Sculpting in time: Reflections on the CinemaAndrey Tarkovsky

“The goal for all art … is to explain to the artist himself and to those around him what man lives for, what is the meaning of his existence.”

“Art must carry man’s craving for the ideal, must be an expression of his reaching out toward it; art must give man hope and faith.”

What is Art?

“The artist … tries to grasp the life principle and make it incarnate, new each time; and each time he hopes, though in vain, to achieve an exhaustive image of the Truth of human existence.”

“Art could be said to be a symbol of the universe, being linked with that absolute spiritual truth which is hidden from us in our positivistic, pragmatic activities.”

“Perhaps the meaning of all human activity lies in artistic consciousness, in the pointless and selfless creative art? Perhaps our capacity to create is evidence that we ourselves were created in the image and likeness of God?”

Tarkovsky dissociates cinema from other art forms, especially literature, and tries to define its essential characteristics: “The time has come for literature to be separated, once and for all, from cinema.”

Cinema is not a composite art.

Cinema is the “most truthful and poetic of art forms”.

Unlike literature. “film does not have to use words: it manifests itself to us directly”, like music, it needs no “mediating language”; it “allows for an utterly direct, emotional, sensuous perception of the work.”

The specific quality of film is its TREATMENT OF TIME

“For the first time in the history of the arts, in the history of culture, man found the means to take an impression of time.”

Time, captured in its factual forms and manifestations: such as the supreme idea of cinema as an art.”

Cinema can portray real time. It can also repeat the same actual time in exactly the same form.

EDITING: Rhythm of life in individual shot vs. rapid cutting between short pieces of film.

Symbolism???

IMAGEIt is to be experienced directly, “on an emotional or even supra-emotional level.”

SYMBOL It could be “deciphered” or “interpreted”.

Film image is a “revelation” of the artist that is experienced by the audience rather than consciously understood of interpreted.

“The moment a viewer understands, deciphers, all is over, finished: the illusion of the infinite becomes banality, a commonplace, a truism. The mystery disappears.”