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1 (2013)
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This, of course, pertains to the death drive, which for Freud represents the irrepressible
yet not total desire for calm, stability, and as such a return to an inorganic state, that is,
death (see Freud 1961).
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As Zuidervaart notes (1991, 332), Martin Ldke has criticised a number of German
commentators for inadequately differentiating between mimesis and imitation (see Ldke
1981).
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It is also one that is likely to aggravate certain viewers even those watching with
sympathetic eyes, as is evidenced by Fredric Jamesons complaint of Tarkovskys camera
and his actors moving if anything more slowly than real time itself, with a solemnity quite
intolerable to any but the truest [of Tarkovskys] believers (1995, 92).
10
In the first of his seven feature films, Ivans Childhood (Ivanovo Detstvo, 1962), there is
just one shot that lasts two minutes, while in Andrei Rublv (1966) shots exceeding two and
three minutes are relatively frequent. Long takes continue to increase, and by the time of
Stalker (1979) the vast majority of shots exceed two minutes, with many also breaching the
four minute mark and one particular scene (in the room with the telephone) almost reaches
seven minutes in duration. Nostalghia (1983) has the extended take of Gorchakov carrying
Domenicos candle across the pool, which lasts eight minutes and forty-five seconds, while
The Sacrifice (Offret, 1986), Tarkovskys final film, features a shot (the longest in his
oeuvre), in which Alexander plants a tree, which lasts nine minutes and twenty-six seconds
(see Johnson and Petrie 1994, 194-195).
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Indeed, Tarkovsky despite having a general admiration for Sergei Eisensteins talent
and contributions to both the theory and practice of the developing medium of film was
hostile towards montage cinema, seeing in it a domineering cinematic form through which
the artist/director imposes his or her will, firstly, on the material (during construction) and,
then again, on the viewing audience.
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Robert Bird perceptively likens the ruin at Galgano in the finale of Nostalghia to Caspar
David Friedrichs Ruin at Eldena, arguing that such imagery betrays the ubiquitous
temptation of romanticism in Tarkvoskys films (2008, 66). In a similar vein, Steven
Vogel is critical of Adorno and Horkheimer for what he sees as a lapse into Romanticism
with their conception of nature as an undifferentiated pure objectivity that is systematically
maimed through the progressive dialectic of enlightenment (see Vogel 1996, esp. chapters
3 and 4).
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For example, the second scene in Nostalghia when, upon hearing the running water,
Gorchakov turns his head and looks to the camera; see also the shot towards the end of
Mirror in which the mother briefly smiles and looks into the lens (simultaneously gazing at
Alexei her son, the narrator but also at we the audience).
14
For example, the monologue delivered by Stalkers wife in the penultimate scene of
Stalker.
15
The depiction of the mysterious ocean in Solaris suggests some additional effects but
no others spring to mind.
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16
Adorno is emphatic on this point: Artworks that unfold to contemplation and thought
without any remainder are not artworks (2004 [1970], 161).
17
The directors views on symbolism are too complex to be explored here. Suffice it to say,
Tarkovsky clearly made use of certain symbolic images in his work, yet he was stringently
against reducing shots to symbolic interpretations. The latter point probably goes some
way towards explaining his somewhat contradictory accounts of symbolism (see Johnson
and Petrie 1994, 37-39).
18
Adorno notes this with reference to the indispensible sensual element of artworks (2004
[1970], 177); and again, art, mimesis driven to the point of self-consciousness, is
nevertheless bound up with feeling (ibid., 336).
19
The recurrent motif of stuttering within Tarkovskys work most notably in Ivans
Childhood and the opening scene of Mirror could be seen to evoke this inescapable
failure of the speech-act. Even when physical impairments dissipate, we remain incapable
of full articulation.
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20
Tarkovsky complains: Actors are often told to get the meaning across. And so the
actor obediently carries the meaning and sacrifices the truth of the persona in the
process (1989, 155). Alexander Kaidanovsky (who played the eponymous Stalker)
recounts in an interview that Tarkovsky once told them on set: I dont need your
psychology, your expressiveness ... . The actor is part of the composition, like the tree, like
water (cited in Johnson and Petrie 1994, 45).
21
Indeed, there is a risk, in the predominant deconstructive reading tendencies towards
play, of advocating wilful misreadings that ignore the real socio-historical content
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Filmography
Tarkovsky, Andrei (1962) Ivans Childhood (Ivanovo Detstvo). USSR
Tarkovsky, Andrei (1966) Andrei Rublyv. USSR
Tarkovsky, Andrei (1972) Solaris (Solyaris). USSR
Tarkovsky, Andrei (1975) Mirror (Zerkalo). USSR
Tarkovsky, Andrei (1979) Stalker. USSR
Tarkovsky, Andrei (1983) Nostalghia. France
Tarkovsky, Andrei (1986) The Sacrifice (Offret). Sweden
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