Geryk: "I don't agree that his films are unwatchable on DVD"

You haven't tried to watch them in my house, then.

But seriously. I spent the better part of my adolescence playing Dino Eggs and Drol while listening to loud, depressing music. My attention span is chaotic, to say the least.

For me, the distractions of everyday living are too overwhelming for anything to block them out other than more distractions. There are cats running around, ambulances wailing by my living room window, phones ringing, and drunken thugs beating each other up on the sidewalk outside my house.

In this environment, it would be pointless to attempt to watch a scene in which a guy tries repeatedly to carry a lit flame across an empty pool in real time. But in the theater, that scene, as "The Room" scene in Stalker, was one of the most powerful things I have ever seen in a film. It's like the scene in Cassavetes' Faces where the wife walks up and down the stairs while the husband sits at the bottom - it achieves its emotional state through repetition, and it's not as effective if you can look away.

The word "sublime" is (too) often used to describe Tarkovsky's films, but it's accurate. They cause an almost hypnotic state in the viewer that gives himself over to them, a difficult thing for me to do in the comfort of my own home.

As for Nostalghia: When I wrote in a previous thread that I didn't understand it, I meant that I had no intellectual reaction to it. I can't process it, or explain its effect. The sequence of images in that film, especially toward the end, is baffling to me. But it definitely had an emotional impact.

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For me, the distractions of everyday living are too overwhelming for anything to block them out other than more distractions.

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"After a while you feel like your head is locked and all you want is a cut but you can't look away."

That's a very accurate description of my experience with his films. So much so, that I just deleted everything I was going to say as a follow-up.

One of the more interesting aspects of Tarkovsky, to me, is that he is such a technical master and yet that mastery is so subtle. The pacing and heft of his films disguises the fact that they feature some really amazing feats of photography. The opening scene of Andrei Rublev, alone, is awe-inspiring.

It's so strange to see his films in the context of modern films. With Tarkovsky, every edit is crucial, it's like he took Eisenstein's theory of montage and stretched it to its absolute breaking point.

Has anyone read Tarkovsky's book, Sculpting in Time? I was a bit dissapointed that it didn't go into more technical detail about how he achieved certain things, but reading his own ideas behind his films, and films in general, is fascinating.

Here's how I'm going to spell Tarkovsky: Ken.

And here's a quote from Ken about Eisenstein and montage, followed by a link:

"I am radically opposed to the way [Sergei] Eisenstein used the frame to codify intellectual formulae. My own method of conveying experience to the audience is quite different... Eisenstein makes thought into a despot: it leaves no "air," nothing of that unspoken elusiveness which is perhaps the most captivating quality of all art..."

http://www.ce-review.org/00/39/kinoeye39_halligan.html

I bookmarked this once when I was planning to write something about Rune's "great, slow" parts being "Tarkovsky-esque". That never happened. I'm glad I finally got a chance to use the link.

Thanks for that link, Erik. I was being a bit of a smarty pants by bringing up Eisenstein, and in hindsight it's ridiculous to have done so.

Applying the theory (meaning in films must be derived as the result of juxtaposed images) to Tarkovsky isn't valid, because the images are so isolated, and the change so infrequent.

"I was planning to write something about Rune's "great, slow" parts being "Tarkovsky-esque". That never happened."

It's amazing how even your trash is funny.

"Thanks for that link, Erik. I was being a bit of a smarty pants by bringing up Eisenstein, and in hindsight it's ridiculous to have done so."

Whoa, I didn't provide the link as a refutation of what you said. I'm not that much of an asshole. Yet. The link's just more info of interest. Plus, Ken has kind of set himself up for any interpretation you're ready to put forward. Here he is talking about The Mirror:

"The images themselves are like symbols, but unlike accepted symbols they cannot be deciphered. the image is like a clot of life, and even the author may not be able to work out what it means, let alone the audience."

Granted, the quote deals with content rather than technique, but what the Hell. It does make me nervous that even *he* doesn't know what The Mirror means. The goddamn thing's like a poetic runaway train. (Andrei Konchalovsky reference - thank you!).

And based on this thread, I'd categorize you less as a smarty-pants and more of a fancy-pants.

By "The Mirror", I of course mean "Mirror".

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By "The Mirror", I of course mean "Mirror".

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"I didn't provide the link as a refutation of what you said."

I didn't take it as such. But the quote did, nonethekess, refute what I said.

"I'd categorize you less as a smarty-pants and more of a fancy-pants."

That reminds me of Eisenstein's theory of fancy pants. It's been years since I've read "Film Form," but I think it was "the fancier, the better."

>>I'm not that much of an asshole.

Erik, don't sell yourself short.

Just wanted to add a note that in a recent interview, Steve Soderbergh commented on how he's writing a script for a remake of Solaris.

-Thierry

Yikes.