as well as a stand in for the directorial figure. So, while both see the moment
shared by Myshkin and Rogozhin as one of connection and intimacy, Kurosawa emphasizes
the uncanny, inhuman sense of going numb and losing connection while Tarkovsky
emphasizes the blurring of boundaries into vulnerability.
Another way to look at resolving ambiguity within Tarkovsky’s last film is to see the
interconnectedness in who he admired as fellow artists, both contemporary and otherwise.
347 Ibid, 232.
201
The two examples of Akira Kurosawa and Dostoevsky show how Tarkovsky’s relational
concerns encounter other concerns expressed by other artists. By including Kurosawa, a
Japanese director with an affinity for Russian literature, we see how Tarkovsky’s protagonist
issues went from personal to universal. Even in Tarkovsky’s earlier cinema is this East-West
tension, most noticeably the Tatars Andrei Rublev who sack Vladimir and are curious about
Russian culture; in one scene of the aftermath a Tatar warrior looks at a wall icon of the
Nativity and asks, ‘Who is that wench (baba)?’ to which the Russian replies ‘that’s no
wench’. Such a film was praised by Soviet critics as a “nationalist, thoroughly Russian
film,”348 while also being described as reminiscent of the historical shogun films of Akira
Kurosawa,
349 which themselves were modeled after the cowboy western. This momentary
mention of the ‘father of Japanese cinema’ matches Tarkovsky’s notes on cinema which
would later become Sculpting in Time. Further investigation shows that Tarkovsky’s
involvement with Kurosawa came in distinct moments of time that coincided with the various
waves of involvement between Soviet and Japanese cinema productions’ such co-productions
reflected the waxing and waning between the USSR and Japan in diplomatic and economic
discussions.
Since Kurosawa says explicitly in his 1987 article that he considered Tarkovsky as a
little brother, what can we infer was Tarkovsky’s thoughts about the dynamic of his
relationship to Kurosawa? It is interesting that Kurosawa places the relationship on the plane
of brotherhood instead of say parent to child since they both came from different generations
(Kurosawa was born in 1910, Tarkovsky was born in 1932). On the flipside, Tarkovsky only
ever comes close to explaining his own thoughts on his relationship with Kurosawa by
placing Seven Samurai as one of his favorite films, making Kurosawa a cinematic ‘father’ in
348 Johnson and Petrie, A Visual Fugue, 124. 349 Martin, Andrei Tarkovsky, 83.
202
the sense of inspiration and admiration. Such an honor is not afforded to Eisenstein, or even
Dovzhenko whose work Tarkovsky admired. 350
350 In his wider legacy, Tarkovsky became shorthand for absorbing introspection on questions of faith (ex. the
music video for R.E.M.'s 1991 song "Losing My Religion" recreates shots from Sacrifice). In terms of the
Japanese reception of Tarkovsky it seems that there was and continues to be a huge fascination for Solaris in
1996 after Tarkovsky’s death. Japanese TV's made an hour long documentary on Tarkovsky’s early life in
which it interviewed his colleagues and especially his sister Marina Arsenievna and it even showed some of
Tarkovsky’s personal papers the majority of which were actually his personal drawings. Some of these personal
drawings look very similar to ukiyoe prints. Japanese cable came out with a re-edited and dubbed version of
stellaris into Japanese that included voiceovers and reordered scenes. In addition is the Japanese anime film
called Angel's Egg by Mamoru Oshii in which some scholars note that the final shot is very reminiscent of the
final shot in Solaris as well as the overall pacing and somber, elegiac, and dreamlike atmosphere is very similar
to the one that Tarkovsky was well known for. Oshii himself has cited Tarkovsky as a major influence on his
own films, from such projects as his Ghost in the Shell franchise.
One unexpected example of Tarkovsky’s Japanese legacy is Mamoru Oshii’s Angel’s Egg (Tenshi no tamago)
(1985). This OVA is often considered the problem child of Oshii’s career. Solaris and perhaps even Nostalghia
appear to have influenced Oshii’s gem, as well as Yoshitaka Amano’s art direction, as seen by scholar Dani
Cavallaro:
“The final sequence of the OVA consists of a protracted reverse zoom that vividly recalls the closing frames of
Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) in its gradual revelation that the island upon which the action turns out to
have taken place is a puny and lonely dot in the midst of an overwhelmingly empty ocean.” (see Dani Cavallaro,
The Cinema of Mamoru Oshii (McFarland and Co. Inc., 2006), 77). This nod to the final shot as well as Oshii’s
explicit admiration of Tarkovsky begs for deeper scholarship into Tarkovsky’s wider legacy into Japanese sci-fifantasy arts.
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Conclusion
This dissertation has sought to expand the existing scholarship on Tarkovsky by
focusing on the director’s conception of interpersonal relationships. In these chapters the goal
was to have begun the discussion of intimacy in the director’s work by providing a
vocabulary and iconography through combined study of completed films, various script
drafts, unfinished screenplays, and personal writing. This topic of intimate relationships
appears as equally vast and important as Tarkovsky’s more well-known spiritual themes of
dreams and memory. By use of such approaches as kinship studies, queer theory, and haptic
film theory, the role of touch between characters becomes more apparent upon rewatching the
director’s works.
The central idea of Tarkovsky’s conception of his male characters is a man
surrounded by men, both emotionally and even physically. The physical component is an
integral part to the relationship, with an intimacy beyond mere brotherhood. Men of
Tarkovsky all search for intimacy with other men. This chapter will also include an example
of the breakdown of the structures of community. The overall formation of Tarkovsky’s
communities of men focuses on creating intimate relationships. Along the way toward this
ideal comes strained male-female relationships, marked differences between in and out
groups (soldiers, monastics, Russians, etc.), a connection between the living and the dead via
dreams and memories, as well as specific moments when touch between characters is
employed. By characters looking at and touching each other Tarkovsky shows a longing for
connection amidst strife and pain. The reality of community, filiation, kinship, or family all
must come with intentional proximity, both physical, emotional, and ultimately spiritual. This
intentionality and proximity lead to seeing the Other as part of the self which comes with the
risk of being vulnerable and open to either a deeper connection, rejection, or violence.
Furthermore, Tarkovsky’s examples of communal proximity can be further grouped into two
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categories of 1) ambivalent, often disruptive male-female relations and 2) tacit understanding
and pacts between men. The visual motifs of hands and faces and heads and gazes become
equally as important as what characters say to one another. This way in which characters
physically interact shows a highly strict appearance with deliberate moments.
As to the role of Dostoevsky, one possible explanation for the use of Dostoevsky in
Tarkovsky comes with coupling visual with moral ideas. The Tarkovskian long take resists
the editing and quick cuts of his processor Sergei Eisenstein. In this way the long takes resists
fragmentation and instills in the viewer a sense of longing i.e., the shot forces the viewers in
the audience and the characters on the screen to share in a space together, in community (ex.
in Andrei Rublev characters are frequently depicted as standing alone in nature). This relates
to Dostoevsky in that the author hated the normalization of science (which behavior as
predictable). Dostoevsky sets up the binary opposition of Russia between Community
(wholeness, cycles, etc.) vs the individualism of the fragmented “West.”
This opposition comes in Tarkovsky’s work as well. For example, in the script Light
Wind Tarkovsky shows how the ego embodied in the characters of both the scientists (as
fragmented knowledge) and the monks (as organized religion) with World War I as the
triumph of technology and the failure of religion both leading to destruction. Thus, while he
does present the opposition, Tarkovsky seems to not have a clear division of sides but instead
chooses to disrupt binary thinking. This brings in another topic understudied in Tarkovsky,
that of queer theory, which for use with Tarkovsky is one of intentional ambiguity and
disruption of binary categories.
Tarkovsky’s creations revel in this indeterminacy of aim or explanation in that the
relationship categories presented have undefined categories. The emotions between a
romantic couple, say, become mapped onto those of a parent to a child, and the bond of
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brotherhood takes a primacy over the championed nuclear family of husband-wife during the
Thaw and post-Thaw periods.
In navigating this discussion of relationships in the work of a Soviet Russian director, I
acknowledge my position as a twenty-first century ‘Western’ scholar using the lens of nonRussian theory for my research, as well as my reticence to make definitive statements on
Tarkovsky the person. Norms of homosocial and heterosocial affection during both
Tarkovsky’s time and Dostoevsky’s time have a specificity to the Russian speaking world,
and as such differ from norms of affection in say the United States of today. Intimacy has the
dual nature of being both highly personal and exceedingly universal, while still maintaining a
specificity to time and place. Thus, while these readings of affects and gestures are made
through the lens of my own time and place, I welcome any scholars to do the work to show
any misreading or misunderstanding on my part. But, undeniably, the discussion of intimacy
and relationship building in Tarkovsky’s work has been opened and can no longer be ignored.
After exploring the vast array of scholarship on Tarkovsky I believe further study can be
done with non-European and non-Russian sources. The topic of Tarkovsky and his
fascination with Asia, for instance, is still uncharted ground, with the director’s love of
Japanese cinema especially containing much potential. But for now, a working knowledge of
Russian, Japanese, and English is essential for such research. Hopefully my brief writing on
the subject can act as just an introduction and a basic taste that should be examined further.
Thus, looking further into especially the relationship between him and Kurosawa would
provide much scholastic fruit for the future of studies on this director.
From looking at Tarkovsky’s configurations of kinship comes the overwhelming
impression of a type of embodying. From haptic connections between characters to the verbal
and physical expression of intimate emotions, Tarkovsky’s characters have both an inner and
outer presence to them. They are more than the cerebral, artistic, lonely figures one takes
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them to be at first glance. Rather, their longing and need for connection as a part of being
human and living in the natural world brings these characters into a type of sensuality that is
only fulfilled by relationships that cannot be easily defined. It is precisely this physicality as
well as this connection via memory and dreams that intrigues Tarkovsky who chose to mature
his art on the founding principle that nothing is purely good or purely evil. But despite, or
perhaps because of, this ambiguity, Tarkovsky still makes his characters see connection with
others as the natural state of intimacy and the ideal for his characters. Whether they achieve
this ideal or not, and they rarely do, Tarkovsky allows them these fleeing chimeras of kinship
that haunt and comfort in equal turns.
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