Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema
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Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema
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If we feel inexplicable symptoms of anxiety, depression or despair, we promptly turn to the services of the psychiatrist or, better still, the sexologist, who has taken over from the confessor, and who, we imagine, eases our minds and restores them to normality. Reassured, we pay him the going rate. Or if we feel the need for love, we go off to a brothel and again pay cash—not that it necessarily has to be a brothel. And all this despite the fact that we know perfectly well that neither love nor peace of mind can be bought with any currency.
Y respecto a ello, a lo material, al materialismo (visto desde la filosofía, y desde la cultura de masas y el consumismo), Tarkovski, que salió de la URSS en 1983, se sitúa en un espacio cuasi paria al criticar a ambos sistemas, aunque no los nombre. No nombra al Capitalismo y al Comunismo, pero sí habla de Occidente y su materialismo (lo cierto es que también critica a ese cine comprometido y político de la URSS con el que no quería tener nada que ver), y cree que la materia amenaza con devorar el espíritu del hombre. También equipara el avance de la tecnología con esa pérdida de espíritu (de ahí que esté relacionado con la introducción de este texto, en el que hablo de la entrada de la tecnología en los dosmiles, cosa que de alguna manera Tarkovski predijo, pese a que murió en los aún analógicos ochentas). Para Tarkovski el cine comercial no tiene valor alguno más que como fuente de generación de dinero y según su idea, el artista no está ahí por enriquecerse. Su visión del arte es totalizadora y metafísica (en el sentido no-místico, sino de trascendencia de lo humano): el arte es lo que salva al hombre de la pérdida de su espíritu. "Y por eso, quizá realmente consista el sentido de la existencia humana en la creación de obras de arte, en el acto artístico, ya que este no posee una meta y es desinteresado". Tarkovsky decided to write this book in part to explain, or give insight, to his puzzled audience on the nature of his films. In the Introduction of his book, he cites many letters he received throughout the years, both of appraisal and discouragement. [2] The letters, regardless of their nature, seemed to agree on one thing: the people did not understand what was going on in the film. This book, as Tarkovsky explains, is a response to the questions of an audience that is willing to dialogue with him. [2] Tarkovsky has also cited film critic Olga Surkova as an inspiration for the creation of the book and that discussions with her greatly influenced the work's content. [2] Reception [ edit ]That we understand the gravity of this statement is more than a simple intellectual or rhetorical exercise for Tarkovsky. Throughout the book (but most notably in its “Conclusion”) he speaks in the voice of a trusted elder, as if determined to pass along the wisdom gained from experience and inspiration while time allows. That he was already suffering from terminal cancer when completing the book makes it all the more affecting. Tarkovsky for me is the greatest (director), the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream,” said the acclaimed Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) of the legendary Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky. Born in 1932 in the village of Zavrazhye in western Russia to poet Arseny Tarkovsky and his wife Maria, Andrei Tarkovsky attended the State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. He made a total of seven feature films: Ivan’s Childhood (1962), Andrei Rublev (1966), Solaris (1972), The Mirror (1975), Stalker (1979), Nostalghia(1983) and The Sacrifice (1986) – the last two being produced in Italy and Sweden, respectively. Tarkovsky died in Paris in December 1986 at the age of 54. And then, in a matter of days, a new house was built, identical to the first. It seemed like a miracle, and proved what people can do when they are driven by conviction—and not just people, but the producers themselves. A passionate proponent of the creative and psychological benefits of boredom as a function of learning to fully inhabit time, he considers the undergirding psychological scaffolding that makes the allure of film so robust: Pero ahí estaba Tarkovski con su Espejo, con su Stalker, con su Sacrificio, y ahí estaba yo, luchando contra ese tiempo extenuante para intentar ver aquello que él veía en el arte. En pequeñas salas de cine o funciones improvisadas incluso en monitores de TV, funciones a las que no acudía nadie. Esto debido en gran parte al contexto cultural del país en el que estoy. Pero todo esto puede parecer una labia innecesaria que nada tiene que ver con el libro que reseño aquí, sin embargo, tiene mucho que ver.
The metaphor of the film is consistent with the action, and needs no elucidation. I knew that the film would be open to a number of interpretations, but I deliberately avoided pointing to specific conclusions because I considered that those were for the audience to reach independently. Indeed, it was my intention to invite different responses. I naturally have my own views on the film but I think that the person who sees it will be able to interpret the events it portrays and make up his own mind both about the various threads that run through it, and about its contradictions. Above all, I feel that the sounds of this world are so beautiful in themselves that if only we could learn to listen to them properly, cinema would have no need of music at all. Little by little that awareness led me to carry out my wish to make a feature film about a man whose dependence upon others brings him to independence, and for whom love is at once ultimate thrall and ultimate freedom. And the more clearly I discerned the stamp of materialism on the face of our planet (irrespective of whether I was observing the West or the East), the more I came up against unhappy people, saw the victims of psychoses symptomatic of an inability or unwillingness to see why life had lost all delight and all value, why it had become oppressive, the more committed I felt to this film as the most important thing in my life. It seems to me that the individual stands today at a crossroads, faced with the choice of whether to pursue the existence of a blind consumer, subject to the implacable march of new technology and the endless multiplication of material goods, or whether to seek out a way that will lead to spiritual responsibility, which ultimately might mean not only his personal salvation but also the saving of society at large: in other words, to turn to God. He has to solve this dilemma for himself, for only he can discover his own sane spiritual life. Solving it may take him closer to the state in which he can be responsible for society. That is the step which becomes a sacrifice, in the Christian sense of self-sacrifice. Slovak experimental guitarist / composer David Kollar emerges as one of the most intriguing figures on the European Avant-Garde / Jazz scene in the last decade. His utterly unique approach both to the guitar as an instrument and the contemporary improvising / compositional idioms are fascinating and completely innovative. I tend to approach the world at an emotional and contemplative level. I don't try to rationalize it. I perceive it as an animal or child can do - not as an adult who draws his own conclusions.” was a bare response of Andrei Tarkovsky when asked what was his attitude to the world. David Kollar's guitar is marked with AT initials along with the title of one of the most significant European movies - "Stalker".
Interesting books
That was cinema, what about “art” in general? Tarkovsky considered art to be a yearning for the ideal. He wrote: The aesthetic experience of their sounding environment has of course inspired music makers throughout the ages. This is reflected in the following quote by the twentieth-century French composer Olivier Messiaen, which echoes Tarkovsky’s statement from the beginning of this article: 7
Perhaps other scenes—the dream sequences or the barren tree—are more significant from a certain psychological point of view than the one where Alexander burns down his house in grim fulfilment of his vow. But from the start I was determined to concentrate the feelings of the audience on the behaviour, at first sight utterly senseless, of someone who considers worthless—and therefore actually sinful—everything that is not a necessity of life. God hears Alexander’s prayer, and the consequences are at once terrible and joyful. On the one hand, the practical result is that Alexander breaks irrevocably with the world and with its laws, which until now he has taken to be his own. In doing so, he not only loses his family, but also—and for those around him this is the most frightening thing of all—he puts himself outside all accepted norms. And yet, that is precisely why I see Alexander as a man chosen by God. He can sense the danger, the destructive force driving the machinery of modern society as it heads towards the abyss. And the mask must be snatched away if humanity is to be saved. Es en esto, tanto obvio como evasivo el aspecto de la condición humana, que Andréi vio algo trascendental; algo que solo se puede capturar por medio del arte. He was never a fan of american style adventure movies and wanted to create inward attention rather than outward. Maria is the antithesis of Adelaide: modest, timid, perpetually uncertain of herself. At the beginning of the film anything like friendship between her and the master of the house would be unthinkable—the differences that separate them are too great. But one night they come together, and that night is the turning-point in Alexander’s life. In the face of imminent catastrophe he perceives the love of this simple woman as a gift from God, as a justification for his entire life. The miracle that overtakes Alexander transfigures him.
Alexander, an actor who has given up the stage, is perpetually crushed by depression. Everything fills him with weariness: the pressures of change, the discord in his family, and his instinctive sense of the threat posed by the relentless march of technology. He has grown to hate the emptiness of human speech, from which he flees into a silence where he hopes to find some measure of truth. Alexander offers the audience the possibility of participating in his act of sacrifice, and of being touched by its results. (Not, I hope, in the sense of that ‘audience participation’ which is all too current among directors in both the USSR and the USA—and therefore also in Europe—and has become one of the two main trends of current cinema: the other being the so-called ‘poetic cinema’ where everything is deliberately made incomprehensible and the director has to think up explanations for what he has done.) We could define it as sculpting in time. Just as a sculptor takes a lump of marble, and, inwardly conscious of the features of his finished piece, removes everything that is not part of it—so the film-maker, from a ‘lump of time’ made up of an enormous, solid cluster of living facts, cuts off and discards whatever he does not need, leaving only what is to be an element of the finished film, what will prove to be integral to the cinematic image. A third key property of the electronic medium is its ability to not only record and synthesize, but also process and thereby transform sound. Sound transformation techniques that alter the pitch, duration, spectrum, or other qualities of sound constitute a defining element of electronic music composition. 81 They are often applied in a manner that echoes the classical music technique of developing larger compositional structures from variations of a simple musical theme. An example of a masterful artistic application of this technique in electroacoustic music is Trevor Wishart’s piece Imago (2002), which its program notes describe as 82 In 1986, Tarkovsky published his Sculpting in Time, a dense and delightful work that is part film theory, part cultural criticism and part philosophy of life. What are the determining factors of cinema, and what emerges from them? What are its potential, means, images—not only formally, but even spiritually? – asked the renowned filmmaker. His explanation: The basic element of cinema is rhythm. The director brings his own rhythm to a picture, as do the subjects photographed as well as the editing imposed upon the footage.
He is pro realism and anti symbolism in film. He believes the most impactful way to portray a situation is with the reality of events rather than obtuse metaphors. The book has commentary on each of his 7 major feature films, and his complex relationship with the Soviet Union. The final chapter, a discussion of his film The Sacrifice, was dictated in the last weeks of his life. Tarkovsky’s discussion of sound, not surprisingly, begins with its relationship to the cinematic image: “But music is not just an appendage . . . It must be an essential element of the realisation of the concept as a whole . . . it must be so completely one with the visual image that if it were to be removed from a particular episode, the visual image would not just be weaker in its idea and impact, it would be qualitatively different” (158). As is often the case when one attempts to write about music (who said it’s like “dancing about architecture”?), Tarkovsky slips more noticeably here into poetic (rather than hard, practical) language. It makes for wonderful reading, but I’m still unsure about his exact approach: “Above all,” he writes, “I feel that the sounds of this world are so beautiful in themselves that if only we could learn to listen to them properly, cinema would have no need of music at all” (162).None of these reactions has anything to do with the reality shown in the film. The first and last scenes—the watering of the barren tree, which for me is a symbol of faith—are the high points between which events unfold with growing intensity. By the end of the film not only does Alexander prove his case and demonstrate that he is able to rise to extraordinary heights, but the doctor, who first appears as a simplistic character, bursting with health and utterly devoted to Alexander’s family, changes to such an extent that he is able to sense and understand the venomous atmosphere prevailing in the household and its deadly effect. He turns out to be capable not merely of expressing an opinion of his own but of deciding to break with what has grown hateful to him, and emigrate to Australia. art, like science, is a means of assimilating the world, an instrument for knowing it in the course of man’s journey towards what is called ‘absolute truth’. Instead, he writes, “rhythm . . . is the main formative element of cinema” (119). He uses a short film by Pascal Aubier to illustrate his point. The ten-minute film contains only one shot: the camera begins on a wide landscape, then zooms in slowly to reveal a man on a hill. As the camera gets closer, we learn first that the man is dead, then that he has been killed. “The film has no editing, no acting and no decor,” Tarkovsky writes. “But the rhythm of the movement of time is there within the frame, as the sole organising force of the — quite complex — dramatic development” (114). Like the Aubier example, Tarkovsky’s films are marked by long takes (most notably in the bookends of The Sacrifice) and slow, beautifully choreographed camera movements. Scenario and Shooting Script Cada vez que usted vea en el cine -aunque cada vez es más escaso- un plano fijo larguísimo, en el que parece que no pasara nada, es Tarkovski. Puede ser un Tarkovski deformado, pero es él. Él es el hombre que esculpió en el tiempo. Es la mejor definición de su cine dada por él mismo, y que da título a este libro. Una gran influencia para muchos cineastas que quisieron seguir/copiar su estilo. Aún recuerdo siendo una estudiante universitaria, la mística alrededor de Tarkovski. Seguía siendo un outsider ya a finales de los noventa y entrado en los dosmiles. Ver sus películas era una especie de ritual para pocos, pero, a la vez, para algunos no era más que un snobismo trasnochado. Los Bergmans, Antonionis, Buñeles y Bressones estaban en ese punto de quiebre que marcaba el nuevo milenio, y que empezaba a darle una fuerza irreductible a la entrada de las nuevas tecnologías, llámese la revolución de lo digital. Entonces, todo aquello con un ritmo análogo y con intención de "el arte por el arte"parecía entrar al terreno de lo caduco, para algunos enfrascados en la novedad y el ritmo cada vez más acelerado de los tiempos.
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