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By the jasmine lies a stone.
Beneath the stone lies a treasure.
On the path stands Father.
It's a bright, bright day.
The silver poplar blooms...
and the centifolia rose,
and behind it the rambling roses,
and the tender milky grass.
Never have I been happier than then.
There can be no going back
and no recounting
the bliss that filled
that Garden of Eden.
An artist feeds on his childhood his entire life.
The shape and form of his childhood...
determine the nature of his art.
The fact my father was a poet
played a huge role in my life.
His poetry had an enormous influence on me...
as did his views about his poetry, Russian literature...
and art.
But it's a kind of unconscious dependence
and connection.
I can't analyze or evaluate its nature.
I feel much more connected to my mother than to my father.
Everything I had to say in that regard
I said in my film Mirror.
Those who've seen that film
probably understand what I meant.
My first memory dates back
to when I was a year and a half old.
I recall a house...
stairs, and a porch.
An uncovered porch
with steps and a handrail.
Five or six steps.
By the steps was a huge lilac bush.
It was cool beneath it, and strewn with fresh sand.
I'm rolling an aluminum saucepan lid down the handrail
when I'm suddenly terribly frightened by a noise.
I crawl under the lilac and look up at the sky,
because the terrible noise that's getting louder and louder
is coming from above.
Suddenly, through an opening in the branches,
I see an airplane overhead.
That was in 1933.
I was born in 1932.
Those postwar years were very hard, with famine and such.
I almost can't remember.
I only remember the hospital where I went in 1947.
As a child I fell ill from hunger and fear.
I peel the scabs off my lips and run my tongue over them.
I recall the cool and salty taste.
And I walk endlessly. I walk and walk.
I sit on the front steps to warm up.
I wander lightheaded, as if to the Pied Piper's tune.
I sit shivering on the steps, trying to warm myself.
And Mother stands a ways off, beckoning to me,
seemingly so close, yet out of reach.
I move toward her.
She stands seven steps away, beckoning... beckoning.
I consider memory a peculiar emotional structure
of enormous importance
to all those whose profession revolves
around imagination and creativity.
I was just three when my father left us.
We saw him very seldom,
so I can only recall the rare occasions
when he'd suddenly appear.
We had two small rooms in an apartment
in the old part of Moscow called Zamoskvorechye.
A few years had passed. I was in school by then.
My father came by late one night.
My sister and I were already in bed.
He argued with my mother in the kitchen,
demanding that she grant him custody of me.
She didn't want to
and was of course terribly hurt by his demand.
Neither of them mentioned it to me directly,
but I remember it.
Hence that scene in Mirror.
Ignat, your mother and I wanted to ask you something.
What?
Perhaps it's better if you live with me.
What do you mean?
Live here with me, go to a new school.
Didn't you mention it to Mama once?
What did I say?
When? No. There's no point.
I realized I'd never ever go live with my father,
even though I always dreamed about it
and suffered from not living with him.
But I'd never in my life go live with him.
I remember her waiting for my father
to arrive from the city.
It happened exactly like in the film.
Maybe that's why I remember it.
I don't remember much else,
except that I know she was in love
with my father
and never loved anyone else.
After my father left us...
we tried to keep in touch.
Or he tried to, since I was just a child.
The war began soon after that,
and life became terribly difficult.
And those difficulties fell on my mother's shoulders, of course.
And though she was totally unequipped for life,
she managed not only to save my sister's life and mine
but to make sure we got an education.
Despite the dire conditions,
she made sure I graduated with a major in music,
studying piano
and also painting.
Looking back today, I simply can't fathom...
how she managed all that,
given the dire circumstances.
If not for her, I'd certainly never have been able
to become a director.
Mama, the kerosene stove is smoking.
What?
Come and take it all.
I need nothing.
What I love I give away. What I don't love, likewise.
I want to replace you,
but if I say I'll turn into you,
don't believe me, poor child.
I'm lying.
Oh, those hands with fingers like vines,
those eyes, open and moist,
those shells of little ears
like saucers filled with a love song
and wings curved sharply by the wind.
Don't believe me, poor child. I'm lying.
I'll try to break away like one condemned,
but I cannot bridge this distance.
I cannot wave your wings
or touch your eyelid with your little finger
or see through your eyes.
You're a hundred times stronger than me.
You are a song about yourself,
while I'm governor of tree and sky,
and by your judgment sentenced for my song.
I must say I have a very hazy sense
of the role children play
in my films.
It's quite murky.
Same with women's roles in my films.
I have the sense I didn't manage
to express
all I should have about children and women.
I've always thought that children...
are much wiser than us...
and thus I've always tried to involve them in my films.
For me, children somehow connect our world
with another world, a transcendent world
to which they haven't yet lost their connection.
They will soon, but they haven't yet.
That's precisely why I feel
that children's roles are so important.
When a grown-up can't find words to express something,
I think he should ask a child.
The child will be able to clarify everything,
even just by his presence.
I have no doubt
that if the famous Khrushchev Thaw hadn't happened,
it would have been highly unlikely for me...
to establish any kind of career in cinema.
I remember that period very well.
It was connected to the hope we all felt.
We looked to the future with hope,
full of plans and prospects.
Full of hope.
I remember that time quite well for that reason.
We all felt connected
by an urgent, irrepressible desire to express ourselves,
and by the sense that that was now possible.
But all that quickly came to an end.
The "hangover after the feast"
set in all too soon.
I remember when my first film came out in 1962...
Ivan's Childhood.
I remember how state cinema officials
considered it a pacifist film —
that is to say, negatively.
Because, according to Soviet thinking,
war can be just or unjust.
It's a rather Raskolnikovian notion:
Killing is acceptable if the cause is just.
With a bit of distance it becomes clear
how hypocritical and false that point of view is.
Nevertheless, my film was criticized
on those grounds.
Its strong antimilitary position,
its stance against death, literally,
and against destruction
was viewed as suggesting an opposition
to death and war in and of themselves,
regardless of whether they're just or unjust.
When we speak of war, we're really speaking of casualties,
because there are no winners in a war.
Even if we're victorious, we're defeated...
simply by taking part.
The story behind that film is quite odd.
Mosfilm began production on a film to be called "Ivan"
with a different director.
The film was almost half finished.
Half the budget had been spent.
The footage was so awful that production was shut down.
Mosfilm began looking around for other directors.
Starting with the big names
down to the very last people at the studios,
when everyone else had said absolutely not,
they asked me.
I'd just graduated from film school.
I laid down a few conditions:
First, I would read the story by Bogomolov
on which the film was based.
Second, I wouldn't watch even one foot of existing footage.
I'd rewrite the entire script.
I'd replace everyone: actors, cinematographer, art direction.
And we'd start over from scratch.
"Okay, but you'll only have half the money."
"That's enough. Give me complete freedom and I'll do it.
All right.
Let me help you. - I'll manage.
"I'll manage!"
I know the film was very well received,
but I really don't think critics understood it.
They all tried to analyze the story line,
when in reality it was simply
the youthful creation of a young director,
a work of art to be examined from the artist's point of view.
Sartre defended the film
from a philosophical point of view,
but to me that was no defense.
It should have been from an aesthetic point of view.
Because I'm not a philosopher. I'm an artist.
His defense was useless to me.
Within this universe our joyous mind
erects an uncertain shelter.
Men, stars, and angels live
by virtue of this spherical tension.
We've barely conceived a child
when, beneath its feet,
the membrane bends outward into the unknown
along the child's circular orbit.
I'm flying!
Hey!
Chase me!
Very soon after the thaw I sensed a certain chill.
My second film, begun in 1964...
and completed in 1966...
called Andrei Rublev...
very clearly illustrates that critical juncture.
Come on!
The film was very well received by the film community.
I remember that the board of the film committee
all praised the film very highly — to my great surprise,
because I myself hadn't entirely grasped what I'd achieved.
Yet the film was shelved soon after that
and wasn't released for 5 1/2 years,
because it was labeled "antihistorical,"
which was completely untrue.
We'd been extremely careful
to maintain historical accuracy
in depicting the circumstances on which it was based.
On the other hand, they called it "anti-Russian."
It was also deemed too close to Western models
in portraying the protagonist as far too individualistic.
He was too self-absorbed
and too often in direct opposition to life
to be a Russian artist —
which was totally untrue.
He couldn't behave otherwise, because he was a monk.
His entire existence was in opposition to worldly existence.
That was the point.
That period was very hard for me.
I could see
that the time of the Party's 20th Congress was over,
and that hard times were coming.
Something goes wrong...
or you feel tired, discouraged.
And then suddenly, in the crowd, you meet a human glance,
and your burdens are made light, as after Communion.
Isn't that so?
A true poet...
if he truly is a poet, cannot but be a believer.
Perhaps that explains the cultural crisis
we've been experiencing for many years now.
We must remind people more often that they are people —
Russians, of the same blood, of the same land.
Personally I can't even remember
when that transition occurred,
when I became a believer,
when I became religious.
But by "religious" I don't mean I'm without sin.
Only that I'm simply more and more convinced
that culture cannot exist without religion.
In a certain sense, religion is sublimated in culture,
and culture in religion.
It's an interdependent process.
If a society needs spirituality,
it begins to generate works of art
and give birth to artists.
If it doesn't need spirituality, it will make do without art...
but the number of unhappy people will grow,
the number of spiritually dissatisfied people.
Human beings will lose their purpose
and no longer understand why they exist.
So for me religion is not a purely personal matter.
It's tied to the fate of the culture
of our civilization.
A filmic image
is something indivisible and intangible,
possessing qualities of the world
that it's depicting.
It's the relationship between absolute truth
and our Euclidian conscience, let us say.
We can't perceive that truth in its pure form,
but we can surmise its existence
and express our inner relationship with it.
Essentially, an artistic image can't be decoded.
If the world is mysterious,
the truthfulness of the image consists
in carrying within it a certain mystery as well.
The image in an icon painting
has a purely interior meaning and symbolism,
by no means external or figurative.
It's pure metaphysics.
An icon was not a depiction of the divine
nor its material manifestation.
This is very important,
because the best works by medieval Russian icon painters
are essentially embodied meditations on the Absolute.
The deeper, the more elusive,
and thus more beautiful the image,
the stricter the structure it calls for.
The most poetic image is rooted in naturalism,
not in some ideological way
but in the earthly meaning of the word.
Thus when speaking of simplicity
in the construction of an artistic image,
for me that always equates
to the artist touching the ground with one hand
while pointing with the other to transcendent spheres.
Tatars!
Run!
We mustn't forget we're human beings...
simple matter.
Spiritualized matter, but matter nonetheless.
Because in the final analysis, everything has one source
and is made of the same material.
That's why we sometimes get so irritated
with what we might call
"artistic pretentiousness,"
which manifests in an overly exaggerated expressiveness —
"exaggerated" only due to a lack of balance
within the image.
The image has become a symbol.
A symbol can be decoded.
It's actually anti-artistic.
Because an image isn't a charade or a puzzle.
Every puzzle or riddle has a solution,
and when the viewer finds it, the symbol is exhausted of meaning,
thus revealing its limitations.
For how can a symbol representing the world be limited
if it reflects the idea of the infinite?
Generally speaking, art is a symbol of the infinite,
a symbol of the world we live in.
There are no signed icons.
An icon painter didn't think of himself an artist.
If he had a talent
for painting icons, he gave thanks to God,
because he felt that through his craft,
his profession, and his skill
he was serving God and praying to God.
That was the meaning of his work.
It's about the absence of pride.
It's crucial to know,
and if you can't know,
to at least believe in your origins,
where you came from, where you're going,
and what you're living for.
You must feel your dependence on the Creator.
If you don't, you become an animal.
When you kneel down and turn all your feelings to God,
words are born within you...
true words.
The same way true images are born
if your profession is addressed
like a prayer to the Creator.
It's like a gift.
I grow a flower...
and I dedicate it to someone.
But I must first grow the flower.
Art is the reflection in a mirror
of the highest capacity for creation.
In creating art, we imitate the Creator,
because we were created
in the image and likeness of God.
And that's one of the moments when we resemble him.
Art is one of the most selfless of human endeavors.
Art is prayer.
It's my prayer.
And if my prayer becomes a prayer for others,
then my art becomes intimately others'.
It's a matter of duty.
And a human being's duty is to serve.
For that very reason this idea gets distorted
and turned into a power struggle
among those who would not serve
but would exploit the service of others.
Because there's just one principle of interaction in this world —
thank God —
and that is to serve and nothing else.
Our blood is not jealous of home,
but a chasm opens in what is to come.
Because what is earthly imposes upon itself
a limit here on this earth.
A crazed mother dreams
of the neighing of chariot horses —
Phaethon and his chariot
and crimson cubes of stone.
We wanted to make a film based on the novel Solaris
without actually traveling to Solaris.
That would be much more interesting, but Lem was against it.
Russians are closely tied to nature.
They can't imagine themselves extraneous to nature.
They feel a part of nature.
This is a trait of the Russian character.
Perhaps that's why nature and its manifestations
have such an impact on a person's character.
We cut nature out of our films
as if it were unnecessary.
We exclude it...
thinking we're what's important.
But we're not.
We depend upon nature.
It's more important than us,
because we're the result of its evolution.
That's why I believe that neglecting nature is,
in some emotional or artistic sense, criminal.
Maybe not criminal. Just foolish.
Because it's the only place
where a sense of truth awaits us.
Remember Tolstoy?
His suffering over the impossibility of loving mankind as a whole?
See, I love you.
But love is a feeling we can experience
but never explain.
One can explain the concept.
You love that which you can lose:
yourself, a woman, a homeland.
Until today, love was simply unattainable to mankind, to the Earth.
Do you understand me, Snaut?
There are so few of us.
A few billion altogether. A handful!
Maybe we're here in order to experience people
as a reason for love.
I think that, even without purgatory,
life itself sometimes gives us a chance to confirm
what it's telling us.
It's life that leads us to these ideas.
Purgatory is necessary
to cool down from our suffering.
Shame — the feeling that will save mankind.
I love that house very much.
It's not just a house. It's more than that.
It's a sanatorium.
It's anything I need it to be.
There I become a person capable of writing a book...
or of building other structures all around it.
I'm able to do anything there.
It makes me a human being
and frees me from the need to work —
professionally, I mean.
I could live my whole life there,
but on one condition:
that I know for certain I can leave there
and go anywhere I want.
It's a wonderful house.
It's all I need. I need nothing else.
It burned down once.
I stayed away, afraid of seeing the burned ruins.
But Larissa rebuilt it.
We put our souls into it, because we're happy there.
To sell or leave or betray that house would be
to betray Larissa, which I'm incapable of doing.
Because I bow down before those
who go beyond themselves for me.
And I remember everyone who behaves that way with me.
Everything that happens around that house is a miracle —
that special atmosphere, those particular moments.
I can't explain it.
I go outside and sit on the steps...
and cinema begins.
Not the usual cinema with a plot.
The type of cinema
that for me is real cinema.
It's wonderful.
When Larissa is at our country house,
I witness incredible things:
Birds fly along behind her...
though never behind me.
They land on her shoulders or her head.
Like in that scene in Mirror.
People ask, "What does that mean?
Why does a bird land on a person's head?
What does it symbolize?"
The answer is very simple:
A bird will never land on a bad person.
It's an amazing house.
I take my son there a lot.
He'll always feel at home,
and we'll live there always, for as long as it stands.
And if someone takes it from me,
I'll have nothing left on this earth.
We heap more and more from above
onto the space and time of our open palm.
Yet soon we'll learn that on a sovereign's crown
it's the star of penury that's most precious.
Penury, vanity, and worries
over our bitter morsel of bread.
And we'll settle our scores with alien constellations
here on our maternal earth.
For Proust the concept of time is more important than time itself.
For Russians that's not an issue.
We Russians have to plead our case against time.
With authors who wrote prose based on childhood memories,
like Tolstoy, Garshin...
and many others...
it's always an attempt to atone for the past,
always a form of repentance.
That's all.
This film generated a lot of discussion.
Once, after a public screening before a very everyday audience,
a dispute broke out during the discussion.
It was late...
and a woman came in to clean the huge hall.
She said, "Quit arguing. Leave. I have to clean.
Anyway, the film's very clear. Now leave!"
The people asked her: "Then tell us: What's clear?"
She said, "It's very simple.
A man fell very ill and thought he might die.
He remembered all the terrible things he'd done to others
and wanted to apologize. That's all."
It turned out she hadn't even finished high school.
And the many film critics present
hadn't understood a thing — as usual.
The more they talk, the less they understand.
And that simple woman explained it all.
I think if I were asked...
how I'd connect...
Ivan's Childhood with Andrei Rublev...
and my film based on Lem's novel Solaris...
or with the film I'm working on now...
I'd say that perhaps what unites them —
or should unite them —
is the desire to develop and delve into characters
who exist in a state of extreme tension,
who are going through
an intense spiritual crisis...
in which they must either break down
or finally get their footing once and for all
in terms of being faithful to their ideals
and true to their principles.
When I tried to edit this film...
the way I had originally conceived it,
it simply didn't work.
I don't know why.
In the script, everything was different.
The scenes were in a completely different order.
After a great effort...
and after shuffling scenes around endlessly...
when I'd lost all hope of ever coming up...
with a final version,
when I'd realized the film was a failure,
then I remember it was on my 19th attempt
at thoroughly reordering everything
that the film finally coalesced into its definitive form.
It was clear that dramatic structure
in a traditional, literary sense
wasn't appropriate for this film.
At its core...
film is poetic in its composition of images.
Because it can do without being literal
or adhering to the sequence of everyday life.
It can do without what we usually call "dramatic structure."
The hallmark of cinema
lies in the fact
that its task is to capture
and express time —
time in its philosophical and poetic...
and literal sense.
Cinema was born
precisely when people began to feel a lack of time.
I don't think someone from the 18th or 19th century
could survive in our era.
They'd simply perish from the pressure
imposed on them by time.
And it's cinema's task
to articulate this problem in a poetic fashion.
Cinema is the only art form that literally captures time.
In theory you could watch the same reel over and over forever.
It's like a time matrix.
In that sense, questions of rhythm,
duration, and pacing
find a special meaning in cinema.
Because in cinema, time expresses itself.
It's an extremely interesting question.
In a certain sense, any art form is poetic
in its best and loftiest manifestations.
Leonardo is a poet of painting.
A brilliant poet.
It would be ridiculous to define Leonardo as a painter...
or Bach as a composer...
or Shakespeare as a playwright...
or Tolstoy as a novelist.
Because they're all poets.
That's the sense in which I said
that cinema has a poetic meaning of its own.
Because there's a part of life, a part of the universe,
that has never been addressed at all
by other artistic forms and genres.
Because what cinema can do,
music and all the other art forms cannot do.
The role of the artist in contemporary society
is an enormous one.
Without artists there'd be no society,
because artists are the conscience of a society.
The less an artist can express himself or herself
and interact with an audience, with other people,
the worse it is for society.
Society becomes soulless,
and in such a society, people can't fulfill their function,
their purpose in life.
It doesn't matter whether it's Russia,
Africa, or Sweden.
What matters is that
when the last poet disappears...
life will lose all meaning.
I'd never have dared ask my father
to write a poem for a film.
But luckily he was kind to me
and paid me a great compliment:
"You know, Andrei, it's not films you're making."
With that, living in the world became easier for me.
From the last leaves the heat rises to the sky
as if in self-immolation.
And on your path
the whole forest lives with the same irritation
you and I have lived with this past year.
Tear-stained eyes reflect the road
the way the gloomy floodplain mirrors the bushes.
Don't fuss, don't threaten,
don't touch, don't disturb
the damp quiet of the woods.
You can hear the breath of old life.
Slimy mushrooms grow in the damp grass,
gnarled by slugs to their very core,
while a damp itch still tickles our skin.
You know how love is like a threat:
"Watch out! I'll be back! Watch it! I'll kill you!"
The sky cringes, holding the maple like a rose.
Let it burn hotter, coming closer, nearly touching our eyes.
I know of no other country with so many talented people.
Something is happening in Russia
that could destroy culture, of course.
That is, the physical possibility to work.
But that doesn't mean you can suppress the spirit.
It's a question of freedom.
What is freedom?
It's one's inner freedom, freedom of the spirit.
It's not a person's rights.
Rights can be taken away.
Inner freedom cannot.
Freedom is an intrinsic part of a person
as a spiritual being.
Hamlet explained this very simply.
That is, Shakespeare put the idea in Hamlet's mouth:
"I could be bounded in a nutshell
and count myself a king of infinite space."
Or as the ancients said...
"If you want to be free, be free!"
Freedom is a personal matter.
Thus you can deprive a person of their rights
but not their freedom.
That's why...
in politically oppressive places
we often find very free people,
while in traditionally democratic countries
we find people who are totally unfree.
HAMLET Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
Hamlet is clearly the most important
dramatic and poetic work ever created,
because it addresses the most important problem,
which existed both before and during Shakespeare's time
and will exist throughout all time.
Hamlet's tragedy lies not in the fact
that he perishes physically
as a result of his obsession
with revenge
or a sense of justice.
That's not the point.
The point is he condemns himself to death...
by trying to set right "time out of joint."
He condemns himself in the service of others
out of a desire to mend the torn fabric of time.
He gives his own self up as a catalyst
in service of the historical process,
leading to his own final and irrevocable undoing.
This danger of vanishing and perishing
in the name of progress,
and being dissolved entirely in the process —
this is Hamlet's tragedy, because he completely disappears.
He's present only as a catalyst
for that historical process.
It's a tragedy of the individual, because not everyone
can so easily sacrifice themselves for others.
That's not given to everyone.
Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
Mother, you have my father much offended.
Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.
Have you forgot me?
No, by the rood, not so:
You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife.
And — would it were not so! — you are my mother.
Nay, then, I'll set those to you that can speak.
You go not till I set you up a glass
where you may see the inmost part of you.
What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me?
What, ho? Help, help!
How now, a rat?
O me, what hast thou done?
Is it the king?
What does it mean, this vengeance
and this setting right "time out of joint"?
It means... blood.
It means spilling another's blood.
It means reinstating truth
by means unfamiliar to a philosopher,
to a student educated in Wittenberg,
by staining his hands with blood,
albeit in the name of justice.
Not everyone is capable of that,
and for Hamlet it's tragic.
At that moment he ceases to be a philosopher
and becomes a man of action.
As for artistic freedom,
without the concept of artistic freedom,
art simply doesn't exit.
It's inconceivable.
For example, it doesn't make sense to speak
of a work of art falling short of success
due to a lack of artistic freedom.
If we sense in a work of art
a lack of that freedom to any degree,
we can say with certainty it's a failure.
In a work of art...
we should see nothing but the work itself.
Unfortunately, during the 20th century,
the meaning of creativity has shifted away from the work
to focus instead on the artist's presence or signature.
I wanted my new film
to be even drier and more "ascetic."
That's the word that expresses my aspiration.
Because I believe that the artist's Olympian calm
is vital to the creative act.
An artist shouldn't be bustling about,
carrying on...
and externally demonstrating his or her concerns.
Because usually, the stronger the artist's temperament,
the less it's expressed externally.
I think Stalker is the most successful of my films
in that the end result matches the initial concept.
And also because it's simpler in construction,
with a pared-down number of expressive devices,
which is very important to me.
Stalker clearly expresses my frame of mind as an artist
over the past few years.
For me this film is about a man...
who is, of course...
facing defeat...
in practical terms.
But since he's an idealist,
he remains chivalrously loyal
to his spiritual values.
The protagonist
is of the same stuff as Don Quixote and Prince Myshkin,
literary characters whom we recognize as ideals,
and because they're ideal, they're defeated in real life.
For me this work expresses
the strength of the weak man
who believes in his dependence
on the spiritual force that gave him birth.
What I'm saying is that...
it doesn't matter what a person does
in the name of what they perceive in their soul
as a connection with a higher being.
I've always suspected that these actions might seem
absurd and meaningless, utterly impractical.
To me such impractical behavior
is a sign of a lofty spirituality.
It means selflessness.
Because there are other ideas,
and the world, conceived and structured as it exists now,
can't satisfy a spiritual person.
That specific force that urges them
to behave impractically is very important.
Yes, I'm a louse.
I've never achieved anything, and I can't do anything here.
I have nothing to give my wife.
I can't have any friends, but don't deprive me of what's mine.
They took everything from me behind the barbed wire.
Everything I have is here.
Here, in the Zone.
My happiness, my freedom, my dignity.
They're all here.
The people I bring are unhappy and tortured like me.
They have nothing left to hope for.
Nobody can help them.
But I can — a louse.
A louse can help them!
I weep for joy because I can help them.
I ask for nothing more.
I'm prepared to give an actor absolute freedom
if, right from the start,
they demonstrate total loyalty to the film's concept.
But I'm unbearable as a director
if the actor doesn't share my point of view
about the film's concept.
But I adore and love those actors
who do share it, and I give them absolute freedom.
This is the most important thing.
One or two takes, 300 or 600 feet —
none of that matters.
What matters is that you not "show" me anything.
It's important that you yourself feel where to give more,
where to give less.
Only you can control that.
Keep it in check.
You understand? - Yes.
It has to stay right on the edge.
All right! Places, everyone!
Camera!
Take 288/1.
But when he came up to me and said, "Come with me," I went.
And I've never regretted it.
Never.
There was a lot of grief
and fear and pain.
But I've never regretted it nor envied anyone.
It's just fate.
It's life. It's us.
And if there were no sorrow in our lives, it wouldn't be better.
It would be worse.
Because then there'd be no happiness either.
And there'd be no hope.
That's how it is.
I have these dreams nearly every night,
and they're amazing.
They go very deep. I can't even write them down.
And I needn't anyway, since I'm inseparable from them.
Dreams can be divided into two groups:
simple dreams, which I remember simply as colors,
and those that I know have profound meaning.
Those are not for us but for our children and other people.
In those dreams we ascertain the power of spiritual connection.
Nostalgia is a totally enveloping feeling.
A person can feel nostalgic
while at home in their own country, surrounded by loved ones.
A person can feel nostalgic even in a happy home,
because they feel their soul can't expand
to the extent it desires.
Love is what shapes human beings.
Love as a capacity for sacrifice,
for offering oneself up for others.
If love is obstructed...
it warps a person and wears them down.
When you feel that kind of love and encounter the terrible barriers
erected by humankind,
the barriers people place between themselves and others,
then you begin to suffer,
just like when lovers are parted.
The protagonist suffers from the impossibility
of being friends with everyone.
He suffers because he can't stay
in that country just a few more days.
He finds a friend who's also suffering.
That's what brings them together
We must destroy the borders
so that all can live freely
and not suffer the consequences of the collision
between social systems.
Because there will be enough problems as it is.
But the borders between us make life unbearable.
The uncertainty of life pains him,
the complete uncertainty of life.
He can't be happy
when so many people are miserable.
His problem
is compassion, a purely Russian idea.
He can't achieve his idea of compassion.
Is he writing about Italy?
He's writing the biography of a Russian composer.
Then why come here?
Because that composer studied in Bologna
and came to these baths every summer.
When?
The late 1700s.
Who was it? Tchaikovsky?
No, his name was Sosnovsky.
Didn't he marry a local girl?
I doubt it. Sosnovsky was in love with a Russian slave.
It was a horrible and unexpected blow.
I suddenly realized for the first time
that the Soviet film authorities didn't consider me
a Soviet director,
because they sent their jury member to Cannes
with the task of completely undermining my success
at the 1983 festival.
It was Sergei Bondarchuk, a Soviet director.
I still don't understand what prompted that desire.
With Nostalghia I was declaring
the utter impossibility for a Soviet or a Russian intellectual
of living in the West.
I'd have expected anything —
their customary inability to comprehend
my filmic language
or some other aesthetic aspect.
But I never expected the authorities of my own country,
my fellow countrymen, my superiors,
to stab me in the back so treacherously.
I suddenly realized I was no longer needed in the USSR,
and I imagined for a moment what would happen
if I were to return to Moscow,
given the Soviet authorities' behavior at Cannes.
I simply had no other choice.
I couldn't return to the Soviet Union.
My wife and I were compelled to stay here in the West,
despite the fact that I have no illusions
about life in the West,
and despite the fact...
that part of my family was still in Moscow.
It was a terribly difficult decision for Larissa
and myself.
Larissa and I haven't yet decided on the country.
The most important thing is to come to a decision.
None of the rest matters.
If in 20 years of being on "diplomatic terms"
with film authorities in Moscow,
I was able to make just five films there,
now, after the scandal at Cannes,
it's clear I wouldn't be allowed to make anything else.
It makes me terribly sad to be cut off from my audience,
my friends, and my homeland.
And of course most of all
I'm sad and depressed
not to be able to work
for those I considered — and still consider — my audience.
It's a real tragedy for me.
I'll of course suffer terribly from being cut off from all of you,
all you who looked forward to and loved my films,
all you for whom I worked
and shall continue to work.
I had no other way out. I had no choice.
What happened was the only logical step
after my clash with the Moscow film authorities.
Lord, do you see how he's asking?
Why don't you speak to him?
Can you imagine what would happen if he heard my voice?
Let him feel your presence.
I do so constantly.
He just doesn't notice.
The hunt is over.
They chased me down.
A hound hangs from my thigh.
I throw my head back
till my antlers rest on my shoulders.
I bellow.
They cut my tendons.
They shove a rifle in my ear.
He falls on his side,
his antlers clinging to wet twigs.
I see a dim eye,
a blade of grass stuck to it.
A black, ossified ball reflecting nothing.
They'll tie his legs together, pass a pole through,
and sling him over their shoulders.
From a historical perspective,
our spiritual development
has lagged behind our material development,
and we're paying for that.
If humanity perishes,
it will be only because the process of human development
wasn't harmonious,
and because humanity didn't evolve spiritually
but was driven by fear.
Humankind defended itself against the world
instead of merging with it
and establishing a connection with it.
Humans transformed interaction...
into a painful daily leveraging of power against one another
that is irritating, useless, and excruciating,
instead of making that exchange something pleasurable.
Mankind grabbed the first toy available,
and it believed in that stone ax
rather than the magical effect of a human gaze, or of desire...
that could have prevented the blow of that ax.
As for salvation...
life on this planet recently seems to suggest
that it perhaps makes sense to save our individual selves
as quickly as possible, thereby denying life
and, consequently, art.
There are no hopes for the future today.
There's a notion of joining forces
against the global evil represented by the atomic bomb.
But you've seen
what the explosion of a small nuclear plant can do.
What if ten were to explode?
In fact, the greatest concern for our future
may not be war
but the gradual destruction
of an ecological niche for humans to exist in.
Even without war...
we'll suffocate in this atmosphere.
That's why the question of art and salvation
is becoming increasingly relevant today.
There's no time to lose.
By "spirituality" I mean first and foremost
that a person be inquisitive
regarding what is referred to as
"the meaning of life."
That's at least a first step.
A person who has asked that question
can no longer fall below that level.
They will begin to evolve.
They will wonder...
"Why do we exist?"
"Where do we come from, and where are we going?"
"What's the purpose of our presence on this planet
during — let's flatter ourselves — the 80 or so years...
that we have in this world?"
To put it simply...
a person who doesn't ask
or hasn't yet asked those questions
is soulless, lacking in spirit.
An artist who doesn't take those questions seriously
isn't an artist, because he's not a realist.
He has neglected one of the most important questions,
one that makes us human.
When we begin to address these issues...
is when what we call "true art" emerges.
I believe...
that the meaning of life lies
in elevating our spiritual level
in the time we're given to live.
Even if it's just one iota compared to when we were born,
our life won't have been lived in vain.
I think evil and the devil
are the absence of good and of God...
like shadow and light.
Humankind harbors evil
as well as good.
And the purpose of our existence
is above all to fight the evil within us.
That's why we were given free will.
We can fight evil,
or we can let the evil within us prevail.
It's up to us, and us alone.
The worst thing is when we begin
to fight evil not within ourselves
but within others.
This film, to be shot in Sweden
and to be called Sacrificio in Italian, or Sacrifice...
is the logical evolution of Nostalghia
and of the central character of Domenico,
a provincial math teacher.
But of course it will take on certain new angles
much more relevant to the issues I mentioned before.
Once upon a time long ago...
an old monk lived in an Orthodox monastery.
His name was Pamve.
One day he planted a dried-up tree on a mountainside...
just like this.
Then he told his young pupil...
a monk named Ioann Kolov...
that he should water the tree every day
until it came back to life.
This film speaks about personal responsibility
when events come bearing down swiftly and inevitably.
It's dedicated to personal responsibility
and the intention and desire to become involved
in those events that we usually entrust to politicians,
those professionals whose occupation is to plan out our future,
to interact with other countries,
social categories, social strata, etc.
That's precisely what my film is about:
involvement of the individual
in contemporary social processes,
and the desire to return the individual
to the very heart of events.
It's a parable, an allegory,
that narrates in poetic fashion the fate of a family
in a very tense and dramatic way, in my opinion.
As I was saying...
we were enchanted as we took in the beauty of the place.
We couldn't tear ourselves away.
The stillness, the quiet...
And...
it was clear that the house
was made just for us.
And it happened to be for sale — a real miracle!
And you were born in that house.
Do you like it?
Do you like your house, my boy?
The more evil triumphs,
the more reasons there are to create art.
In fact, all the more reasons.
Art is...
how should I put it?
As long as human beings exist...
they will instinctively strive to create.
In a way, that's what binds them to their creator.
And what is creation?
What is the purpose of art?
Why does it exist?
Is it good or bad?
Is it something constructive, or just art for art's sake?
But one thing is clear: Art is prayer.
That says it all.
Through art humankind expresses hope.
Everything else is irrelevant.
All that which doesn't express hope
and isn't built on a spiritual foundation
has nothing to do with art.
If someone were to ask where I see hope for the future,
I'd say only in Russia, despite everything.
Hope in the sense...
that civilization may end
before the first nuclear bomb falls.
That will happen when the last man who believes in the creator dies.
A civilization without spirituality,
without belief in the immortality of the human soul,
is no more than a gathering of animals.
It's no longer civilization.
It's the end, the decline.
That's why I see in Russia
many more signs of spiritual rebirth
than here, in the free West.
There was a time when I could name those
whom I considered my teachers.
But now only those come to mind...
whom I would call not so much "masters"
as "holy fools,"
who don't belong to this world,
lunatics.
With no offense intended toward anyone living,
among them I would consider Bresson,
Tolstoy, Bach, and Leonardo.
Ultimately, they all were crazy...
because they didn't have to think up their art.
They all were possessed.
People like that frighten me
and at the same time inspire me.
Their work
is absolutely impossible to explain.
So much has been written about Tolstoy
and Leonardo and Bach.
Yet no one really managed to say anything at all.
Thank God no one could explain their talent.
That means it's impossible to explain.
Miracles can't be explained.
A miracle is... God.
BELIEVE IN SPITE OF EVERYTHING.
FAITH IS KNOWLEDGE THROUGH LOVE.
For my part, I'm not afraid of death.
It doesn't frighten me.
Perhaps the only thing that's scary...
is physical suffering.
For a person who has...
some understanding of life,
I don't think death can be frightening.
I'm sure of that.
I'm not sickened by the thought of approaching death.
On the contrary.
Sometimes I feel that death...
and even the sense of despair around it...
can bring on an incredible sense of freedom
that we've never experienced before in our lives.
A masterpiece could be bearing witness to a soul
passing by you
and clearly moving upward, somewhere skyward,
sweeping past you and leaving behind
just a breeze that you feel.
That is sufficient for a work of art
to become a creation of genius.
A delicate breeze wafts through your heart,
and you fly and fly headlong.
Meanwhile, love on a photo negative
holds your soul by the sleeve
as, grain by grain, like a bird
it steals what it can from oblivion.
It won't let you be scattered to the winds.
Even when dead, you'll live on —
not completely, just a hundredth part,
beneath our breath, in our dreams,
as if you're wandering in some field
in the land beyond.
All that's dear, alive, and visible to the eye
takes flight again and again
if the Angel of the Lens
takes your world under its wing.