In February and March, there is a screening of Tarkovsky’s films in Teatro Guiniguada organised by Filmoteca Canaria. I learned it from Tamara who, in turn, learned it from somebody else during one of Arawak excursions, because there was nothing on Teatro Guiniguada’s own page. After reading some info about the film and remarking on a profusion of Andreys therein, Timur decided against watching it (three hours of black and white epic in Russian with Spanish subtitles on a weekday is not everybody’s cup of tea*), so I went on my own.
€2 per ticket (€1 students and OAP) is a bargain, don’t you think? Yet the audience was no more than 30 people, which could be explained by the aforementioned lack of publicity. Thankfully, the version they had shown was a 183-minute theatrical release rather than 205-minute «Страсти по Андрею» (The Passion According to Andrei). Even more thankfully, there was a five-minute break between the two parts of the film, to give some of the audience a chance to escape with dignity.
It’s been at least 15 years since I watched Andrei Rublev last time — and at least 25 since I last watched it in the cinema — but I remember it remarkably well. Apart from (untranslated) banter of Italian ambassadors in The Bell, from which I now understood roughly a half: first, expressing doubts about the bell’s ability to ring, then switching their attention to a beautiful girl.
I found the film’s epilogue, shot in colour and accompanied by a highly disturbing music, as irritating as I remember it back then. As if instead of a steady hand of Vadim Yusov (who was to further perfect his trademark slow shots in Solaris) the camera was held by an apprentice. And what’s the point of it?
In spite of all the criticism and censorship, the movie was nevertheless shown, if not widely, but in its (183-minute) entirety, in the Soviet cinemas of the 1970s and 1980s. I think it is amazing. It is even more amazing that the characters who bring the most light to the, let’s face it, rather grim film, are neither Rublev himself (Anatoly Solonitsyn) nor his fellow painters with their endless talk about Christian faith but those who don’t show any signs of this faith: the Jester (Rolan Bykov), a pagan woman Marfa (Nelly Snegina) and Durochka (Irma Raush). In particular, Marfa, in only a few words, seems to talk more sense than Andrei in all his (pre-Silence) diatribes.
Марфа: А ты чего головой вниз просился? Совсем худо было бы. И нас зачем ругал? Огнём грозил пожечь.
Андрей: Так ведь грех это так вот нагими-то бегать и творить там всякое грех.
Марфа: Какой же грех? Сегодня такая ночь. Все любить должны. Разве любовь грех?
Андрей: Какая ж любовь, когда вот так хватают да вяжут?
Марфа: А то как же? Вдруг дружину наведешь, монахов, насильно к своей вере приводить будете. Думаешь, легко вот так в страхе жить?
Андрей: А вот и страх кругом потому, что либо совсем без любви, либо срамная она да скотская. Одна плоть без души, а любовь братской должна быть.
Марфа: А не всё едино? Любовь же.
Marfa: Why did you ask to be put upside down — it would have been even worse. And why did you abuse us — threatened to burn us in the fire.
Andrei: But it is sinful to run about naked like this, to do all sort of sin.
Marfa: Why sin — tonight is such a night — everyone must love tonight. Is love really a sin?
Andrei: What sort of love is this when they capture and bind me so?
Marfa: How else — you might bring the guard — the monks. You will start trying to convert us to your faith by force. You think it’s easy to live like this in fear?
Andrei: This is why there is fear all around, for people either live entirely without love or with a shameful, bestial one, love for the body without the soul. Love should be brotherly.
Marfa: Isn’t it all the same? It’s love.
* It reminded me of a 1980s Soviet anecdote, perhaps based on the overheard dialogue in a box office queue:
— А кто это Андрей Рублёв?
— Художник такой.
— Это что ж, чёрно-белый, две серии, и всё про одного художника?
“And who is this Andrei Rublev?”
“A painter. ”
“Why, a two-part, black-and-white, and all about the same painter?”
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