"A Letter To My Friend, Anna"

"A Letter To My Friend, Anna"

Hi! How R You?

If you could Read:
{There is an autobiographical work by Andrei Tarkovsky – “Sculpting in Time”. It is not only a treatise on his craft or even an in-depth analysis of the making of his films but a heartfelt statement about art's inherent spirituality and its role in combating the destructive materialism that defines society and kills humanity's quest for the infinite.}

If you could See:
Watch the 7 films by Tarkovsky; you will come to realize that no film is worth seeing any more. (pls don’t laugh). I have seen the films of other ‘masters’ too… Bergman, Antonioni, Fellini, Godard, Bunuel, Zanussi, Kurosawa… even the films of Kim Ki-Duk. Yet I affirm my conviction; my LOVE for him is ETERNAL…

What I have to Say:
I have seen ‘film clips’ of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s ‘Santa Sangre’ (Holy Blood); and have read about it too from various sources. I don’t acknowledge this 'surrealist’, 'psychotic’, ‘bizarre’ and ‘gore’ film as a good ‘work of art’. Apart from the ‘surrealist bizarreness’, it is totally unfocused. The film talks about and depicts many things, but ultimately what do they convey? Does it give us a different or novel interpretation of LIFE? You said about the ‘spirituality’ of the film. There is no other film-maker who has talked about ‘spirituality’ endlessly and in depth other than Tarkovsky. In his films, SPIRITUALITY itself is the plot; it permeates the very fabric of his films. It can be said that his films vibrate with his own spirituality. As he himself states, in all of his films, the main characters undergo a SPIRITUAL crisis.

{"The connection between man's behaviour and his destiny has been destroyed; and this tragic breach is the cause of his sense of instability in the modern world. Man has arrived at the false and deadly assumption that he has no part to play in shaping his own fate."}
~ ‘Sculpting in Time

Since his films strive to reach out to the spirit within us and convey to us a spiritual experience, each one of us will take away from them something uniquely personal. But in each case, it will be something which will move us on a deep spiritual level - much deeper than emotion! This level of experiencing is akin to a state of NOSTALGHIA. Here the word "nostalghia", which one of Tarkovsky's films bears as its title, is to be understood not in the English sense of "nostalgia", but in the sense it has in the Russian language: a state of unquenchable longing for one's homeland. And since the homeland of the spirit lies far above this earth, "nostalghia" of the SPIRIT for the LIGHT is that inexplicable longing we feel when nothing on earth seems to satisfy us, nothing seems to come up to that ideal of harmony and beauty, which we carry deep inside us as a vague memory from our distant homeland. Far from being an imaginary place dreamt up by poets, it is a place as real as the earth - and it is precisely the reality of that memory, which the poets in all branches of the arts throughout all the ages have tried to convey to us. Tarkovsky himself stated that he was not satisfied with the screenplay for his film ‘Nostalghia’ until he succeeded in expanding the more narrow concept of Russian "nostalghia" (the longing to return to Russia) into a more profound "global yearning for the wholeness of existence," so that the film "came together at last into a kind of metaphysical whole."

{"I do not know whether there is Truth or not. But I instinctively feel that I cannot be without It. And I know that if It is, then It is everything for me: reason, and good, and strength, and life, and happiness. Perhaps It is not; but I Love It - Love is more than everything that exists. I already count It as existing, and I Love It - though perhaps non-existent - with all my soul and all my thinking and dreaming. I renounce everything for It - even my questions and my doubts."}

Mime & Film:
Film is the ultimate/TOTAL art, where mime, dance, music, painting, sculpture, photography, Theatre & other performing arts come together and evolve as a WHOLE. I consider Film/Cinema as the SUPREME and SUBLIME art form.

Tarkovsky as the Supreme/Sublime Auteur Film-Maker:
Tarkovsky is the greatest Auteur film-maker ever lived. Each of his film carries his unique artistic ‘Signatures’. He developed a truly novel and unique ‘film language’/'cinematic language' which is Deep as well as Mysterious. His 7 films can be considered as ‘Text Books’ on Film-Making for other Auteur Film-Makers. (Even the great ‘Ingmar Bergman’ was inspired by his films). Cinema being essentially a visual medium, it goes without saying that the hypnotic images Tarkovsky creates are essential to his films’ greatness. Every film contains numerous unforgettable shots; one could instance the crossing of the river in ‘Ivan’s Childhood’, the motorway sequence in ‘Solaris’ (stunning on the wide screen), the breath-taking Brueghel-like scene in ‘Mirror’ following the rifle-range episode, or the arrival of the Tatars at the start of the episode entitled "The Raid" in ‘Andrei Rublev’. In his later work, Tarkovsky increasingly relied on exquisite long takes, whether the trolley-car journey in ‘Stalker’, the crossing of the pool in ‘Nostalgia’ (at over 9 minutes the longest take in all his work), or the house-burning scene of ‘The Sacrifice’. Recurring motifs include scenes of levitation, rain indoors, hysterical outbursts by women characters, paintings by Leonardo Da Vinci, Brueghel, music by Bach, dream sequences, characters who begin to speak after long periods of dumbness, and the ever-present fire and water.

One of the last things Tarkovsky said on his deathbed (as reported by his wife) was: "It is time for a new Direction."

p.s. Sorry for this LONG note; just wished to say who and what ‘Tarkovsky’ is… and, also BTW, who and what Alejandro Jodorowsky is…

Regards,

Yours Truly,
Satheesh Balachandran.