Andrei Tarkovsky (Ieft) with Vadim lusov (bottom right)

ANDREI RUBLEV

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First published in 2004 by the

BRlTISH FILM INS nTUlE

21 Stephen Street, London Wl T ILN

Copyright © Robert Bitd 2004

The British Film Institute

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ISBN 1--84457--038-X

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments 6

Introduction 7

1From Rublev to 'Rublev' 12

2The Via Crucis of 'Andrei Rublev' 23

3The Shape of the Story 37

4The Elevating Gaze 65

Notes 82

Credits 85

Bibliography 86

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ACKNOWlEDGMENTS

In the writing of this small book 1have accrued a great number of debts tomy colleagues and students at the University of Chicago. 1 should neverhave risked it without the encouragement and support of Yuri Tsivian" 1should never have completed ir without the sympathetic reading of LauraLee, Stephen E. Lewis, and Nathan Preston.. Only at Chicago could 1havedevoted an entire seminar toAndrei Rublev, and gratitude is owed to eachand every student in my course in the autumn term of 2003. 1would alsolike to thank Trond Trondsen of nostalghia"com who has continuouslyprovided me with valuable information and images" 1am grateful to JoshBartos for technical assistance, and to Margarita Zaydman for an essentiallast-minute intervention..

Because of the incomplete and inaccurate translations of theEnglish subtitles in all versions of the film, 1 have chosen to cite aHdialogue in my own translation from the Russian.. All other translationsinto English are also my own, unless otherwise noted.

ForFarida

The trinity of monks: Daniil, Andrei and Kirill; Andrei Rublev as spectator

INTRODUCTION

For us the story of Rublev is really the story of a 'taught' or imposedconcept which burns up in the atmosphere of living reality to riseagain fi:om the ashes as a fi:esh and newly discovered truth..

Andrei TarkovskyI

Andrei Rublev is the most Russian of films, emblematic of what everyonefinds so fascinating and so maddening in the way Russians do things .. Inthe case of Andrei Rublev the challenges to our complacentpreconceptions are extraordinarily strident.. For over three hours, themain protagonist does little more than observe. One of his most drasticactions is to take a sixteen-year-long vow of silence, not an auspiciouspremise for a movie" Its religious subject matter and flaunting ofnarrative convention bathe Andrez Rublev and its director AndreiTarkovsky in a rarefied aura of sanctity or of sanctimony., It is seen by itsfervent admirers as the 'film of films', putting it in the same category asthe book of books - the Bible" But how can a film which promises somuch possibly succeed - while remaining a movie?

For its first viewers, by contrast, Andrei Rublev was an eagerlyanticipated forbidden fi:uit and a courageous intervention incontemporary ideological discourse.. Its miraculous aura stemmed lesstram the film itself than from the very improbability of its existence inthe atheist USSR, and it was the stubborn controversy over its releasewhich contributed most to Tarkovsky's image as a suffering artist.. In1970, af1:er five long years of struggle with the authorities over AndrezRublev, Tarkovsky began a diary which he entitled 'The Martyrology' ..Here he recorded his personal trials and cases of divine intervention onbehalf of his films, which enjoyed a charmed life even as the SovietUnion of the post-Stalin Thaw graduaHy fi:oze over again under LeonidBrezhnev, Tarkovsky twice recalls the miraculous recovery of the onlycopy of the screenplay of Andrei Rublev which he had lefi: in a taxi:'Hours later the taxi driver saw me walking along the street, in the crowd,at the same spot, and he braked and handed me the folder.. Anunbelievable story..'2

While it has ended up deflecting attention fi:omAndrez Rublev as awork of art, the film' s aura of sanctity originated precisely in its aestheticimpact, and the controversy was caused more by Tarkovsky's startlingmanner of storytelling than by his ideological position, Tarkovsky's

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formal innovations estab1ished him both as one of the most distinctiveyoung artists in world cinema and as a major threat to the standard artisticdiscourse in the USSR .. While Tarkovsky invariab1y disp1ayed apragmatic flexibility in his public statements about his fi1ms, the success ofA ndrei Rublev confir med his fierce1y independent approach to his arto Forhim, any compromise was a profimation. In this respect, Andrei Rublevwas Tarkovsky's 1aboratory; what he discovered and deve10ped herebecame the foundation for his subsequent fi1ms.

One major discovery - and another miracu10us intervention - wasthe film 's star Anatolii Solonitsyn (1934-82), In 1964 Solonitsyn was aninexperienced stage actor in distant Sverd10vsk (now Yekaterinburg)when he carne across the screenp1ay of Andrei Rublev and exclaimed,'This is a role I cou1d give my life for!' Rushing to Moscow in the dead ofwinter, Solonitsyn underwent a battery of auditions and was cast in thetitle role instead of severa1 more accomp1ished candidates,3 In the end,Solonitsyn essentially did give his life for the role insofar as he wou1da1ways be associated with Rub1ev and Tarkovsky. He was even used as amode1 for the statue of Rub1ev which graces the Rub1ev Museum inMoscow. He appeared in all of Tarkovsky's subsequent projects up to thedirector's emigration, including a 1977 stage production of Hamlet" Evenin death they were bound; Solonitsyn's death in 1982 of 1ung cancer wasa premonition of Tarkovsky's own succumbing to the same disease fouryears 1ater"

Another decisive discovery in Andrez Rublev was the cinematicpotentia1 oí the Orthodox icon, which wou1d be a mainstay ofTarkovsky's fi1ms rightup to the 1astone, The Sacrifzce (1986). One oí the'synchronicities' of Solonitsyn's casting was his physica1 similarity to theimage of Christ in Rub1ev's icon, Saviour in the Wood. The three ange1s inRub1ev's The Old Testament Trinity provided the pattern for themysterious1y inseparable threesomes in Andrez Rublev and Tarkovsky's1ater fi1ms, Solaris (1972) and Stalker (1979).,

Rub1ev's Trznity is deceptive1y simple and transparent., The threefigures bow to each other in gracefu1 acknow1edgment oí their sharedmajesty. Theo1ogians tell us that the ange1s (based on Cenesis 18)prefigure the reve1ation of the triune Cod in the New Testament, unitedin love because their shared nature is love" Artists tell us that space itse1f,bending obediently around the figures, confirms them as the centre ofcreation and draws the viewer into their world.. Historians treasureRub1ev's image as the jewe1 which glistened amidst the embers ofRussia's historica1 bonfire and expressed the nation's si1ent spiritua1

vision Tarkovsky took inspiration fi:om the icon in all oí these respects:in the fi1m's thematic structure, in its visual composition, and a1so in hisaspiration to give voice to a silenced culture, The central subject o~

Tarkovsky's camera is not the threesome of monks, nor even Andre1Rub1ev himse1í, but rather the e1usive force which ho1ds their worldtogether: compassion, care, vision .... ."

In an essay written during the productlOn of Andrez Rublev,Tarkovsky coined the term 'imprinted time' for the invisible mediumwhich unites hisfi1msin1ieu oí aclear linearnarrative, Ishall return1ater tohis e1usive conception oí film, but for now it might be taken simp1y as adescription oí how the film makes it possib~e to live for a sh?rt whi1e on thepensive rhythms of his world, blinded bY.1tS ~no,:s and rams, numbed bythe grieí which weighs heavy even m ltS hght-h:arte~ moments.Tarkovsky's gr acefully tracking camer a immerses the V1ewer m the worldof his cr~ation unconditionally, without ironic distance, without theinterpretive aid of a clear narrative co:n~entar'y or. reli~b1echaracterisation.. This is not fa1se piety, rather 1t 1S raw mtenslty. It 1S ab1ack-and-white intensity which exp10des into co1our in the fi1m's fina1e, a

Andrei Rublev, The OldTestament Trinity (e. 1420),Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow)

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celebration of Rublev's icons which consummates the halting narrative,retrospectively revealing its underlying logic and transfarming its deeptextures into glorious surfaces. However, the icon display also suspendsthe complex weave of dialogue, music and ambient sound in a pioussupplication. In effect, it dissolves the film's heavy temporality in itseternal patterns, as if Tarkovsky were ceding authorship to St AndreiRublev. Several of Tarkovsky's subsequent films end in a similarconfusion of temporal and spatial planes, a feature which irks sorneviewers as an 'easy transcendence' of the characters' otherwise tortuousprogression across the dolorous earth. However, by extending hissearching gaze into the transcendent plane, Tarkovsky is also raising thestakes of his aesthetic gamble.. Instead of the certainty of faith, hecontemplates the possibility that there can be no true ending, possibly notrue story at al1, under the weight of time..

Tarkovsky's sparse landscapes, silent protagonists, and discontinu­ous narrative, punctuated by mysterious vignettes and transfarmations,make far an uncompromisingly difficult film which seems to repel anyattempt at viewer 'identification' .. In this multidimensional world, each lifehas its own truth. The characters inAndrel Rublev represent various typesof spirituality, fí:om the stern but spineless intel1ectualism of Kirill (bril­liantly played by 1van Lapikov in a vastly underrated perfarmance) to thepagan revellers' exuberant carnality, to Rublev's humanist questioning..Andrei's point of view is privileged only insofar as he remains a spectatoralongside the viewer, immune to the allure of action.. We are never quitesure what he sees and how he sees it, and so we can neither be sure that weare seeing properly either .. Nonetheless we feel an almost ethical impera­tive to keep watching.. Perhaps this is the key to Tarkovsky's personal aura:that he encouraged beaten and distracted people to look, both at the worldoutside and at their inner selves.. It reminds us of the original meaning ofthe word 'martyr', the one Tarkovsky may really have had in mind when hebegan his diary: 'witness' .. Tarkovsky's films bear witness to his world andpositthe spectator also as witness ..

Tarkovsky boasted of the way his films educate their viewers.. Afterthe eventual release of Andrei Rublev in the USSR, he was heartened bynumerous telephone cal1s and letters: 'Of course audiences understandthe film perfectly well, as 1 knew they would'.4 One doubts the literaltruth of this statement. Apart fí:om its inherent difficulties, appreciationof Andrei Rublev has been handicapped by the farm in which it hasreached viewers, especially outside Russia.. Tarkovsky's film has beenrepeatedly mutilated under aesthetic, ideological, and commercial

pressures, to the point that no two copies are the same. Furthermore, theincomplete and indistinct subtitles on English-Ianguage versions havenot only made the film harder to fol1ow, they risk making Tarkovsky'sradical aesthetic seem simply incoherent The situation is better now thanit has been, with both majar versions available on DVD with improvedsubtitles, but it is still far from ideal.

The shock of its aesthetic difficulty has inclined viewers fí:omacross the ideological spectrum to reduce Andrei Rublev to a tidy'message', invariably ignoring the multivalent textures of the film .. Thiswas not surprising in the Soviet Union, which ideologised al1 discourse,whether artistic, religious or personal. Moreover, Tarkovsky nevershirked fí:om explaining what his film 'meant', but his pronouncementswere often tailored to the needs of the moment. For official Soviet outlets,Tarkovsky stressed the epic qualities of the film, which presents apanorama of the nation at a crucial historical momento EIsewhere,Tarkovsky stressed the film's retrieval of traditional Russian art, societyand religi·on. However, Andrei Rublev has proven disconcerting to thosewho would seek in it a salve far wounded national pride .. While impressedby Tarkovsky's artistic independence, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn faund. thatTarkovsky contaminated Holy Russia with Sovietisms (such as Bonska,the Stakhanovite bel1faunder) and 'besmirched' Rublev's faith by havinghim wander around spouting 'humanistic platitudes'.. Solzhenitsynderisively summarised the film's sentiment as fol1ows: 'what a savage,cruelland is this eternal Russia, and how hase are its instincts'.5 Suchcriticism highlights Andrei Rublev's controversial image of Russia andRussian spirituality; however it entirely obscures the fact that AndreiRublev is a breathtaking movie befare it is anything else and that its onlyobligation is to its own artistic integrity..

Although 1 take the icon itself as a central component inTarkovsky's innovative cinema aesthetic, 1 have been wary of conflatingTarkovsky's film with the icono This would sacralise a movie which takespains tú retain a universal narrative shape. The key issue is not why thefilm is so uneventful; rather it is why Tarkovsky used a story at all beforeshowing Rublev's images. In seeking to recover Andrei Rublev as a workof art, 1 take my cue from Tarkovsky's description of the film which Iquoted aboye: the film's narrative has to hurn up in the viewer's eyebefare it yields its own inner truth on the threshold of the icon ..

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1

FROM RUBlEV 10 'RUBlEV'

Making a biographical film on an historical personage imposes certainexpectations on the nan ative, such as a linear progression from childhoodto death and afocus on the person's remarkable achievements. In one of hisfirst statements aboutAndrei Rublev, Tarkovskyboldly stated his intentionto flaunt these conventions and seek a new type of nan ative:

We would like to depart fi:om traditional dramatutgy with itscanonical completedness and with its formal and logical schematism,which so often prevents the demonstration of life 's complexity andfullness .. After all, what is the dialectic of the personality? Phenomenawhich aman encounters or in which he participates become part of theman himself, a part of his sense of life, a part of his character.. [.....] Weunderestimate the power of the screen image's emotional charge .. Incinema it is necessary not to explain, but to act upon the viewer'sfeelings, and the emotion which is awoken is what ptovokes thought6

Acting on viewers' feelings in this way required a complex attitudetowards history:

We are not interested in a stylisation of the epoch in costumes,furnishings and the characters' conversational speech .. We want Outfilm to be contemporary not only in the completely contemporaryresonance of its main issue.. Historical accessories must not fragmentthe viewers' attention or try to persuade them that the action is takingplace precisely in the fifteenth century. The neutrality of interiors andof costumes (together with theit utter authenticity) , the landscape andcontemporary speech: all of this will help us to speak of what is mostimportant without getting distracted .. 7

Conscious of the inevitable reductionism of fictional nanativeTarkovsky takes care to create a world which both characters and viewer~can znhabit.. This neutrality, or even emptiness, is precisely what allowsthe film to engage with topical issues and historiographical clichés whileretaining the stamp of lived authenticity..

Ostensibly Andrei Rublev is the story of Russia's most renowlledicon painter, who died in 1430 and is conjectured to have been bom

between 1360 and 1370.. Only a single icon, The Old Testament Trinity, canbe attributed to Rublev with certainty; its distinctive style has in tumserved as the basis for numerous other attributions of icons, f1:escoes, andminiatures. Sparse contemporary sources record only thatAndrei Rublev(pronounced and sometimes written 'Rublyov') collaborated in thedecoration of several churches in the early 1400s: the Cathedral of theAnnunciation in the Moscow Kremlin (spring 1405), the Cathedral of theDormition in the city of Vladimir (begun 25 May 1408), the new cathedralat Andronikov Monastery to the southeast of Moscow (c. 141 Os), and theTrinity Cathedral of the Trinity-St Sergius Monastery to the northeast ofMoscow (c .. l420s). Art historians have also detected Rublev's style in theicons of a church in Zvenigorod, to the west of Moscow, including therenowned Saviour zn the Wood; these were recovered fl:om a dilapidatedshed in 1918 .. The episodes of Tarkovsky's nanative conespond roughlyto these events, although his Rublev is never actually shown at work andRublev's most amply documented commission at the Trinity Monastery,when he probably created his famous Trinity, features only as a promise atthe end of the film.

The shape ofAndreiRublev is closely attuned to that of early Russia.By the seventh century the tenitory was inhabited by a loose group of EastSlavonic tribes whose economic activity was centred on the system ofwaterways which pass from the northem forests to the southem steppes,

Andrei Rublev, Saviourof Zvenigorod deesis row (e 1410), Tretyakov Gallery (Moseow);Apostles, detail of The LastJudgement (1408), Dormition Cathedral (Vladimir)

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'from the Vikings to the Greeks'. The introduction of Christianity in 988bonded the tribes into an internationally recognised, Christian state basedin Kiev and known as Rus' "Mostimportantly, Christian belief br ought theBible, the liturgy, and other religious texts in the closely related ChurchSlavonic language .. This language, this script and these texts comprised thecultural patrimony of Rus', inviolably linking all intellectual culture to theChurch .. The Church's unifying role was reinforced when Mongol-Tatarinvaders exploited divisions among the hereditary princes to achieve thealmost total subjugation of the Russian lands in the early thirteenth centu­ry. Power gradually shifted to the cities in the northern forests: Novgorod(a semi-democratic city-state which remained free of Mongol-Tatardomination), Vladimir, and then Moscow. All of this history is reflected tosorne degree inAndreiRublev, from the divisivepolitics of theprinces andthe vagaries of Mongol-Tatar occupation, to the vital economic role ofthe river system. Only the pagan rites in the film are clearly anachronistic,coming after four centuries of official Christianity.

Rublev's life coincided with the beginning of the end ofMongol-Tatar domination and the rise of the modern Russian state, inwhich the upstart city of Moscow was asserting its primacy among itspeers. Vladimir, the previous seat of the Russian Grand Prince and metro­politan (1Op hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church at the time), lost its

dominance to Moscow around1364.. In 1380, the Grand Princeof Moscow Dmitrii Donskoi ledthe first victory of Russians overthe Mongol-Tatar forces at theBattle of Kulikovo Field .. Thus,in Andrei Rublev, the GrandPrinceisbasedin Moscow, wherehe commissions the decorationof Annunciation Cathedral, buthe also takes care 10 show hispatronage of Vladimir's olderchurches and to replace hisburnt, wooden palace with astone edifice more becoming tothe leader of a burgeoningEuropean power. The conflictbetween the two princes inthe film bears a similarity to the

14 Early Muscovite Russia, c .. 1400

rivalry between the sons of Dmitrii Donskoi, Princes Vasilii of Moscowand Iudi of Zvenigorod. While the details of Tarkovsky's history are notalways precise, such rivalries are a recurring motif in the history ofRussian city-states, whose princes were forever engaged in musical chairsand mutual destruction..

The 'gathering of the Russian lands' around Moscow found aspiritual patron in St Sergius of Radonezh (d. 1392). Inspired by achildhood vision, St Sergius became a hermit in the impenetrable Russianforests, but his charismatic presence attracted numerous monks and hefounded the Trinity Monastery on the communal or cenobitic modeLMany of St Sergius' disciples founded monasteries on the same model inthe Russian north, making him the father of northern Russianmonasticism. One such disciple was Andronik (d .. 1374), who greatlyexpanded the monastery which became known by his name, where AndreiRublev later lived and worked .. St Sergius also 100k an active part inMuscovite politics; in 1380 he gave his blessing to Grand Prince Dmitriibefore the landmark Battle of Kulikovo Field .. St Sergius is today regardedas the main conduit of Byzantine monastic spirituality in early MuscoviteRussia, the heir to Byzantine hesychasm (from the Greek word for silence,hesyche). Hesychast theology, as elaborated by St Gregory Palamas(1296-1359), held that the divine essence was totally transcendent andunknowable, but that the world was suffused with divine energies such asthe light seen by the apostles during Christ's Transfiguration (Mt 17:1-13).. As monks, the hesychasts focused on the acquisition of divineenergies through prayer and showed little or no interest in aesthetics..However, the hesychast teaching on the communicability of divineenergies inspired contemporaries, who saw the word and the image asmedia of grace. For instance, Epiphanius the Most-Wise (d c.. 1420)perfected a literary style known as 'word-weaving', which was marked byan intense attention to verbal textures.. In Andrei Rublev, Kirill citesEpiphanius' alleged description of St Sergius' moral virtue, 'simplicitywithout ostentation', precisely as an aesthetic credo..

Whether due to hesychasm or by sheer coincidence, the time of StSergius witnessed the first blossoming of Muscovite icon painting .. Thedecoration of the cathedral at Trinity Monastery under St Sergius'successor Nikon became an almost legendary event in the history ofRussian spirituality.. This is how one anonymous chronicler described it:

the most venerable [Nikon] was overcome with a great wish, and withfaith; remaining continuously in this state, he desired tú see with his

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images of Christ Our Lord and His Most-Pure Mother and a11 the saints'.9However, it was Rublev's name alone which became the standard fortraditional Moscow-school icon painting.. In 1551, in the face of growingWestern influence, the Russian church mandated that icons be painted'from the ancient standards, as Greek icon painters painted and as AndreiRublev painted along with other famous icon painters'. Rublev's exclu­sive reputation was confirmed in 1988, when he was canonised as a sainton the occasion of the millennium of Christianity in Russia. Today, onecan find Rublev mentioned as Russia's premier theologian in the medievalperiod, which underscores the experiential and visual nature of Russianspirituality.

Between 1551 and the twentieth century, Rublev's work andRussian icon-painting genera11y, fell into oblivion.. While Rublev's namewas sometimes used as a generic tag far icons painted 'in the olden style',his Trinity had long since been over-painted and enclosed in a silvercovering (as were most valued icons in this period). Beginning in about1900, with the development of new historical and restoration methods,medieval icons gradually became a central factor in the culturalconsciousness of modern Russia, with sometimes surprising results. Thepoem 'Andrei Rublev' by modernist Nikolai Gumilev (1886-1921) wasone of the first to mention him, but it uses Rublev's name only as ageneric link between art and spirituality and betrays no first handknowledge of Rublev's work. The key factor in the rediscovery of theicon and, by extension, of Rublev, was the theological aesthetics of PavelFlorensky (1882-1937), a polymath scientist, philosopher and priest whotaught at the Moscow Theological Academy in the Trinity-St SergiusMonastery, where Rublev had created his masterpiece five centuriesearlier. Florensky penned a series of essays on the icon immediatelyfollowing the revolution of 1917.. Sorne of his work was part of theprocess of converting the Trinity-St Sergius Monastery into a museum,which saved many of its cultural riches from the Soviet government'santi-religious campaign On 11 Apri11919, Soviet officials presided overthe desecration of the relics of St Sergius, an event that was captured onfilm by the 'cine-chronicler' Dziga Vertov. Fearing for the relics,Florensky took part in a plot to hide St Sergius' skull in the garden of alocal house; it was restored to the sarcophagus only after the officialreinstatement of the monastery in 1946.. Under Stalin, the ideologicalemphasis shifted frum Marxism (and atheism) to official patriotism, andby the mid-1930s sorne pre-communist personages had been restored tothe cultural pantheon, as illustrated by Vladimir Petrov's 1937 epic, Peta

own eyes the church completed and decorated; so he quickIy gatheredpainters, very great men, superior to a11 others, and perfect in virtue,Daniil by name and Andrei his spiritual brother, and sorne others withthem; and they did the job quickIy, as they faresaw in their spirit thedeath of these spiritual fathers, which would fa110w soon upon thecompletion of the task.. But since God was helping to complete thevenerable one's task, they devoted themselves to it assiduously andbeautified the church with the most diverse paintings, which to this dayare capable of astounding viewers. Leaving their final handiwork as amemorial to themselves, the venerable ones remained a short whi1ebefare the humb1e Andrei 1eft this 1ife and went to the Lord first, andthen his spiritua1 brother Daniil the most pious, who had lived we11 withGod's he1p and who pious1y accepted a good end in old age .. WhenDanii1 was preparing to separate himse1f hum his bodi1y union, he sawhis be10ved Andrei, who had preceded him in death, and ca11ed out tohim in joy. When Danii1 saw Andrei, whom he 10ved, he was fi11ed withgreat joy and confessed the coming of his spiritua1 brotherto the monkswho stood before him, and thus in joyhe gave up his spirit to the Lord8

This unusua11y detailed passage depicts Rub1ev and Danii1 the Monk (or'the B1ack', so-ca11ed far his monastic cassock) as spiritual brothers, per­fect in virtue and superior in artistic ability.. In other extant chronicle

passages, Rublev is likewisementioned after his co11abora­tors: Theophanes the Greek,Prokhor of Gorodets, andAbbot Alexander of AndronikovMonastery. Aboutacentury1ater,the Church polemicist Joseph ofVo1okolamsk (1439-1515) men­tioned 'the famous icon paintersDaniil and his pupil Andrei' asmen who had on1y virtue andwere on1y concerned 'to beworthy of God's grace, on1y tosucceed to divine love, [....] andalways to elevate their mind andthought to the immaterial anddivine light, raising their sensi­ble eye to the eterna11y painted

Andrei Rublev and Daniil the Mank in a sixteenth-century manuscript af St Sergius' Life16

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the Great or Sergei Eisenstein's 1938 film, Alexander Nevsky.. In thiscontext Rublev, whose work had only recently been recovered, was alsoappropriated for patriotic purposes. One example of this was the mentionof Rublev in a 1941 poem by Arsenii Tarkovsky, the director's father,entitled 'My Rus, my Russia, Home, Earth and Motherl' In 1943, in a bidfor national unity, Stalin restored the Church as a national institution, andpostwar Soviet culture witnessed a further legitimisation of re1igiouspersonages as national heroes who had contributed to the rise of theunified Russian state, Thus in the 1950s, Andrei Rublev was suddenlyrecognised as the outstanding Russian artist, thinker and humanist of so­called 'Russian Renaissance' (or, in an uncharacteristic display ofmodesty, 'pre-Renaissance') .. This process continued even under NikitaKhrushchev, whose liberalising economic and cultural policies (known as'the Thaw') were accompanied by renewed church closures .. In 1960, onthe occasion of the 600th anniversary of Andrei Rublev's presumedbirthdate, the Soviet authorities sponsored a broad campaign includingexhibitions, catalogues and learned studies.. The festivities culminated inthe inauguration of the Andrei Rublev Museum of Old Russian Art at theformer Andronikov Monastery., Rublev also attracted the interest of abudding nationalist movement, as witnessed by nationalist painter Il'iaGlazunov's kitschy portraits of Rublev or Vladimir Soloukhin's 1966volume, Letter:sfiom the Russian Museum"

Tarkovsky's Rublev bears traces of this postwar idealisation, forinstance in his humanistic concern not to 'scare' people with the LastJudgement and in his defence of the Russian nation against Theophanes'derision" Tarkovsky freely borrowed elements fram Vladimir Pribytkov'srabidly anti-clerical 'biography' of Rublev, including much of the episode'The Last Judgement' and the character of Patrikei. 10 On the other hand,Tarkovsky publicly took issue with Glazunov's vision of Rublev, and theartist repaid him in kind by condemning Tarkovsky's film as a defamationof the Russian people: 'Andrei Rublev was a great philosopher, and notsorne neurasthenic character like in Antonioni's films', Glazunovcontended" 11 All in all, the broad cultural dialogue about Rublev'sart madehim a safe way to engage spiritual concerns under the guise of patrioticmyth-making" Andrei Rublev became the most significant single event inthe constant re-interpretation of Rublev precisely because its image ofRublev was too pratean for easy ideological appropriation,

The subtlety of Tarkovsky's intervention in the Rublev debates isbest illustrated by the film's Prologue, in which the peasant Efim escapessuperstitious villagers and launches into flight on a home-stitched

balloon, only to crash into a riverbank. This puzzling episode is re1ated tothe curious legend of Kriakutnyi, who on the basisof a forged chronicleentry, was reputed to have made the first human flight in the Russian townof Riazan in 1731, by making 'a kind of big ball, [which he] filled withdirty and smelly smoke, made a hook which he sat in, and an evil powerlifted him over the birch tree, then smashed him against the bell-tower,but he clutched onto the bell-rope and remained alive'Y The legend ofKriakutnyi had surfaced periodically in Russian culture, fOl instance inIurii Tarich's 1926 film, Wings of a Ser/. However it enjoyed its heyday inthe early years of the Cold War, when in addition to the arms race and thespace race the Soviets claimed all number of inventions and discoveriesfor their own. In 1956, just in time for the Sputnik, the USSR celebratedthe 225th anniversary of Kriakutnyi's flight by releasing a stamp showinga spherical balloon rising over an ensemble of traditional woodenarchitecture.. Nationalists also appropriated Kriakutnyi as an image ofRussian ingenuity; in 1964, Il'ia Glazunov painted his perfunctoryversion of the legend, The Russian ¡catus,

In the screenplays of the film Tarkovsky's Efim was also equippedwith wings 'like an angel' ,13 which linked him to Tarich's cinematicprecedent It was perhaps the painting by his nemesis Glazunov whichpersuaded Tarkovsky to replace the wings with a balloon, although hedescribed the reasons as purely aesthetic: 'We spent a long time workingout how to destroy the plastic symbol on which the episode was built, andwe concluded thatthe root of the trouble lay in the wings" In orderto dispelthe overtones of Icarus we decided on a hot-air balloon,,'14 However, toavoid the smug quaintness of the official portrayals, Tarkovsky stressedthe scene's material immediacy: 'This is a concrete happening, a humancatastrophe, observed by onlookers just as if now, as we watched, someonewere to dash out for sorne reason in front of a car and end up lying there,crushed on the asphalt' .15 He also leaves open the question of Efim's fate"In sum, Tarkovsky's free adaptation of the legend undermines itshistorical truth while intensifying its sense of immediate realismo Thisexemplifies Tarkovsky's overall treatment of historical clichés, especiallythose concerning Andrei Rublev's image in Russian culture,

The Prologue also polemicised with the popular poet AndreiVoznesensky, whose brash new voice helped to define the era of the Thawand Sputnik. Maia Turovskaia has noted the importance for A ndreiRublevof Voznesensky's poem 'Craftsmen ('Mastera', 1958), which depictsmedieval Russian artists as overcoming political and religious tyranny:'Art was resurrected / From executions and torture', Voznesensky

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Soviet postagestamp celebratingthe 225thanniversary 01Kriakutnyi'slegendary Ilight(1956)

11'la Glazunov, TheRussian learus(1964)

2O Wings ofa 5erf by lurii Tarich (1926)

Nikolal Glazkov's parody 01 AndreiVoznesensky (1962)

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wrote. 16 Voznesensky's ground-breaking volume, Antiworlds (Antimiry,1964) also contains a couple oE poems which bring Rublev explicitly intocontemporary contexts. In 'Rublev Highway' ('Rublevskoe shosse') hecompares young lovers on motorcycles to 'Rublev's angels' whosepartners 'spark1e like wings behind their backs' as on a (non-existent)'fresco oE the Annunciation'Y In another poem, Voznesensky evenconscripts Rublev to the cause oE communism:

Names and numbers disappear.Genius changes its clothes ..

Genius is the spirit of the nation ..In this sense,Andrei Rublev was Lenin.. 18

Tarkovsky's response to Voznesensky's syncretism was to give the role oEEfim to the fi:inge poet Nikolai Glazkov. Glazkov had parodiedVoznesensky in a 1962 ditty, 'A Conversation with a Monk' ('Razgovor smonakhom'), which ends with a tongue-in-cheek exhortation to the monk~o farget the monastery and become a poet. In his book the poem islllustrated by a monk in a kind of jet-fighter or spaceship.19 By castingGlazkov as Efim and stressing the hand-made materiality oE the balloon,Tarkovsky both echoes Voznesensky's syncretistic dreaming and bringsitdown to earth ..

The Prologue clearly demonstrates Tarkovsky's basic method: afragmented narrative, long takes joined by jarringly discontinuouseditin.g and the reduction of the mise en scene to its barest components,especlally the four primal elements of water, earth, fire, and air.. Thepalpable, familiar texture of this distant, historical world communicatesthe ambivalence of life itselE and neutralises historical clichés.. Thissimplification elevates the balloon to a global symbol (it reappears inTarkovsky's 1974 film, The Mirror and Nikita Mikhalkov's 1995 Burnt ~ythe Sun) , but what it symbolises is most oE all the fragility oE life and of itsown meaning.. Like its human creators, the balloon harnesses the vital?reath only to release it back into the atmosphere in silent expiration.. Thelmage captures Tarkovsky's particular genius far communicating themost complex human experiences and intricate historical interpretationsless through narrative sequence than through the vulnerable, elusivepresence of life on-screen..

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THE VIA CRUCIS OF 'ANDREI RUBLEV'

Soon after the Rublev celebrations oE 1960, three young men could beseen walking around a Moscow park. One, the young actor VasiliiLivanov (known far his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in the Soviet screenadaptations oE Conan Doyle) shared with the others his idea for makinga film on the life of Andrei Rublev, with himselE in the starring role..Livanov became busy with other projects (there is a hint of bitternessabout his exclusion from Andrei Ruhlev), but his two friends AndreiTarkovsky and Andrei (or Andron) Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky quicklyconcluded a deal with the Mosfilm Studios for a screenplay, which theysubmitted at the close of 1962.. The project's early titles were 'Beginningsand Ways' and 'The Passion According to Andrei' .. The former title callsto mind Dostoevsky's pessimistic comment: 'We know only the dailyBow of the things we see, and this only on the surface; but the ends andbeginnings are things that, far human beings, stilllie in the realm of thefantastic' .. 20 The latter title, which was subsequently attached to the 1966version oE the film, could be taken as self-referential (both screenwriterswere Andrei, after all), as an allusion to the St Matthew Passian byTarkovsky's favourite composer J. S.. Bach, or else as a sign oE the film'sintended status as scripture or national epic (legend holds that Russia wasvisited by Christ's disciple, St Andrew) .. However, these early titles, bothoE which suggest an unusual narrative structure, soon ceded to the simple'Andrei Rublev', which is how the film figures in most contemporarydocumentation and discussion from 1963 on, and which seems to augur amore conventional type oE narrative.21

In 1962, Tarkovsky was a recent graduate oE the Moscow filminstitute, VGIK, where Konchalovsky was still completing hisstudies.. 22After collaborating on the screenplay oE Tarkovsky's finalstudent project, The Steamroller and the Vialzn, they worked together onthe screenplay far his first full-length feature at Mosfilm, ¡van 'sChildhood, in which Konchalovsky also acted .. Their prospects at Mosfilmimproved after ¡van's Childhood and Konchalovsky's student film, TheB ay and the Dove won prizes at Venice in 1962.. Both at home and abroad,Tarkovsky was the Sputnik on the firmament óE Soviet cinema. He wasencouraged to take up the nomenclature's prized project, a film based onLeonid Leonov's 1961 screenplay, The Escape oI Mr McKlnley.However, in a series oE interviews and essays, Tarkovsky tirelessly

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plugged the selling-points of A ndrei Rublev: its treatment of artists' socialresponsibility and its innovative narrative structure, In an early interviewin the newspaper of the Writers' Union, Tarkovsky stressed the film'stopicality: '

I link ~y creati:,e ~lans ro the quesrion of the anist's relationship tothe natlOn and hls time, where the artist does not exist in isolation butis the conscience of society, the pinnacle of its imagination arre! themouthpi~ce of its t~lent These issues are the basis of the sc~eenplayThe Pal SIOn A ccordzng lO Andrei which 1am currently writing togetherwith Andrei Konchalovsky. ,

This screenplay tells of the life of the genius Russian anist, AndreiRublev, whose memorialisation was urged by Vladimir Lenin in hisfirst decrees"

The problems of the Russian renaissance, about which weunfortunately know practically nothing, help us to trace the civicprofile of this artist and isolate the significant point at which severalplanes coincide: time, history, the ethical ideal, the artist, and the nation"Our fil~ about Andr.ei ~uble~ w.ill tell of the impossibility of creating~rt outslde of the natlon s aspnatlons, of the artist's attempts to expressltS soul.an~ ch~ract~r, and of the way that an anist's character dependsupon hls ~Istoncal sltuation, The question of the artist'splace in the lifeof th~ natlOn seems to us one of the most contemporary and importantquestlOns on the cusp of our future,23

Elsewhere, Tarkovsky dwe11ed more on the film's innovative narrativestructure:

Our prize [for Ivan's ChildhoodJ obliges" And of course 1want to makethe next film better" Right now Andrei Konchalovsky and 1are workingon t~e screenpl~y of a new film, Andrei Rublev" To some degree thiscontmues our lme of poetic cinema, which we began with Ivan's~hlldhood. I t?in~ th.is picture will help us to depart from literarydlscOurs~, whlch IS ~tlll ~ery strong in our cinema" And although thegreat artlst Rublev lrved m the fifteenth century our cine-story abouthim should be contemporary, After a11 the p:oblem of talent theq~estion of the artist and the nation are not obsolete in our own d~y.. Inthls work we want to reject a unified plot and narrative" We want theviewer to see Rublev with 'roday's eyes'24

Tarkovsky is careful to avoid any mention of religion, but it was stillrisky for him to propose a film about a monk, especia11y a film which hasforesworn not only a clear ideological viewpoint but even 'a unified plotand narrative'.

Tarkovsky's unshakeable self..belief and untiringpromotion of theproject were not sufficient to winAndrei Rublev immediate approval fromMosfilm. There is disagreement over Konchalovsky's involvement in thefirst version of the screenplay (the basis of the English translation), but thetwO certainly co11aborated closely on the draft which Mosfilm eventua11yaccepted at the close of 1963.25 In typical fashion, the issue was addressedat the highest levels of the Soviet government. Cognisant of the inevitabledifficulties which lay ahead for this controversial project, a sympatheticofficial at the ideological section of the Central Committee of the SovietCommunist Party arranged for the screenplay to be published in theofficial film journal, lskulstvo kino in the spring of 1964.26 In mid-I964,Andrel Rublev was approved for production as a two-part film with abudget of one million roubles. This amount, though large, was insufficientfor the entire screenplay and necessitated ever-increasing cuts in theshooting script, although Tarkovsky caused an administrative flap byincurring a large budget overrun. The inevitable comparison is withSergei Bondarchuk's War and Peace, which was a110cated a budget ofaround eight million roubles at about the same time.. There are myriadconnections between the two Mosfilm productions, bothof which featuredsymphonic scores by the young composer, Viacheslav Ovchinnikov, Mostimportantly, Tarkovsky's experimental storyte11ing is firmly in theTolstoyan tradition of sprawling, self~conscious narratives,27 However,the contrast in the films' official status eventual1y grew into open warÜuebetween the directors after Tarkovsky accused Bondarchuk ofmanoeuvring against him on the jury of the Cannes Film FestivaL For hispart, Bondarchuk took Tarkovsky's brash originality as a mortal threat tohis conventional brand of costume drama..

Tarkovsky's prickly temper ament was both a constant hindrance tohis career and a main condition of his success. He strove to controleverything, from the tiniest detail in the mlse en scene to the weatherconditions, The difficulty of such a meticulous approach was multipliedby his characteristic, long-duration tracking shots, which requiredimmaculate choreography in order to produce the necessary 'rhythm'while avoiding any anachronistic features in the landscape andconserving precious film stock.28 His producer, Tamara Ogorodnikova(who plays Christ's mother in the crucifixion scene) te11s how Tarkovsky

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ordered a field ploughed in order to darken the background outside thehut in episode one, and how he insisted the hundreds of stacked aspenlogs in the yard of Andronikov Monastery be replaced by birch.. 29 Heoften refused to explain to his collaborators the reasons for variouscapricious instructions, and was capable of terrorising his actors(especially young Nikolai Burliaev) in order to create the requisite mood.

Both screenwriters have stressed their diligent study of a'mountain' of historical documentation and scholarship on the period; asan added layer of security Mosfilm hired historical consultants, whoTarkovsky claims found nothing objectionable in the screenplay.3° Hemay have exaggerated the amount of work they did" For instance, Kirill'slearned quotations from Konstantin Kostenecki and Epiphanius theMost-Wise are both lifted from a popular study by Soviet academician, D..S. Likhachev.3! Moreover, both are spurious; the Kostenecki quotation isLikhachev's wilful paraphrase, while the other one appears not inEpiphanius' Life of St Sergius (which itself postdates the scene in the filmby several years), but in a later reworking by Pachomius the Serb.. Ofcourse, such details are unimportant. In fact, Tarkovsky attributes thefilm's aura of authenticity precisely to his refusal to create stylisedillusions:

[O]ne of the aims of ourworkwas to reconstruct for a modernaudiencethe real world of the fifteenth century, that is, to present that world insuch as way that costume, speech, life-style and architecture would notgive any sense of being relic or of antiquarian rarity.. In order to achievethe truth of direct observation, what one might almost termphysiological truth, we had to move away from the truth ofarchaeology and ethnography,32

The colour of the fie1ds and wood piles was crucial, given the need toreduce Rublev's world to basic e!ements with palpable and familiartextures without trying to date anything backwards in time ..

Tarkovsky's re1uctance to force entry into the alien historicalepoch is reflected in many discontinuities in the film" Tarkovsky used akind of neutral-contemporary Russian dialogue, Most of the markedlymodern words (e.g" 'talent' [talant)) and archaic language (e"g .. fotms ofChurch Slavonic) are spoken by Kitill and are part and parce! of hishysterical self-stylisation; here history and hysteria truly coincide" Arelated decision was the use of black and white for the nanative andcolour for the Epilogue displaying Rublev's icons .. In an interview,

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Tarkovsky claimed that black and white communicated reality, whilecolour imbued everything with an aura of fictionality..33 This curiousreversal of the usual view of things shows that Tarkovsky understood'teality' in his picture to mean reality as portrayed in accordance withcinematic convention, By extension, although they are Rublev's onlyreal historical traces and are shown in their current state, the icons areplaced beyond the limits of normal filmic reality, and therefore qualifyas 'fiction'. The nanative grounds the icons in a temporal reality, in aIHe, without which they are impossible incursions of the supernaturalinto our world .. The rare cinema tricks stick out, as when blood spurtsflamboyantly from an arm wound during the sack of Vladimir. But wealmost weIcome these lapses into obvious cinema convention becausethey assure us that Tarkovsky acknowledged himself master of his ownfiction, not of history or reality as such, and was happiest as storyteller,not as prophet.

Tarkovsky's desire to achieve both authenticity and distancedictated the use of authentic locations, which was fraught with legal andaesthetic hazards. During the shoot, a small stir was caused by a fire whichoccuned at the historic Dormition Cathedral in Vladimir; it was awkwardthat a film advertised as recovering the historical Andrei Rublev mightendanger his only surviving frescoes,34 But the locations also containedhazards for the film, such as the paved yard of Andronikov Monastery orthe electric pylon and power lines which the Soviets had taste!essly placedat the east end of the Church of the Protection on the Nerl River nearBogoliubovo (site of the Prologue) .. Tarkovsky studiously avoided thesehazards, pointing the camera to the west at Bogoliubovo and shooting allscenes at Andronikov Monastery in the winter, when the yard isconveniently covered in snow.. However, Tarkovsky was happy to capturethe sense of wear and tear in the actual structure of the cathedral atAndronikov Monastery., The oldest surviving structure in Moscow, it wasbuilt only towards the end of Rublev's IHe and therefore should, H presentin the film' s diegesis, be as sparkling new as the prince's palace in episodefour. However in the film, although it is only shown hom its mostadvantageous side, it shows all the scars of having been gutted duringNapoleon's invasion and used as a prison under Stalin.. Shots of theBogoliubovo Church clearly show its gutted interior, a ruin that invites usin but forces us to project our own past onto its walls .. To those who havetoured the Golden Ring of old Russian cities around Moscow, closeviewing reveals many discrepancies within scenes, sorne of which wereshot at multiple locations .. During episode five, the Russian-Tatar forces

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approach two different locations in and around Pskov, a stone fortress anda wooden stockade, but they penetrate through to the cathedral inVladimir, hundreds of miles away! Moreover, the Vladimir cathedral seentrom the outside is obviously different from the interiors in this episodeand episode four, which were shot at Mosfilm Studios.35 That these

28 Nikolai Glazkov in multiple roles

discrepancies remain so inconspicuous is testament to Tarkovsky's andcameraman Vadim Iusov's meticulous planning of the long tracking shots.However, the discrepancies contribute subliminally to a subtle sense ofdisorientation, as if the full truth of the scene is forever receding into anelusive distance.

Both the crucifixion sequence of episode two and the entire finalepisode, 'The Bell', were shot on a hill opposite the ProtectionMonastery in Suzdal, and the crew spent most of its time between thereand the nearest large city, Vladimir.. It was an immense and intense task,led by an inexperienced and moody director who was constantly forced10 measure his wild dreams against reality. Aleksandr Misharin,Tarkovsky's collaborator on the screenplay of The Mirror (1974),recalls visiting Tarkovsky during shooting and viewing a preliminaryedit lasting six hours, which somehow had to be cut down to size.36

Other glimpses of the arduous shoot are preserved in the poems ofNikolai Glazkov. Glazkov's poem, 'The Flying Peasant' ('Letaiushchiimuzhik') is broken into seven 'shots', and reads like a storyboard for thePrologue. In another he describes himself as an extra in episode one'The Jester':

It's boring and awkwardTo hold a mug of kvas in the bam,It's better to swim in the pond,So 1swim the erawl in my shirt..

And 1climb up onto the slippery bank,The rain is falling, it's pouring down,And the sky in white-grey storm-cloudsAIso makes it inta the wonderful shot..

And 1go in my wet shirt,Fascinated with my important role,Watehed by the monks:Andrei Rublev and Daniil the Blaek.37

Other non-professional actors were cast in minor roles: Solonitsyn's wifeplayed one of the pagan women in episode three, while a local ceramicartist was eonscripted to play one of the guardsmen who arrest thejester.38 Iurii Nikulin, who was known as a clown and comic actor whenTarkovsky cast him as the sacristan Patrikei, recalls Tarkovsky's

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satisfaction with his persuasive expressions of pain during his torture inepisode five .. Nikulin explains that he was able to achieve this naturalisticeffect thanks to the burning torch which was dripping onto his feet:'When the pain became unbearable 1 began to yell at the Tatar wordswhich weren't in the screenplay' ,,39

Despite such improvisations, for the most part Tarkovsky'splanning was de1iberate and sure .. For the major roles Tarkovsky usedprofessionals with whom he often struck up lasting re1ationships" Hecame to rely on his favoured collaborators in part because he knew theycould put up with his peculiar and imperious demands. How many actorscould equal the patience oE Solonitsyn, who refrained from speaking foran entire month prior to shooting the final scene in order 'to find the rightintonation for aman who speaks after a long silence' ?40 Thereappearance oE the same actors in multiple films reinforces the integrityof Tarkovsky's oeuvre, but it also heightens the narrative discontinuitieswithin each separate work.41 The connection between Burliaev's Boriskaand his titular role in ¡van's Childhood is underscored by the citation oEmusic from the earlier film in 'The Bell' episode. Even more confusingly,some actors play multiple roles within the same film, most conspicuouslyIurii Nazarov, who plays both the Grand Prince and his younger twin. Assuggested by his poems, Glazkov does not disappear with the death ofEfim in the Prologue; he is present in the hut during 'The Jester',accompanies the Grand Prince in 'The Bell', and probably acted in 'TheRaid' as we11. When the holy fool reappears as a noble woman at the endof the film the viewer has no way to tell whether it is the same characteror simply multiple roles played by the same actress (lrma Rausch,Tarkovsky's first wife).

The other major collaborators on Andrei Rublev had also workedon Tarkovsky's previous films: co-screenwriter Andron Konchalovsky,cameraman Vadim Iusov, editor Liudmila Feiginova, composerViacheslav Ovchinnikov, in addition to the actors Nikolai BurliaevNikolai Grin'ko (Daniil), Irma Rausch (the holy fool) and Stepan Krylo~(the head bell-founder). Many oE these - Iusov, Feiginova and Grin'ko, inaddition to Solonitsyn - would be enlisted for Tarkovsky's next filmSolaris. Grin'ko, one oE Tarkovsky's mainstays, has written thatTarkovsky always recalled the production oE Andrei Rublev with wistfulnostalgia: 'We lived as a single family', Grin'ko remarks,42 a particularlyapt image iE one considers his fatherly roles in Tarkovsky's films .. Despitethe constant stress, even the newcomers to Tarkovsky's set, such ascostume designer Lidiia Novi, recall Tarkovsky's working methods with

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warmth and admiration. As Rolan Bykov (the jester) puts it, Tarkovskyobsessive, but not dogmatic: 'Such a great artist, Tarkovsky, who

knew precise1y what he wanted .. " But he also valued others'treated them lovingly and attentive1y, and believed in them,,'43The collaborative nature of the effort, coupled with the passage oE

between conception and rdease, has created no little confusion overcontributions oE the main participants" 1 have already noted

disagreements over Konchalovsky's role in the first. draft. ?E ~hescreenplay; accounts likewise diHer over the degree of hiS partlCipatlOnduring production. Both he and Aleksandr Misharin have laid claim to theidea of discarding the bulky 'Famine' episode where the holy fool gives

and regains her sanity.44 The friction between the two Andrei'sprobably began long befare shooting started and centred on Tarkovsky'stendency to obscure narrative connections and stress non-narratlvevisual motifs and images" Recalling Tarkovsky saying, '1 want that senseof fresh leaves opening up', Konchalovsky comments, 'For himsensations replaced dramaturgy',,45 In retrospect, Konchalovsky claimsoE the finished product that 'there was too much, too many minutiae,which didn't form themselves into any holistic composition'.46Criticising Tarkovsky for his overly intellectual approach to actors, hesingles out the conversation between Theophanes and Kiril1: 'The entirereason we (at least 1) wrote it got lost. We made it under the obviousinf1uence of Dostoevsky" Between the characters (not between them andthe author, but between the characters themselves) there was supposed tobe an almost mystical tension',,47 However, this criticism hardly seemsfair iE one considers that in both published screenplays the conversationis between Theophanes and all three monks, it is much shorter, and itbears little oE the dramatic tension of the corresponding scene in the film;in the screenplays, it concludes with Andrei's weak sniffle that he canpaint better than Theophanes.48 Konchalovsky's insinuation thatTarkovsky killed the drama by intellectualising it is false; Tarkovsky didsomething much more radicaL

It is easy to attribute the sketchy storyline oi Andrei Rublev tocensorship and budget constraints" However, within these constraintsTarkovsky had a relative1y free hand in the way he told the story, and hewas a past master at making a virtue oi necessity. In 1963 he stressed theimportance oi two battle scenes, one depicting the Battle of KulikovoField in 1380, and one depicting a semi-fictional sack of Vladimir in 1408.In interviews and memoirs, Tarkovsky appears adamant about thenecessity oi the Kulikovo scene" However it is conspicuously absent from

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the screenplays, which include only a single shot of the battle's aftermath,and even this was eventually left out of the film" (Tarkovsky resurrected itin the screenplay of The Mztror but reftained fi:om shooting it then aswelL)49 By contrast, the much more elaborate and expensive sack ofVladimir became the film's pivotal evento The loss of the Kulikovo Battlescene diminished the film's overt discourse on national unity, as did theexcision of Andrei's flashback of a Tatar siege of Moscow, during whichthe Muscovite women sacrificed their precious locks of hair. The loss ofthis scene rendered obscure two overt references to it at other points in themovie and numerous other shots of women's hair.. Finally, the removal ofthe 'Famine' episode rendered the holy fool's later reappearance as a noblewoman with a young daughter almost totally opaque. This example showshow Tarkovsky intentionally de-intellectualised key images, such aswomen's hair, and thereby opened them up for active viewerinterpretation. According to Konchalovsky, his more logical approachdissuaded Tarkovsky from collaborating with him on Solaris: 'After all Ihad learnt some lessons fi:om Rublev and was interested in the structure ofthe work, whereas he wanted to destroy the structure. He was obsessedwith this goaL'50 For all his tendentiousness Konchalovsky confirms thatobscure narrative and ideological connections issued fi:am a consciousaesthetic of discontinuity on Tarkovsky's part,

That Tarkovsky's radical aesthetic was the underlying cause of thesubsequent problems withAndrei Rublev is demonstrated by the revisionshe made in his protracted but ultimately successful bid to win the film'srelease" Tarkovsky completed the film at 205 minutes in duration in mid­1966; the final editing was done in such haste that Nikulin's name was leftoff of the credits, which bore the title The Passion According toA ndrez,SlThe State Committee on Cinema then drewup a list of changes tobe made before the film could be officially accepted, Tarkovsky mademany or all of these changes, which amounted to a loss of about fifteenminutes of film. In the meantime, however, an inflammatory newspaperarticle '"." And the Cow Caught Fire' attacked Tarkovsky for 'extremenaturalism',,52 This infamous article denounces Mosfilm on severalgrounds, and the author (hiding behind a pseudonym) actually refrainsfrom naming Tarkovsky or his film, which he had evidently seen in apreliminary version (he claims that one offending shot of a naked 'youngactress' who is made 'to jump thr ough a flaming bonfire' had been excised,when it is extant in all available edits). Inspired by this denunciation, thecommittee then returned to the film and demanded more changes, but in aletter of 7 February 1967, Tarkovsky refused to acquiesce to these

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'm<)nstrous, illiterate demands [which would] murder the picture'S3 Atarlm,rskvdid make some further changes, shortening the film

aÚutJ1et hv'eminutes or so. However,Andrei Rublevremained officiallyunJ11l1SnE:a and therefore ineligible for release until 1969, when a second~.~'rrllprp was held, a print was sent to the Cannes Film Festival, and

distribution rights were sold to a company linked to ColumbialJirtures, At this point all hell broke loose: at Cannes, Andrei Rublev won

FIPRESCI International Critics' Prize for the screenplay andembarked on a successful run in French theatres, to the horror of Sovietcine-officialdom" After deflecting still further demands for cutsthroughout the year, Tarkovsky finally saw the film released in the USSRat the very end of 1971. 'There aren't any announcements in any paperabout Rublyov being on', Tarkovsky noted in his Martyrology, 'Not asingle poster in the city. Yet it's impossible to gettickets. All sorts of peoplekeep telephoning, stunned by it, to say thank you' .54 The film remainedforbidden ftuit for most Soviet filmgoers until well into the liberalisationof the Soviet system in the era of perestroika" Still, Tarkovsky was luckycompared to Konchalovsky and Aleksandr Askol'doy, whose 1967 filmswere released only in 1987, or Sergei Paradzhanov, who was imprisoned inthe 1970s for the crimes he committed against Soviet sensibilities in hisfilms Shadows oI Our Forgotten Ancestors (1965) and The Colour oIPomegranates (1969),

What was wrong with Andrei Rublev? The most common chargewas 'naturalism', which meant excessive violence and nudity in thecentral three episodes: the pagan festival, the blinding of the artisans andthe sack of Vladimir.. Nationalistically minded viewers were also liable totake umbrage at the rather desultory depiction of early-MuscoviteRussia, which is shown mired in cruelty, famine, and internecine strife,with a repressive Church cajoling the fun-loving pagan masses. Evensome sympathetic viewers, such as Solzhenitsyn, were disappointed withTarkovsky's weak-kneed Rublev, who not only fails to paint a singleimage in the film, but also cavorts with naked heathen wenches, kills aman, and generally behaves in a manner unbecoming to a hesychastmonk. Why did Tarkovsky need the historical Rublev at all, if he hadnothing to say about him as the subject of some remotely plausiblenarrative? Beneath all these criticisms, however, lies a more fundamentalunease with Tarkovsky's overall aesthetic, which viewers everywhere areliable to find confusing or just plain boring,

So what did Tarkovsky change in Andrei Rublev to make itacceptable? The process which led fi:om the 205-minute version to the 185-

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version had been split into two discrete shots, and even added shots whichhad been completely absent from the longer edit. The shorter version hasmany more examples of fades and dissolves between shots, oftenaugmented by aur allinkages between sequences, all of which encouragesthe viewer to link individual shots and scenes into causal chains.Moreover, Tarkovsky freely changed the dialogue (which was all dubbedin afterwards anyway) and added dramatic musical cues.. Evidently, there-edit was not merely a matter of economy, but also a retreat into moreexplicit narrative causation. This explains why Tarkovsky deletedflashbacks and fantasies which fragment Andrei's unifying perspectiveand provide insight into others' visual imaginations. In the secondversion Tarkovsky takes upon himself part of the work which he hadoriginally entrusted to the viewer ..

When Tarkovsky engaged Eduard Artem'ev as his composer forSolaris in 1970, he chose to show him the original version of AndreiRublev, suggesting that, privately at least, he considered it to be a moreaccurate realisation of his design.57 Just what the two versions revealabout the film's shape will be addressed after my discussion of the plot ofthe original version, known as The PasszonAccording toAndrez .. For now itis sufficient to establish that both versions were authorised and foHowcogent narrative strategies.. This cannot be said of the versions which wereshown in the West in the 1970s, which incorporated additional cuts madeoutside of Tarkovsky's control, although in at least one case he did granthis acquiescence, perhaps out of a sense of powerlessness.S8 By the late­1980s these bastardised versions had disappeared, and the 18S-minute cutwas accepted as standard, although the precise composition of certainscenes still differed between Soviet and Western prints and the soundtrackhad been remastered. In addition, most VHS and DVD versions of the re­edit actually run four per cent faster at 176 minutes (due to a cheapermethod of transfer), and the aspect ratio is cut from 23S:1 to 1.8S:1. In1987, the Soviet film archivists unveiled the original 20S-minute version,which has become the standard for theatrical showings and is nowavailable on DVD in the true aspect ratio, but with an image cropped on allsides, which obscures sorne key details and affects the expansive tone ofIusov's widescreen cinematography. In March 2004 Mosfilm demonstrateda restored print of the 18S-minute edit, with enhanced audio and colour.s9

It remains to be seen which edit of the film, and indeed which version ofwhich edit, becomes accepted as canonicaL Quite possibly the film willcontinue to exist in parallel forms, the comparison of which will always bea crucial part of comprehending the film..

minute one is usually described as cutting.. The most conspicuous cuts werethe most graphic shots of the stonemasons' gouged-out eyes, the burningcow, and the horse being lanced (although its horrific fall remained).. Fourembedded scenes of flashbacks or fantasies were also cut completely:Foma's fantasy of flight in episode two, Andrei's reminiscence of the threemonks under a rain-soaked oak tree in episode four (merged with a similarsequence in episode seven), the younger prince's fantasy of humiliatingthe Grand Prince in episode five, and Boriska's recollection of thebellfounding in episode seven.. All in all, 1 have counted thirty-six shotswhich were completely deleted in the 18S-minute version of AndreiRublev, and about eighty-five which were considerably abbreviated,including nine very long takes which are sp1it each into two or more parts..The total number of shots went trom 403 to 390, with the average shotlength dropping from 31" to 28" .. The only sequence which remainedinviolable was the Epilogue in colour.. In a 1969 interview Tarkovskyclaimed that the cuts improved the film by streamlining it:

In the first place, nobody has ever cut anything trom Andrei Rublev..Nobody except me.. 1 made sorne cuts myself The first version of thefilm 1asted 3 hours 20 minutes. The second - 3 hours 1S minutes. 1shortened the final version to 3hours 6minutes. And 1declare and insistthat in my sincere opinion the latest version is the best, the mostsuccessfu1, the most beautiful in the way 1understand that word .. And 1on1y cut certain overly long scenes which the viewer doesn't evennotice.. The cuts have not changed anything either in the content, theaccents we placed on the material, or the important dialogue in the film;in a word they have removed excessive time which was not intended..We shortened certain scenes of violence; however we did this in ordertú induce psychological shock instead of merely creating an unpleasantimpression which would only destroy our intent.. [..... ] 1do not regret ataH that the film has been shortened to its present length .. 55

Maia Turovskaia, a trusted source on Tarkovsky, has also concluded that,despite the natural 'breath rhythms' of the first edit, one can see the 'handof the "Iater" Tarkovsky' in his removal of 'narrative excess' in the 18S­minute version of Andrei Rublev.56

Other changes suggest a much more significant shift inTarkovsky's approach between the first and second edits. In addition tostraightforward cuts, Tarkovsky also re-arranged several sequences,used at least two alternate takes, restored one long take, which in the first

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THE SHAPE OF THE STORY

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The plot of Andrei Rublev can seem both uneventful and confusing,especially if one is reliant upon flawed subtitles .. Even as well prepared aviewer as Solzhenitsyn has called it 'an impossibly long film filled withextra episodes which have no bearing on the main story'.6ü A key factorin this confusion is that the title and anangement lead one to expect atraditional nanative pattern.. However, Rublev is the central protagonistonly in the sense that he sees more than any other character, and the keyevents are ones oE vision or oE witness. In this suspension of actionTarkovsky is true to a long Russian tradition, exemplified by AntonChekhov's fl:ustrated dramas and applied to cinema as early as 1913 bythe young Boris Pasternak: 'Let [the cinema] photograph not stories, butthe atmospheres of stories',61

Given this tradition and Tarkovsky's own predilections, what issurprising is not that the plot is so thin, but that it is present at al!Tarkovsky stressed that he did not want to follow any common nanativepattern: 'Often films about people of art are constructed according to thescheme: an event occurs, the hero observes it., Then the viewer sees himthink it over, and then he expresses his ideas about the event in hisworks,'62 The most stable element of Tarkovsky's project was the idea ofdisplacing Rublev's icons to the end of the narrative, As early as 1962,Tarkovsky wrote:

The history of the film's production and release hasovershadowed the film itselE.. Attention has been deflected from itsnarrative discontinuities, first by Tarkovsky's emphasis on its his:to]tic¡llthemes in public statements, and then by critics inteipreting the film as anallegory for the director's own via crucis.. Tarkovsky did put a lot ofhimself in the film. Solonitsyn's Andrei even borrows sorneTarkovsky's nervous habits, such as biting his fingernails" Boriska, theimpertinent bellfounder, is another obviously self-referential character,and it is tempting to see his sidekick Andreika as a jab at Konchalovsky. Inthe end though, this tortured path to the screen, however interesting andmeaningful, must lead the viewer back to the film itself, just asTarkovsky's narrative enables the viewer to see Rublev's icons ..

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In our film there will not be a single shot of Rublev painting his iconsHe will simply live, and he won'r even be presenr on-screen in aHepisodes.. And the last part of the film (in colour) will be solely devotedro Rublev's icons We will show them in detail (as in a popular scientificfilm)., The on-screen demonstr ation of the icon will be accompanied byrhe same musical rheme which sounded in rhe episode of Rublev's lifecorresponding ro rhe time during which rhe icon was conceived63

36

Rublev's character is formed gradually of events, sorne of which heexperiences, sorne oE which he sees, while others are seen only by theviewer.. Tarkovsky is concerned not to specify causality., Instead, theviewer must actively seek and even construct connections betweenevents, people and images. Tarkovsky compared the demands and theeffect on the viewer to that of a mosaic:

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Two visual motifs: white liquid spilled into water (from episode four) and white birds failingthrough the frame (from episode five)

same coin. The link between art and brutality is confirmed by the use ofsimilar wooden contraptions: as the machinery of torture in episode two;as an undefined artistic device in episode four; and as the be11-hoist inepisode seven" Each episode is linked to others either by repeated shots(such as the images of flight or of the monks under the rain-soaked oak)or visual motifs (such as white liquids spilled into the rivers or white birdsand feathers fluttering down from the top of the frame). The music andambient sound weave another layer of themes and variations which affectthe viewer's perception of isolated events., If one regards the film as aneducation in sight, then Kirill's mole-like blindness, Daniil's amiablenearsightedness, Foma's vivid imaginings, and Andrei's carnal curiosityare a11 superseded in the end by a sympathetic witnessing which formsdisjointed reality into a cogent shape.

Perhaps the most powerful means by which the film teaches to seeis the complex weave of characters' perspectives, with their overlappingclaims to legitimacy A prime example is Theophanes the Greek, acharacter who is constantly shown on the borderline between life anddeath .. His role as angel (angelos means 'messenger' in Greek) is reflected

Without negating the importance of the events themselves, Tarkovskystresses their overall shape, which manifests itself insymmetries, doublings, repetitions, and even one or two decisive U~'"~UJ.

The plot (in the conventional sense) reveals an arched shape, formedAndrei's departure from and return to the Trinity Monastery. At otherlevels, the plot stresses the gradual elevation of Andrei's vision over thecourse of his travails. However, the arching of the plot and the elevationof Andrei's gaze provide the mere fi:amework for the viewer's ownconstruction of a detailed narrative" In sorne respects, it is the resultingformation of the viewer's own vision which is the majar point of the film.

The plot constantly gestures beyond itself, to events or causeswhich are simply not accessible from our vantage point. Thus, forexample, the character Daniil disappears and reappears without anyexplanation; when a11 the major surviving characters gather in the finalscene, Daniil is absent although he is the one person who is attested tohave been present in Rublev's final years.. These gestures to an absentbeyond are not rea11y gaps though, since they communicate a cleardirectionality. For example, most episodes (with the exception of 'Love ')begin or end on rivers which link them into a single journey across aunified space, even if we sometimes do not know where we are, Similarly,many scenes end with background characters proceeding to the right, asif in a universal migration to sorne off-screen destination" Furtherpatterns are evident across the film. For instance, each episode containsboth an act of cruelty and an act of creativity, often as two sides of the

You can stick YoU! nose into sorne fragment, beat it with YoU! fist,scream: 'Why is it black here? It shouldn't be black here! 1don't likelook at black!' But you have to look at a mosaic fram afar and onwhole, and if you change one colour the whole thing falls apart64

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38 The people's procession

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PrologueImmediately afi:er the credits, Tarkovsky's restless camera reveals thehasty preparations of a peasant, who rows across a river, ascends a churchbell-tower and takes to flight, all the time pursued by a throng ofsuperstitious peasants. The balloon, roughly patched together of fursand hides, ascends over the ensuing fight around the bonfire. At firsthesitantly, Efim declares 'I'm flying' and lurches farward along a riverbank; fi:om his bird's-eye view he sees a herd of livestock covering theflood plain. Crane shots of the landscape alternate with static shots of theaviator hanging immobile in a tangle of ropes Then, with a gasp and athud, the camera plummets to the river bank and fi:eezes on a close-up ofthe grassy knolL Cut to a horse rolling on its back and then rising to its

in slow motion .. In a final shot we see the motionless aviatorsprawled as if dead, the balloon exhaling as if alive, and the horse passingthrough the frame like an ethical judgment.

Tarkovsky's films ofi:en begin with sorne kind of prologue whichestablishes the general thematic space of the picture han ~s Chzldhoodbegins with an idyIlic scene which is immediately unmasked as thenightmare of a child warriOL At the start of The Mirror, the narrator'sson switches on a TV set which shows a hypnotist curing a young man ofhis stutter .. '1 can speak', the youth declares befare the opening titles rolLIn this connection, the prologue to Andrei Rublev could be taken todeclare: '1 can see'. In eighteen shots lasting a total of 6 minutes 36seconds, Vadim Iusov's camera demonstrates its entire repertoire of

visiono However, this grouping of characters is unstable .. There is noconsistent point of view for the narration, even when the titular hero ispresent in the shot.. The camera may seem to sympathise with a characterfor a time, but it invariably switches to another character or takes on alifeof its own.. There are also few establishing shots to give a sense of theobjective space in which the viewer can array events and characters..HhH-'--' the meaning of a shot is liable to remain suspended until theviewer ascribes it to a particular subject and places it precisely in thenarrative. The screen acts as a locus of exchange on which the characters'and viewers' gazes run like alternating current through the tense, pensiveimages.. The viewer is encouraged to acknowledge a manifold of possibleplots and interpretations and to avoid reducing the film to a tighter story.The screen is not a transparent window on objective reality, but thematerial basis of a narrative form which takes shape only with theviewer's active participation.

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by Andrei's pupil Foma, who imagines the flight of the swan and theangels at the crucifixion, and who then is himself shot down like a bird inmid-flight or 'an angel with one wing'.65 Like Theophanes, Foma treatshis vocation matter-of..factly, as a craft, and his frustration at Andrei'sinaction calls to mind Theophanes' admission that he gets bored if hisicons take too long.. Theophanes' stark and somewhat imperious view ofthings is also reflected in Boriska's tyrannical coordination of thebellfounding.. Boriska, Foma and Theophanes are united also as secular­minded artists who are free of pangs of conscience, but limited in their

40 Theophanes has three appearances, each time on the border between life and death

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[vidimo-nevidimo] of icon painters in Moscow before we ever get there';such subtle expressions of sight continue throughout the film. Themonks disagree on how long each has been at the monastery; we don'tlearn who is correet, but at issue is whether they had been there prior tothe death of its founder St Sergius in 1392 .. As their conversation is cutshort by rain, the youngest one fussily dashes for the shelter of a scrawnybirch tree, but Kirill ridicules him: 'We won't dissolve'. The rain coversthe screen like gauze, but the field behind is bathed in sunlight as the threemonks jog along to the right, always to the right. Tarkovsky cuts to ahead-on shot of the three picking their way through the mud which, asthe camera zooms out, is revealed to be the view from inside a hut, out ofa long lateral window which matches the dimensions of Iusov'swidescreen lens., The sheet of rain and the framing of the window remindus of our own dependence upon the screen and our inability to access thisenigmatic life directly.

In episode one, the window echoes the cinema screen

movements.. The long tracking shot of Efim walking into and throughchurch introduces us to the camera as an inquisitive and sensitive guidean opaque world .. The camera is conscious of the viewer and 11l,UllIJUldU:S

his reactions, making him gasp when Efim clumsily clambers out ontoledge and then pushes off unsteadily f1:om the church (in a malsterfu:llvvertiginous erane shot from the balloon).. Ouridentification with Efim causes us to accept his smooth flight oversuccession of different landscapes, even as the intervening shots ofsuspended over a river bend call his progress into question. Aftercamera swings violently, plummets to the ground, and seizes infreeze f1:ame, we are clearly reminded both of the camera's in(iitj:er'~n(:e

to the human experience and of our own dependence uponambivalent perspective. Like the camera, the spectator witnessescollapse both of endeavour and of vision, but is helpless to act, as if in anout-of~body experience.

On reflection, there is even more in this short sequence to give uspause. At the end of the first shot, Efim's collaborator turns aroundface the camera We then see and hear the crowd chasing Efim.,implication is that the first man has heard the commotion and is lookingour direction to identify its source .. However, this apparent connectionactually impossible because the crowd is not audible during the first shot,nor is it possible to locate it in the direction of the camera. What then,does he look at? We aren't given the chance to dwell for long on thismystery, because new ones keep arising. How does Efim make it toupper floors? The Church of the Protection of the Mother of CodBogoliubovo near Suzdal famously has no stairs, because it is only thesurviving core of a much larger original structure.. Does an unseenwoman whisper 'O Lord' just as Efim pushes off, or is this justimagination? Does he fly far, as suggested by the erane shots, or just a fewyards, as is suggested by the static shots which hover unchanged over thesame river bend and village? Does the horse represent an angelic 'He issaved', or the face of a nature as implacable as the camera? Thediscontinuities, which are palpable if not conspicuous, warn the viewernot to rush to conclusions, but rather to focus onseeing the full amplitudeof multivalent reality.

EpiSode One, The Je ster. Summer 1400Three monks leave the Trinity Monastery, ignoring the plea of theabbot's young messenger but voicing wistful regrets and fears for theirfuture in Moscow.. One says, 'There are probably unseen multitudes

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After zooming out from the window, the camera perfarms acomplete circuit counter-clockwise around the hut, fa1lowing the danceof the falk entertainer (skomorokh) who sings a bawdy songaccompanies himse1f on the tambourine. This shot, which lasts over twominutes, ends up at the front door, through which enter the three monks.When the jester's song ends we gradua1ly become conscious of a femalevaice singing a wordless plaint and of the camera executing anothermasterfuI pan around the hut, facusing this time not on the jester buthis audience. Even the drunk who apes the jester is shown, in a pensivemoment, as a sovereign centre of vision and meaning. Switching betweenfareground and background in this way transfarms our own gaze, whichmust not rest on the first thing at hand .. The panning shot comes fu1l circleto reveal only two monks.. The jester steps out for a moment and hangsupside-down in the doorway; a hidden cut makes his climb seemimprobably quick. The youngest monk looks out the lateral window at acassocked figure talking to horsemen" Four horsemen presently approachthe hut and arrest the jester, bashing his head against a tree in a way whichvividly reca1ls his own dance .. When the guards smash the jester's musicalinstrument (guslz), it makes an off-key twang like those which Chekhov

44 TheJester and his ape

inserted at key moments of his dramas. The absent monk, now identifiedKirill, walks in with a bird perched on his hands; at his suggestion the

leave hurriedly, escorted by the peasants' leering eyes.At the beginning of the episode the as yet unnamed younger monk

sighs, 'It's a pity we 're leaving the Trinity'" By the end of the episode theof monks has already begun to disintegrate in intimations of

oppression, betrayal and apocalypse. The insular world of the monast:ryhas been exchanged for a multidimensional world which at first surpnsesand shocks the gaze of the one monk whose eyes are fu1ly open to ir.

Episode Two ..·Theophanes the Greek.. Summer-Winter-Spring-Summer 1405-1406Kirill remains the facus of the next episode, which opens with him walkingthrough the narrow, twisting Moscow streets into Red Square, where aman is undergoing torture and execution" As he enters a dark building,again the camera seems to hijack the point of view, moving fl~i~ly into anadjacent room where aman lies life1essly on a bench.. Km1l fo1lowsgingerly, asks 'Is there anyone alive in here?' and is shocked t? hear"th~manspeak. 'Where are you looking? Look there!', the old man cnes, pomtmg t"othe camera" Kirill impresses Theophanes with his learned speech, but 1S

offended when Theophanes takes him far his fe1low monk, Andrei Rublev.Theophanes needs a he1per, and Kirill promises to serve him 'like a faithfuldog', but only if Theophanespublicl~sends far him in fi:ont of Rubl~v andthe other brothers. Instead of answenng, Theophanes runs to the wmdowto castigate the crowd at the execution" As the victim is removed from themachinery of torture, the crowd disperse to right off-screen. .

We then see Kirill in his ce1l at Andronikov Monastery, munchmgon a cucumber as a voice-over reads Ecclesiastes 11: 9; 12: 1,6-8, 11-13;one assumes the vaice is Kirill's, although its tone is uncharacteristica1lyeven. The young Fama enters and argues with Kiril!.. Foma's surprise atKirill's use of a lamp in daylight cal1s attention to the monk's need forartificial illumination. Kirill's rejoinder, 'Have you fed my dog?' begins arunning theme of Foma's indolence" Fama then leaves and returns againto announce the arrival of a messenger from Theophanes. In the nextshot it transpires however, that the messenger has come not far Kirill, butfar Andrei, whom we only now learn to identify with the insecure,younger monk. It is as if Andrei's very naming as an individual istantamount to his being cal1ed outside of the cloister. Andreiimmediately agrees to join Theophanes at the Cathedral ?f theAnnunciation (Rublev's first attested commission), but his haste alienates

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Daniil. Alone in their cell, Andrei pleads with his friend, saying: '1with your eyes'. Daniil forgives him, but sends him off alone.humiliated and livid, noisily quits the monastery, bludgeons his dogdeath, and disappears among the oaks..

Together at the table, Daniil and Andrei adopt a pose rerniniscentof Rublev's Trinity. There is perhaps an expectation that the film willabout the restoration of this trinity, but this expectation will be fru.strated.1nstead it will become the story of Andrei learning to see forwithout the love and support accorded him by his friends .. Andreisurrounded by examples of imperfect vision.. The events of the plot,the extent that there have been any, have thus far centred on Kirill,despite his display of initiative and articulate speech, his actionsprecipitated by a numbing inability to express himself.command that Kirilllook into the camera, reinforces the monk's needmediated vision as does his gaping stare at Theophanes' iconogood-natured but inattentive, is twice shown with a book which he

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incapable of focusing on .. Bis parting words of gratitude to the mistressof the hut seem ill-advised in the light of Kirill's implied denunciation ofthe jester. Andrei is distinguished by his youthful ambition, his nervytemperament, and his wandering gaze; he alone makes eye-contact withthe jester and he alone seems to divine the significance of Kirill's absencefrom the hut. Subtly, perhaps imperceptibly, the viewer is being preparedto expect a resolution to Andrei's story not in the events of the plot, butin the fate of his eyes

The following sequence in episode two dwells especially onAndrei's developing vision. We are transported to an unidentifiedlocation, where the dank ground is palpably fecund and the trees are

Andrei Rublev, The Old Testament Trinity (detail); Andrei and Daniil echo Rublev's Trinity 47

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budding with those 'sticky leaves' which Tarkovsky was so eager toaccording to Konchalovsky" Andrei castigates Foma for his indolencegreed" In answer to Foma's complaint, 'How can you think if your bellyringing?', Andrei declares, 'Only through prayer can: the soul ascendthe visible to the invisible'. Foma is limited less by his body than byrationalism; Andrei asserts the need far faith .. As if investigatingdispute, the camera caressingly poses Andrei and Foma amidst thetrunks and roots, subtly displacing them as it pans, and in an invisiblediscovers Theophanes sitting nearby, his legs teeming withTheophanes joins in the persecution of Foma, who wanders off anda dead swan" Three aerial crane shots similar to those in the Prologuefallowed by a long take of almost three minutes which commencesFoma crouching on the river bank. The camera rises together withbut then dwells on Andrei and Theophanes whose figures executecomplex ballet, while the camera floats around them in a long take"Andrei expounds a paradoxical understanding of the Russian peoplethe crucifixion, the camera comes to rest on the back of his head andcuts to the shot of a white cloth in flowing water, The camera zooms outreveal a passion play, set in wintertime Russia, accompanied by a drumchoral music, and featuring winged angels. The voice-over of A"""""o

theological argument continues throughout this sequence, but theintensity of the images makes it difficult to follow.. After the Russianis nailed to the cross, we cut back to Foma, who rinses the white painthis brushes" The white paint flows in the stream as an echo of the cloth inthe first shot of the crucifixion sequence.

This episode continually frustrates the viewer's attempt to definesingle narrative point of view. The fantasy of flying is precipitatedFoma's touching the dead swan, but the images reprise the crane shotsEfim's human flight in the Prologue" By contrast, the crucifixionarises out of Andrei's head (both literally and figuratively), butit concludeswith Foma's brushes. Both sequences are acts of collaborative imaginationand as such, provide a model far how viewers appropriate others' imagesand ideas into their own imaginative narrative.. As usual, the viewer is givenno clear interpretive guide, except the imperative to keep watching"

Epzsode Three .. The Holiday. 1408Without explanation, Daniil and Andrei are together again, accompaniedby a group of helpers and pupils on their way to Vladimir.. As they set upcamp on a river bank, Andrei wanders off and is taken up in a nocturnalpagan celebration" He fallows one naked woman and, when she is pulled

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down into the bushes by a naked man, Andrei blindly steps into a bonfire,He looks inquisitively around, especially at another woman who isjumping through a fire in a kind of ritual. He is grabbed by three men andtied to a pole in a hut in crucifixion fashion, whereupon he curses themwith hellfire, When the men leave, he convinces the naked woman, whois called Marfa, to untie him,. She kisses him passionately and, when heweakly remonstrates, she says: 'It's that kind of night.. Everyone mustmake love' .. He runs off, avoiding with difficulty the couples copulatingin the grass, but Marfa confronts him again with a seductive gaze, Cut tothe morning, where, amidst smouldering fires and couples languidlystirring, Andrei gingerly picks his way out of the hut and out of thevillage" He joins up with his comrades who regard his scratched face withconsternation, He asks, 'What are you looking at?' Daniil reproaches himby saying, 'Take a good look at yourself'" As they paddle away,guardsmen and monks pursue two pagan revellers into the river, 'Don'tlook', Andrei commands his young pupil, Sergei" After a struggle, thewoman escapes and swims silently past the monks, whose eyes seemparalysed.

At the beginning of the episode, the monk Aleksei comments thatthe young Petr has never seen the famous cathedrals in Vladimir; Daniilanswers: 'Never mind. He'll clamber around the scaffolding [lesa ­literally, farests], wave his brush around, and figure it out'" This commentpresages Andrei's actions in a baldly Freudian manner which callsadditional attention to the theme of carnal vision in 'The Festival' .. Andreiis literally singed by the spectacle of naked female flesh, while Marfa'sgaze hypnotises him in the night. While he fusses about Sergei's innocenteyes, Andrei ignores Petr's glowering look and seems strangelyunperturbed by his own falI. The problem with Andrei's vision soon

As Andrei submits to the spectacle of flesh, Petr and Foma look on 49

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affects the viewer, who may notice that, as she runs towards the river andthen swims across it, the woman repeatedly changes her form .. Accounts ofthe shoot confirm that three actresses were used,66 but no explanation isforthcoming. It is as if the camera sees her through Andrei's carnal gaze,which constructs her as a mutable object of desire instead of as a persono

5 O The pagan woman played by lhree differenl aclresses

The entire episode is like a mutable gaze into Russia's pagan past.. Itabounds in intimations of the supernatural, fIom the weird music whichdraws Andrei into the wood to the giant white figure which appears in arare long shot. Even in the chronology of the film, 'The Festival' isdifficult to place.. It is the only episode for which a season is not specified,leaving open its temporal relationship to the two subsequent episodes(also dated 1408); for example, little Sergei is present here although heappears to join Rublev's crew only in the fo11owing episode .. Foma says,'It'l1 be June soon', but the festival seems linked to the tradition of StJohn's Eve, which occurs on the summer solstice on 22 June .. In short, thisis a midsummer night's dream in which urgent questions of the plot (suchas 'Did Andrei have sex with Marfa?') are overwhelmed by a more basicdisorientation. The viewer is encouraged to identify with Andrei onlyinsofar as he adopts the role of a witness who tries to stitch the rent clothof the narrative into a single shape, providing a model for the viewer'sown composition of the film.

Episode Four.· The LastJudgement.. Spring 1408The temporal disjuncture of 'The Festival' is exacerbated in the story ofthe large fresco of the Last Judgement in the cathedral in Vladimir.. As 1noted befare, such a fresco is still extant in Dormition Cathedral and isattributed to Andrei Rublev and Daniil the Monk, but the creative act ishere suspended in indecision and reflection.. A tracking shot around thecathedral shows the idle crew (including Fama, Petr, and Sergei). Petr isbusy creating the perfect surface, as if to erase the memory of what hesaw in the previous episode .. In a subtle foreshadowing of the nextepisode, an axe is stuck into the scaff61ding. To paraphrase Chekhov, ifthere's an axe stuck in the scaffolding in the first act, it must chop

The axe in lhe scaffolding in lhe Dormilion Calhedral al Vladimir, foreshadowing Rublev'scrime in lhe nexl episode

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something later on .. In the meantime, however, in good Chekhoviantradition, the crew is adrift in ennui.

The sacristan nervously urges the painters on in Andrei's absenceand warns that the bishop is taking measures to punish them .. At this, thescene shifts to a fieldoE grain where Andrei and Daniil discuss how topaint the Last Judgement. As in Andrei's conversation with Theophanes,the camera pans constantly around the two characters who hardly everface each other. Daniil is a pragmatist: icons are supposed to copycanonical patterns, so there 's no point getting uptight. Andrei says hedoesn't want 'to scare people'. The topic oE vision is paramount here.'Look at me', Daniil implores. Andrei averts his eyes from the task athand, just as he would avert believers' eyes fram the horrible truths oE theapocalypse. As a horseman approaches (perhaps the bishop's messenger,the agent oE Andrei's demise), the camera violently swings around 180degrees to show him ga110ping away behind them.. This cut echoes thedescription oE the road in the screenplays as slashing through the fields'like a mark drawn on whitewash'.67

Cutting back to the church, Andrei is shown nervously biting hisfingernails, while in voice-over he reads a key passage on love from StPaul (I Corinthians 13: 11-13, 1-10) .. The voice-over continues as we cutto Andrei in a lighter moment, playing with the infant princess in a palaceoE brilliant white stone, fi11ed with the airborne poplar Bufr whichblankets Russia every spring.. The scene, white on white, is almostblinding, and the Grand Prince squints agitatedly at the invisible reliefs..His henchman Stepan recommends painting the stone with brightcolours. Fed up, the stonemasons te11 him they are going to Zvenigorod towork for his younger brother.. Outside, surrounded by charred wood(remains of the former palace, one learns from the screenplay),explain to Andrei that the elder prince has tried to get off too cheaplythat his younger brother has purchased 'even whiter' stone .. We see Sergeiblindly groping an unused relieE as iE it were a tablet in Braille .. This,incidenta11y, is the only time we see Andrei working on icons; he iscleaning a scorched image oE The Miracle of St George Killing theDragon, together with two young princesses, one oE whom says she has'dirtied her hands' on the burnt icon.. On this cue, we switch to anoverhead shot in the forest which shows Stepan leading the prince'sguard against the stonemasons and blinding them in gruesome fashion ..The only survivor is the youth Sergei, although it is not clear in the endwhether he belongs to the stonemasons' party or has simply fo11owedthem into the forest. The scene ends with white paint spilled into water..

The next shot is like a negative image oE this: a hand smearing darkpaint over an immaculate white wa11, creating a gash which echoes thepath slashed through the field. Daniil has Sergei read 'fram Scripture'; heopensto 1Corinthians 11: 3-9 .. Enter a 'holy foo1', who gawks atthe scenein the church but breaks out crying at the sight of the desecrated wall.From a shot oE the back oE Andrei's head, which echoes the beginning ofthe crucifixion scene, the camera then cuts to a sequence oE four shots ofthe three monks (Andrei, Daniil and Kirill) taking shelter under an oaktree; the music and the bird, which Kitill holds in his hands, suggest thatthis sequence should be dated around the time oE episode one.. Cuttingback to the church, we see Andrei walk outside, fo11owed by theastonished gaze of his co11eagues. He looks back into the church;switching to his point oE view, we see the holy fool and the rest oE Andrei'screw looking out at him. The holy fool then exits out of the churchtowards him..

The entite scene at the palace and with the stonemasons,introduced by Andrei's voice-ovet and culminating in his desecration ofthe wa11, seems marked as a Bashback fram Andrei's point oE view.. Theprecise location and time are not defined.. Judging by the weather, thescene starts in early summer and then Bashes back to early spring, perhapseven before episode three 'The Festival', which would account forSergei's appearance there .. Vida Johnson and Graham Petrie (1994)consider the Bashback an explanation oE Rublev's inactivity: his crisis isresolved only by the appearance oE the holy fool, who gives him 'theconfidence to paint a "happy" Last Judgment' .. 68 There are problems withreading the scene as Rublev's actual memory. After a11, the first part of theflashback is almost surreal and Andrei does not actua11y witness theblinding, as far as we know. Moreover, if that occurred at sorne point inthe past, then the smearing oE the paint seems quite a delayed reaction. Inaddition, the frescoes would appear to have been finished by the nextepisode, which takes place that very autumn It is more logical to seeAndrei's imagined reco11ection oE the murder oE the stonemasons,together with the pagan rite, not as the cause oE his painter's block, butrather as its cure: the cruelty oE blindness and the distortions oE the carnalgaze give Andrei a preview oE the Last Judgement and instruct him howto re-shape it as a fresco.. The paint smear is not yet a fresco, but it doesexpress Andrei's first attempt to form his raw horror into a visualrepresentation. Curiously, when the holy foollooks at it in anguish thesmear has a different shape, suggesting the way that pictures speak indistinct ways to each pair oE eyes.

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Epzsode Five. The Raid.. Autumn 1408The opening episode oí part two follows closely in time but marksdrastic change to an unabashedly epic diction.. Andrei steps firmly outthe central role and is reduced to the rank oí a spectator alongside usorare panoramic shot shows a military camp on a river bank. Hereyounger prince meets up with his Mongol-Tatar allies andVladimir Three flashbacks reveal the history of their fi:aternal -'-V.UllIlCl,

including the younger prince's fantasy oí overcoming his brother inviolent wrestling match.. An orgy of violence culminates in the siegethe very church Andrei has presumably been painting. Inside, weAndrei and the holy fool cowering in supplication; 'Lord Have Mercy'the chant. When the enemy soldiers burst in, the holy fool is seizedtaken up into a 10ft; Andrei follows and kills the would-be rapist withaxe.. Exterior shots show the attackers stripping the gilt off oí theof the Cathedral oí the Dormition. In the aftermath, the sacristanis tortured, a molten cross is poured inta his mouth, and he is pulled

54

writhing, behind a horse .. Some time later in the same space, to theaccompaniment oí bells toHing quietly, the holy fool plaits the hair of adead woman while Andrei converses with Theophanes, who, it turns out,is dead. One by one, Andrei's helpers are struck down. Daniil is absentwithout explanation. The tumultuous episode concludes with a series ofslaw-motion shots oí the burning church with white birds fluttering downthrough the fi:ame. Time itselí fi:eezes as the action subsides into memory.

The conversation with Theophanes is the central event of Rublev'sstary.. At first, the viewer sees only an unknown hand leafing through acharred volume .. In the course oí the ensuing conversation, Theophanessurprises himselí by reeiting a line from the New Testament, exclaiming,'1 remember! 1 haven't forgotten!' The Book is superfluous in heaven,where God communicates without verbal mediation.. However, itremains dear ta Theophanes, perhaps because oí its pedagogical role inpreparing him for divine wordlessness. Theophanes treats images in asimilar way. He nonchalantly dismisses Andrei's grief over his burnticonostasis: 'Do you know how many iconostases 1 have had burnt?' heasks encouragingly.. To Andrei's question about heaven, he answers, 'Itdoesn't look at aH as you imagine it' .. However, after caHing inta questionthe accuracy of the icon and the icon-painter's gaze, Theophanesgestures to the charred iconostasis and adds, 'Still, it's aH so beautiftil!'Theophanes demotes the icon ta an approximation oí the truth, whichdoes not express transcendent reality precisely, but imprints it in beautyas the tracing oí an outline .. Andrei responds to this crisis oí word andimage by disavowing speech and icon-painting.. At this point, AndrezRublev becomes a film about the resurrection oí the word and imagethrough Andrei's purgative silence. He must rediscover the burnt wordand image as imprints oí a spiritual shape, and not as transcendent realityitself; and he must embody that spiritual shape in his actions, which aremore durable than words and images.

Episode Six. Love.. Wznter 1412At the end of 'The Raid', Andrei vows ta give up painting.. As 'Lave [orCharity]' begins, we see he has also taken a vow of silence.. He is busy withhis duties around Andronikov Monastery and with taking care oí the holyfooL In the monastery, five monks sit at atable at the confluence oí two longcorridors. They peel apples and discuss the famine. When Kirill appears,ane monk recognises him.. When Andrei enters, the monks explain to Kirillthat he is repenting for unspecified sins committed with the holy fooL Next,the abbot walks in and, despite initial reluctance, accepts Kirill back into the

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community with the penance oí copying the Scriptures out fifteenBack outside, sorne Mongols ride up, make fun oí the holy fool andher off despite Andrei's despairing silent protestations. Andrei'switness is he1pless to prevent this betrayaL Instead, he returns toSisyphean labour oí dropping hot rocks into a barrel oí water.

'Love' is a barren episode, fi1led with negative space andmeaning. The untranslated foreign speech of the Tatars ismargina1ly less meaningful than the idle gossip oí the apt)le--pelelel:S.Andrei has replaced expression with self-absorption.

56 Krill discovers the camera obscura works but remains in blindness

shadows on the wall, as if discovering the camera obscura, but he can nolonger see, and his bookishness is punished by the empty obligation tocopy out the Scriptures fifteen times; in neither case will mechanicalreproduction bring him any closer 10 understanding.. Finally, the holyfool's betrayal of Rublev seems 10 remove the final barrier keeping himfi:om total despair. Yet, amidst all of this silence, the film's most importantsingle event comes to pass, as the desolation of community and thebarrenness of the winter air reveallove to be the only medium capable ofholding everything 1Ogether.

Episode Seven:The Bell. Spring-Summer~Autumn-Winter~Spring 1423-1424The title fi:ame announces an eleven-year jump in time. At first Andrei iscompletely absent from the scene, which focuses instead on Boriska, thebellfounder's son.. The plague has taken away all the be1lfounders, butBoriska claims 10 know the 'secret' formula for the metal. The prince'sguards reluctantly agree 10 use him and he soon becomes a tyrannicaltaskmaster.. He orders the pit to be dug in a new place (although he endsup digging it himself, together with his almost mute he1pmate Andreika),and leads the men on a seemingly month-long search for the right clay.Back at the pit, he demands more silver from the prince, has Andreikaflogged for insubordination, and makes the mould thinner than the othersadvise.. Once, Andrei Rublev gets in his way and Boriska curtly warnshim to watch where he 's going. Still, after sorne he1lish scenes of thefoundry, the bell turns out fine and is raised in the presence of the princeand two bemused Italian dignitaries, who chatter away distractedlyamidst the reigning solemnity. If the Tatars' foreign speech exuded thethreat of linguistic power, here language is simply superseded by thesynaesthetic spectacle of the be11.

Throughout the episode, Andrei has remained a silent butfascinated observer as various plotlines are resolved.. We overhear that theyounger prince has been executed. The jester reappears, tongue1ess andembittered by ten years of captivity, and accuses Andrei of havingbetrayed him. This brings Andrei 10 the verge of speech and action, butKirill intervenes to turn drama into farce .. Unable to make a cleanbreast ofhis actions, Kirill offers himse1f as a scapegoat for Andrei.. In a flashback,Boriska remembers events from earlier in the episode. This short scene isfollowed by a discontinuous cutaway to Andronikov Monastery, whereKirill once again fails 10 make a clean account of himself to the silent

and instead launches into a tirade against his younger colleague..

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Even the reappearance of the ho1y foo1 as a noble woman, with horse andchi1d in tow, does not move Andrei" He remains a disembodied gaze, as thepeop1e continue their inexorable migration to off-screen right"

Andrei is spurred into action and speech on1y when Boriskaco11apses into the mud" Boriska admits that he never knew the secret, butAndrei suggests they both go to the Trinity Monastery to paint icons andcast be11s" Boriska sobs, Andrei ho1ds him in a pieta embrace, and thecamera concentrates its gaze on the embers of a fire, which flicker and,sudden1y, are reignited in co10ur, suspending and fu1filling the narrationin a new conflagration"

EpilogueThe co10ur shot of embers disso1ves into detai1s from Rub1ev's icons,among which can be recognised: The Entry into }erusalem, The Nativityof Christ, The RaiSing 01 La{arus, The Tranlfiguration, and The Baptismof Christ and The Annunciation (a11 from the Cathedra1 of theAnnunciation); The Saviour in the Wóod (from Zvenigorod); and The OldTestament Tnnity (from the Trinity-St Sergius Monastery)" The camera'sgaze remains dynamic, mobile, restless, whi1e the chora1 music retreatsinto 'Lord Have Mercy', just as it had in the besieged V1adimir cathedraLAs in the cathedra1, the final image is a further negation of the icono Theicons are sp1ashed by a film of rain which enshrouds the camera andseparates it from the four horses which stand unperturbed in the sun1ight.This final, apoca1yptic image underscores the imperfection of our visionand the sovereign inaccessibility of transcendent beauty.. However, thenarrative film has 1ed right up to the border of this rea1m, a bordermarked by the icon..

A Bell 01 a StoryJust as the ropes extend out from the be11 in a11 directions, so do a11 thep10tlines converge on the final narrative episode 'The Be11', which weavesa11 the major voices together and imbues the entire film with a precise 10gie.Tarkovsky's assistant, Mariia Chugunova, reca11s that 'The Be11' 'swung'back and forth between different 10cations in the final edit,,69Koncha10vsky's recent claim that 'the nove11a about the be11 cou1d rep1acea11 of Rublev'70 is typica11y bombastic, but it is undeniab1e that 'The Be11'provides a clear shape to the entire preceding narrative, Boriska is the veryepitome of a marginal figure: an orphan, disrespectful and indo1ent, in theend he turns out to have been a1most a confidence trickster eager to disposeof the Grand Prince's silver. Butitis in the storyof his founding of thebe11

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thatAndrei Rublev finds its centre. The film itselí describes the arc oíleading from the Trinity Monastery back again, and like the bell itembossed at its centre with the holy violence oí St George.. The processconstructing the bell can clearly be taken as a metaphor far the makingthe movie, which results in a narrative which facuses viewer attentiondistinct centre of meaning, with a clear sense oí where the variousare coming from and how it all could achieve a meaningful end. Justwhen Efim pushed off from the church in the Prologue, as the bell iswe feel the suspense of the decisive moment, brilliantly exploitedTarkovsky with the sound of the creaking ropes.

In the final sequences of 'The Bell', Tarkovsky'snarrative explodes in a narrative suspense which concentratesexhausted viewer's attention ahead oí the final revelation of Kllhlp,,,'o

icons. When the bell is rung, it resounds throughout the universecosmic celebration oí the icon.. It is notable that this occurs at thespot as the crucifixion fantasy in episode two, as ií the raising oí thewere a recapitulation and restoration of Christ's sacrifice. The trilJmph'The Bell' leads directly to Andrei's rebirth as a witness and as aLike Boriska, Andrei finally relinquishes agency over his work in arder

60 Efim flies overthe Monastery ofthe Protection in Suzdal (a shot missingfrom The PassíonAccording lo Andrei); The Russian Christ is crucified on the hill across from the same mOlnasltery

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reveal it to the world .. Rublev's very biography - and by extensionTarkovsky's narr ative film - has to be inciner ated in order far his icons tobecome visible in an act oí witness..

'Andrei Rubley' and 'The Passion A ccording to A ndrei'The open bell-shape oí Andrez Rublev is confirmed by a detailedcomparison oí the two edits, which reveal two distinct approaches to thenarrative. Despite ample evidence oí Tarkovsky's compliance in the re­editing oí the original version, the result is a film somewhat at odds withitselí and uncomfortable with the very aesthetics of discontinuity whichguided its shooting and narrative composition. The removal oí sorneintentionally obscure passages inadvertently introduced others, leavingthe film littered with phantoms oí the more discontinuous narrative ..

The different strategies in the two edits are best illustrated by asingle phrase from episode one, uttered by the jester to ridicule the threemonks .. When Kirill rejects an offer of mead with the words 'Thank you,we don't drink [Spasibo ne p 'em]', the jester retorts with the unfinishedrhyming phrase: 'And women we don't ... [1 bab ne .... ]' .. In the originaledit, the word unspoken has to be supplied by the viewer, leaving openBoriska marks the spot at the same location; Andrei consoles Boriska at the place of his 61crucifixion

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the degree of vulgarity. In the re-edited version, this very ambiguitydeemed dangerous, and the jester implausibly finishes his phrase witheuphemistic substitute word 'shake' ('triasem') .. This pattern indicatesoverall strategy of the re-edited version: to remove ambiguities andinterpretation, even at the cost of fiawed narrative logic..

Similarly, in the re-edited version of the Prologue,introduced an aerial shot of a monastery, as if he wanted the viewerimagine seeing Andrei somewhere down below, thereby establishingevident link to the ensuing narrative.. On close examination,monastery is evidently the same one seen in the crucifixion andscenes. However, this is a more mysterious and tenuous link thanimplicit connections between the Prologue and other instances ofand ascent in the longer version. Thus surface coherence is won atprice of structural confusion..

Other re-edited sequences are more complex and more egre¡Üous.In the longer version, Kirill's visit to Theophanes' workshop withtracking shot of the execution scene outside, with the crowd exitingscreen right; this is followed by the long take (over three minutesduration) of Kirill in his cell at Andronikov Monastery, with a VOlce-O'verreading from Ecclesiastes, after which Foma enters, suffers verballeaves and then returns to announce the eagerly awaited arrival ofGrand Prince's messenger, who invites Andrei instead of KirilLlong take of Kirill in his cell is so ambiguous that it may even cause oneview the preceding scene of Kirill's conversation with Theophanes asproduct of Kirill's imagination; perhaps he is dismissing his wblimsicaldream of a conversation with Theophanes as a 'vanity of vanities' .. 71

order of the shots is markedly different in the re-edited version.scene at Theophanes' workshop ends with a long take of Kirill in frontan icon, which overlaps with the sound of the messenger pnxlainrÜnlginvitation to Moscow in the monastery courtyard. It is afteraccepts the invitation, argues with Daniil and tells his young helpersprepare for the journey, that we see Kirill in his celL On the surface,new order makes more sense insofar as Kirill's ambitious dH"anninlgTheophanes' workshop runs right into the destruction of his hopes,which he is shown brooding on the nature of vanity. But this n:"":>1-ivp

causality is purchased at the price of new discrepancies: for eXclmlJ]e,there is no explanation of why Foma enters Kirill's cell when he MlIJUJLU lle;

preparing to leave for Moscow..A similar rearrangement was performed with Kirill's other

scene when he returns to Andronikov Monastery in episode six.. At62

point, Kirill is shown staring at shadows projected upside-down on themonastery wall, as if in a camera obscura.. He then looks at the lightwhich pierces the boarded window, which looks for all the world like anunpainted icon board and raises intriguing possibilities: perhaps Kirill'svision is limited to shadows, or perhaps his artistic impotency iscomplemented by a conscious understanding of the principIes of art (inone interview, Tarkovsky compares him to Pushkin's Salieri, who'verified harmony with algebra').72 At the end of this shot, we hear amonk welcoming the abbot, who is then shown entering the scene. Thissequence is made conspicuous precisely by its isolation and unresolvedambiguity. Shortened and rearranged, in the re-edit this scene is renderedless conspicuous but more opaque Kirill's glance at the window isaccompanied by crowd noise from the monastery yard, to which theaction then cuts away. It is as if Kirill is looking, not for the source of theshadows, but rather, for the source of the commotion outside .. Theenigmatic shots remain in place but lose their connection to the theme ofKirill's vision, which is what made sense of them in the first place ..

The narrative logic of the original version was closer to that of thescreenplays.. In episode seven 'Love' (which, in the 18S-minute version,becomes episode eight 'Silence '), Andrei is shown lugging scaldingstones across the monastery courtyard with a pair of large tongs. In the1964 screenplay, Andrei drops one rock in a barrel of water and picks upanother, but he drops it and has to put it back in the fire to reheat it beforegrabbing it again. Carrying it with obvious discomfort, he once againdrops it short of the barrel: 'hissing with satisfaction, it rolls into astream' .. As if in one of Samuel Beckett's short plays, the screenplaydirects: 'Andrei returns to the fire and everything starts over'.73 In anearlier version, Andrei's ordeal with the stone occupies much more text,but makes no more sense .. 74 In the original edit of the film, the event isshown in three shots.. First, Andrei takes a stone with tongs and then, inthe following shot, drops it. Afrer almost ten eventful minutes of screentime, during which the holy fool is abducted, a long take shows Andreipicking up another stone .. Here the scene retains the enigmas of thescreenplay while stressing the futility of Andrei's labour .. In the re-editedversion, however, after Andrei picks up the first stone, the sceneimmediately shifts to the abduction of the holy fool, after which Andrei isshown picking up a second stone and dropping it. The new order suggeststhat Andrei drops the second stone in a display of disappointment;however it fails to explain why he is lugging the stones in the first place.Thus the shorter version introduces apparent narrative causality which

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imposes a simplistic explanation on the sequence, The result is liablemystify the thoughtful viewer even more. The original version ismore consistent with Tarkovsky's other films; for instance, in its OIllgiltlalform the scene bears a clear resemblance to Andrei Gorchakov's carryingof the candle at the end of Nostalghia (1984).

It is notable that the gravest victims of the re-edit wereFoma, and Boriska, who are Andrei's main rivals for the centre offilm's narrative. Clearly, Tarkovsky decided to focus attentionsquarely on Andrei instead of dividing viewers' allegiance and att(~ntion

among the casto In addition, Tarkovsky heavily amended thosewhich called into question the reliability of Andrei's vision, For eXclm¡)le,the loss of two shots at the end of 'The Festival' obscures the use ofdifferent actresses while doing nothing to explain the character'schanging form" Perhaps she is more likely to be taken simply aswoman with whom Andrei has had a sexual encounter, an int:erlpn~tation

that itself is made more plausible by the use of a dissolve betweensecond appearance and the shot of the village the morning after. Inoriginal version, the escaping woman is an amalgam of all thewho have tempted Andrei during the night. When linked to the end'The Bell', this suggests that the inexplicable transformation of thefool into a noble woman may also be chalked up to Andrei's trans:torm<~d

gaze more than to her own person,,75 In the re-edited version, these twoscenes are simply inexplicable puzzles which obscure, rather thanstrengthen, the film's discourse on the transformation of Andrei'sinto witness ..

64 A dissolve added to the re-edited version of the film completes the story of Andrei's terrlpt2ltiQJ1

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THE ELEVATING GAZE

In addition to all of his technical and stylistic experimentation,Tarkovsky also used Andrei Ru6lev as a theoretical laboratory.Tarkovsky's first major essay on film, 'Imprinted Time', was published in1967 even as Andrei Ru6lev was becoming mired in the bureaucraticslough" However, Tarkovsky's central concern throughout this andsubsequent essays was not so much the issue of artistic fl:eedom as thedistinctiveness of cinema vis-a-vis literature and painting, which hedefined with reference to its temporality: '1 think what a person normallygoes to the cinema for is time; for time lost or spent or not yet had" Hegoes there for living experience', 76 Tarkovsky does not mean that cinemacan provide vicarious experience, but rather that it can illumine anddeepen the viewer's sense of real time by depicting an abstract temporalform which must be filled in with emotional content.

Like Sergei Eisenstein before him, Tarkovsky decried attempts toimport into cinema narrative or representational methods from the moreestablished arts, Nonetheless, one of the hallmarks of Tarkovsky's film­making was his conscious participation in traditions of representation,from Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer to Eisenstein and RobertBresson. Andrei Ru6lev conducts an especially intense discourse on thedifferent ways to visualise spiritual reality, among which it privileges theicon as both a locus and an agent of spiritual visiono However, the filmonly gestures towards the icon without itself trying to become iconic"Tarkovsky's use of Rublev's icons is emblematic of his use of otherpeople's creative work. Just as Tarkovsky 'burns' the narrative ofRublev's life in order to reveal his icons anew, so does he form an originalcinematic world out of the ashes of his predecessors' words and imagesby engaging in an intense interchange with viewers' memories andperceptions.

CinemaCinema provided Tarkovsky with an ambivalent tradition for the kind ofspiritual film he wanted to make" As he noted later on, 'cinema was born[.. ".] at the fairground with the goal of pure profit', 77 To be sure, there arenumerous points of contact between Andrei Ru6lev and popular filmgenres" It is, after all, a biographical film named for its hero, whichfollows the basic pattern of his recorded deeds while introducing a sort of

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love interest and a secret crime.. Tarkovsky was always fond of Ldlap(!eV

(1934), and was proud when a survey of critics namedAndreithe best Soviet film since this socialist realist classic. 78 Toaviewer, the depopulated widescreen expanses may call to mindLeone, making Tarkovsky's tale a monastic equivalent of The Good,Bad, and the Ugly (1966). A Soviet publicity poster for Andreimade the film's structural similarity to the Western a point of sale.Tarkovsky was, after all, an artist of the cinema and shared moreD. W Griffith than with the historical Rublev, even if he hoped to establishnew possibilities for cinematic discourse about spirituality.

For a film about an Orthodox monk there are few outward signspiety; most provocatively, only the jester and the pagans make the signthe cross, something Russian Orthodox believers normally do withfrequency. This reflects Tarkovsky's sensitivity to the conventionalof film.. In pre-revolutionary Russia, there was a legal prohibitionreligious images in the cinema, since the medium itself was UL'.~H<;U

profane.80 However, after 1917, the cinema struck a Ú1St alliance with themilitantly atheist, Soviet state and became a valued tool of antl-!:eligicJUspropaganda. In addition to Vertov's 1919 cine-chronicle of the de:,ecrationof St Sergius' relics and Iurii Tarich's voluptuous monks in The Wings

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a Serf, there are prominent anti-religious sequences in Eisenstein's TheOld and the New (1929) and Vertov's Donoass Symphony (aka Enthusiasm,1930) .. The tension between film and religion was symbolised by thefrequent conversion of confiscated churches into cinemas. It might be saidthat Tarkovsky took the Church back into the cinema..

There were precedents for Tarkovsky's endeavour. IakovProtazanov took advantage of the brief interlude between the tworevolutions of 1917 to produce Father Sergius (1918), adapted from a latestory by Lev Tolstoy in which an officer enters a monastery, resists thesexual provocation of a society woman he used to know, but thenviciously takes advantage of a retarded girl entrusted to his care .. Rublev'stemptation by Marfa and his relationship with the holy fool reverseTolstoy's pattern, suggesting a contrast between Rublev's hesitanthumility and Father Sergius' hypocrisy. Much as he was loath to admit it,Tarkovsky also owed an obvious debt to Eisenstein's two historical films,Alexander Nevsky (1938) and ¡van the Terrible (1944-47). There arenumerous specific bonowings; for instance, both the ascetic profile of theabbot of Andronikov Monastery and the idea of a sudden switch fromblack-and-white to colour are taken from ¡van the Terrzble .. However,there are broader stylistic similarities, such as the shocking scenes ofgraphic cruelty which hearken back to the slaughtered cow in Strzke orthe immolated infant in Alexander Nevlky .. They also underscore thecontiguity of religious ritual and film as means of intervening in thestructures of political and spiritual power. Openly antagonistic towardsEisenS'tein, Tarkovsky was more willing to admit the inspiration he drewfrom the earthy textures of Aleksandr Dovzhenko, whose pioneering useof long takes and sparse, naturallandscapes achieved a spiritual tonalitywhich defied his ideological stance Vsevolod Pudovkin also creatednaturalistic textures which influenced Tarkovsky; the shots of Boriskasliding down the clay cliff are remarkably similar to the World War 1trenches in Pudovkin's The End of St Petersourg; in both cases, the screenbecomes a wall of mud which absorbs the frail human subject.

As Tarkovsky prepared his project for production, he also hadseveral more recent precedents in mind.. First, there was JerzyKawalerowicz's Mother/oan of the Angell (1961), which according toVadim Iusov impressed Tarkovsky with its use of cross-shapedcompositional structures.81 There were the films of Cad TheodorDreyer, from The Pawon of StJoan of Are (1928) to Ordet (1954), withtheir bare, rigid nanatives and sets. Of his contemporaries, IngmarBergman, Akira Kurosawa and Federico Fellini all1eft an indelible mark

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PazntingTarkovsky was clearly fascinated by the spatial form of certain paintingsand by their role in cultural memory, speaking at times of the waypainterly models can lend authenticity to the cinematic image. The mostexplicit quotation of painting in Andrei Ruhlev is of Pieter Bruegel theElder. In episode two, Bruegel's Road to Calvary (1564)is merged with hiswinter landscapes to produce the melancholy scene of the RussianGolgotha. There is an undeniable affinity between Tarkovsky's andBruegel's use of active backgrounds within a full frame, The foregroundaction can easily become subordinated to what is occurring in thebackground, or else it turns into a background as a new foregroundemerges" Tarkovsky also associated this polycentric world with theVenetian Renaissance painter, Vittore Carpaccio: '[EJach of thecharacters in Carpaccio's crowded composition is a centre, If youconcentrate on any one figure you begin to see with unmistakable claritythat everything else is mere context, background, built up like a kind ofpedestal for this "incidental" character',82

In the crucifixion scene, however, Tarkovsky's borrowings go farbeyond Bruegel's compositional technique. First, the scene cannot beseen as a straightforward dramatisation of the Gospel narrative in aRussian setting. In addition to the Bruegel citation, the board which isnailed to the cross clearly reads 'Tesus Christ, the Crucifixion of OurLord', which corresponds not to the Gospels but to the inscription on theOrthodox icon of the crucifixion, Therefore the vision is not of thecrucifixion as such, but of its traditional representation on an icon,Further, the scene cannot be seen as an exemplary visualisation of theevent, in part due to its uncharacteristically melodramatic acting. 83 Thedubious-looking angels also suggest that it should be viewed not as anauthentic spiritual vision, but rather as a test of different representationalmodels which must be burned up in the icon painter's visual experience inorder to give rise to a true image. The film-maker, like the icon painter,cannot simply copy models, but must experience them as his own life andas tests of vision, in order that the true image emerge from their traces.

A similarly studied use of painting can be observed in the nextepisode 'The Festival'., Here, instead of imagining Christ, Rublevimagines himself as Christ, appropriating for the purpose several modernRussian canvases on religious subjects" Rejoining his colleagues themorning after his nocturnal adventure, he strikes a pose which is strikinglyreminiscent of that of Christ in Russia's most famous religious painting ofmodern times, Aleksandr Ivanov's Presentation of Christ ro the People

on Tarkovsky's complex narrative structures and innovative tec:hrliq1ue.However, the greatest immediate inf!uence on Tarkovsky was probabJlyRobert Bresson, whom Tarkovsky often acknowledged as his tav'ouritedirectoL In The Diary of a Country Priest (1950), Bresson providedmodel for depicting the inner experience of a religious man withemtoverstepping the possibilities of the mechanical medium, The spiritualfilm addresses itself to a reality which avowedly cannot be depicted onscreen. Like Bresson, Tarkovsky made his film an exercise in depictingthe invisible, which can only take shape beyond the trame through theagency of the vieweL The basis of this innovatory style is the use of thecamera to suspend the event in the act of its being regarded by others,which undermines the subject's sovereign viewpoint The resulting focuson the sparse textures of experience bares the temporality (evenmortality) of each image. The lack of a clear centre within the cinematicworld forms the act of viewership into a bearing of witness, in the senseof both sympathetic observation and testimonial narrative which mustcontinue after the collapse of the evenL

The inscription on the cross reads, as on an icon, 'Jesus Christ, the crucifixion of Our Lord';the incongruent angels in the background of the crucifixion scene

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Andrei returns frorn his ternptation in 'The Festival'

Andrei is rebuked by his colleagues

7 O The crew continues its journey

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Aleksandr Ivanov, The Appearance ofChrist to the People (1837-57)

Ivan Krarnskoi, Christ in the Desert (1872)

Mikhail Nesterov,Silence (1903)

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(1837-57). When he kneels down to pu11 an onion out of the fire, heChrist in a later and more naturalistic canvas by Ivan Kramskoi,the Wilderness (1872) Fina11y, as the monks paddle away downstn~anl,

they are reminiscent of Mikhail Nesterov's Silence (1903), one ofquaint nationalistic stereotypes of Russian spirituality fi11ed wirhTarkovsky ca11ed 'saccharine sentimentality'.84 As in the crucifixionthe effect of these quotations is the recapirulation and, mostrejection, of the modern Russian traditions of religious painting,however must be internalised by the artist and superseded in a newexpression. Rublev'spose as Christ bestows upon his co11eagues the rolewitnesses. In this scene, the camera dwe11s with especial attention ongazes of Petr and Foma; since both of them perish that same year,puzzled, yearning looks are especia11y poignant.. The suggestion isthus far at least, Andrei has remained too concerned with how he i,,,,,iPUTP'':¡

by other s and has yet to attain the status of witness to his world.In sum, Tarkovsky is clearly aware of his own dependence

modern conventions of representing religious tradition, but his cít;OltÍ<>nsare overshadowed by his almost titanic struggle to gain authentic visualaccess to Rublev's era both through and in spite of, these ínnlerítedimages. Central to this struggle is Tarkovsky's appropriation of the icon,not as a picture of how things once looked, but as a record of howhave viewed their own hopes, beliefs, and fears ..

leonTarkovsky's cinematic and painterly precedents are a11 fuel far theconflagration which renews and reveals the icon, an icon which is bothubiquitous and tantalisingly absent in Andrei Rublev.. It is present as acommon object of the characters' daily lives - in workshops, in monastic

72 Atlributed to Andrei Rublev, The Annunciation (detail), Annunciation Cathedral (Moscow)

ce11s, in charred palaces and, of course, in the churches, where it isvenerated by believers, puzzled at by the Tatar marauders and burnt inacts of vengeance. However, as an object of Rublev's activity and of ourown regard, ir remains beyond the scope of the film .. In fact, the icon canonly be restored in its fu11 significance beyond the possibilities of filmicnarrative.

The film needs almost to liberate itself from the icon's influencebefare it can present the icon in its majestic sovereignty. The two mostfrequently cited icons are TheAnnunciation and The Miracle oI St Georgeand the Dragon. The only detail shown of the Annunciation icon in theEpilogue is the descent of the Holy Spirit in the farm of a dove, enclosedin a ray of divine light.. This image echoes the many incidences of whitebirds fluttering down into the frame.. The icon in the Epilogueretrospectively marks the birds not only as a visual device, but also asmanifestations of the Holy Spirit. However, the birds grace not onlyscenes of magic, but also ones of desolation. Even greater moralambivalence marks the icon of St George, which is the only one Andreihandles after it has been burnt in the Grand Prince 's palace. The GrandPrince glances at the icon just after he sends Stepan out to blind thestonemasons, as if comprehending the diabolical similarity between StGeorge's spirituallabour and his impending crime .. The negative echoesof St George continue in 'The Raid' , where Russian and Tatar alike takeup the saint's pose. In this way, the desecrated icon of St George isrevealed as a pattern for the apocalypse, fIom which humanity's crueloverlords trace their actions.. However, Boriska salvages St George byimprinting his image onto his triumphal belL Boriska's violent firing andsmashing of the cast renews the image itself, showing that, as with the

'Iconic framings': the martyr Patrikei

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background on Rublev's Trinity .. The Trznity is also suggested by thethreesome of monks who leave the Trinity Monastery, arrive atthe peasanthut, and then reappear in the two flashbacks of the three monks gatheringunder an oak tree. In the screenplays, another such connection is madeexplicit: Rublev conceives of his Trinity while regarding three peasantsdrinking at atable (one turns out tobe Boriska); in a flashback, Andreirecalls a childhood experiencewhen 'he was for the first timetouched by the desire tocommunicate this movement, tostop it and repeat it, a movement soclear and distinct'. Suddenly, 'thesimplest and most everyday thingswere revealed to Andrei in theirinnermost meaning', and the threepeasants are revealed as a trinity,'indivisible, balancing each other,ftozen in wise contemplation, andthe bright sun is caught by theboy's unkempt hair in a goldenhalo' .. Andrei traces out his futurecomposition and whispers tohimself, 'Send me death, Lord!'85In the completed film, Tarkovskyrefrains from such obviouslinkages.. It is notable that Andreiwitnesses none of the examples ofThe final procession; Andrei Rublev, Procession of the Righteous Women, detail from The 75LastJudgement (1408), Dormition Cathedral (Vladimir)

ANDREI RUBLEV

burnt icons in Vladimir, it must be incinerated in order to reveal itstracing of eternal truth.

A similar pattern can be discerned in Tarkovsky's iconiccompositions.. As a backdrop, the icon acts as a kind of halo for characters..In episode two, Theophanes standsin front of an unpainted icon board as ifimpressing his own image onto it, while Kirill is positioned as theinquisitive and inquisitorial viewer who seeks to unlock the icon'sinaccessible secrets by force. In episode five, Patrikei is tied to a benchwhich is stood on end against a cathedral wall, as if posing for the iconwhich would be painted of him after his impending martyrdom. In otherscenes, Tarkovsky uses the landscape to fr ame the human image in a kindof natural icon.. In episode two, the camera tracks around Andrei in theforest enclosing his face in two trees, suggesting a similarity between himand his icon, The Saviour zn the Wóod.. When Andrei follows the holy foolout of the cathedral at the end of 'Last Judgement', they stand together infront of a lonely tree and building which together are suggestive of the

74 Rublev in the wood; the holy fool transformed

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in terms of earthly time .. The icon compresses temporal sequence in10 acomposite moment, showing the Christ child with his adult face, ordepicting Mary twice - as a corpse and as an eternal soul- in the icon ofthe Dormition.. Just as a remembered dream sometimes ends with theevent which logically caused it (e.g., a dreamed crime culminating in apolice siren which turns out to be belong to a police car wailing outsideyom window), so also the icon is a space in which time can flowbackwards from effect 10 cause.

There are just such reversals of time in Andrei Rublev.. The mosttantalising example is the crucifixion sequence in episode two. The longtake which precedes it begins at Foma's eyeline and rises with him as hestands up, suggesting that the point of view in this scene belongs to him..The camera then shifts its facus 10 Andrei and Theophanes, but Foma isstill visible at the water's edge. From Andrei's head, the action cutsstr aight 10 the white cloth flowing in the water, which is revealed to be thefirst shot of the crucifixion scene The scene ends with a cut back toFoma's face, as he crouches at the water's edge and dips his paintbrushes

Fama washing the brushes; Andrei's head with Fama at river's edge

iconic framing 1have noted. Instead, only the viewer can recognise'innermost meaning' of things' shape and movement, and decide whereplace the limits to this interpretive operation.. Thus a viewer familiarthe fi:escoes in Vladimir might explain the constant movementcharacters from left 10 right by relating it to the The ProcessiÓnRighteous Women, attributed 10 Andrei Rublev and Daniil theThese examples form a pattern whereby the narrative inhabits theshadows and seems to imitate its very shape as a window on the beyond.The prolifer ation of doors and windows also contributes to the impressionthat the fi:ame is pushing the viewer through to the other side. Likeicon, Tarkovsky's world has no privileged centre but is unified by aninvisible, off-screen destination, which becomes the real facus ofviewer's attention. Just as Andrei's artistic gaze is shaped by the staresother s, so the film elevates the viewer's gaze into a far m of bearing witness.

At this point, Tarkovsky's cinematic image becomes quite similarto Pavel Florensky's conception of the icon in several respects.. V"Oul;ncr

physical reality as rooted in a farcefield of spiritual energies, FlcHt.ns1,yheld the icon to be a direct expression of divinity, either in the personChrist or via the mediation of a saint whose person was imbued withChrist's grace .. The surface of the icon is therefare a locus of exchangebetween transcendent reality and the world, both a worldly windowheaven and a heavenly mirror image of the world. This may sound aliento a moder n ear, but what Florensky valued most in religion was preciselyits adherence to truths beyond the laws of reason, which fail to accountfar human reality.. He played with the dualism of science and belief,claiming that the idea of the triune Cod was 'a kind of square root of 2,that is, an irrational number'.86 The icon was far him the pre-eminentmeans by which irrational truths can be expressed; he boldly declared,instance, that 'the most persuasive philosophical proof ofexistence is the one the textbooks never mention [....]: There exists theicon of the Holy Trinity by Andrei Rublev; therefare, Cod exists.. '87Cherishing aporias and discontinuities as irruptions of eternity into ourworld, Florensky attached great significance to the peculiarities of iconiccomposition (which 10 this day are sometimes dismissed as artisticnaivety and backwardness). As a visible image of the invisible realm, theicon is filled with spatial and temporal discontinuities which are tangibletraces of the compression of spiritual reality into two dimensions. Thesediscontinuities decentre and destabilise the viewer's sovereign point ofview.. Other discontinuities are caused by the depiction of eternal reality

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in the stream, setting white specks flowing away.. The similarity betweenthis shot and the first shot of the crucifixion scene al10ws one to read bothas representations of the same event seen by Foma first in his fantasy andthen in real time .. In other words, Foma's fantasy of the crucifixionsequence is formed by an event which actual1y fol1ows it in earthlytemporality, that of the washing of the brushes.. The iconic inscription onthe cross suggests that the fantasy is linked to Foma's imagining of anicon: what he sees in a momentary flash of inspiration, the film can depictonly as a sequential narrative in earthly time, which arches back 10 itsstarting point..

Florensky's insight was that the icon requires an active viewer who,like Foma, works 10 array the discontinuous image into a meaningfulnarrative.. He himself linked this insight to the possibilities of cinematicmontage, which may 'require the greatest spiritual effort, while the unityit communicates will be contemplated by a spiritual gaze, not at al1 by asensual gaze'.88 For Tarkovsky also, the cinema is like the icon in that it

78 The first shot of the crucifixion scene; Foma washing brushes at the end of the episode

can educate the eye to see the invisible, but in this case the invisible is itse1fthe icon, obscured by history and cultural forgetfulness.

The lcon and the ApocalypseFor Florensky, the icon is a snapshot of the apocalypse .. It owes its truth notto the skil1 of the artist, but 10 the ful1ness of the reality it depicts, a realitywhich contains al1 of time, al1 of space, al1 of human endeavour andiniquity. It directs the viewer's gaze 10wards eternity not as sorne distantfuture, but as the heart of today. Perhaps the most common trait in the iconis the saint's gaze outwards, into the world .. It is said that, instead ofpainting over the fi:escoes of Hagia Sophia, the invading Turks simply putout their eyes. The fear of this gaze fi:om beyond the grave is what causesus instinctively to close the eyes of our dead .. Tarkovsky himse1f ofIenseems mortified by this gaze and preoccupied with the collapse of hisfi: agile visiono A poet of the earth and other primal e1ements, Tarkovsky'sworld is always in a state of crisis and perhaps even extinction. VadimIusov tel1s of how Tarkovsky sought out dead forests for locations inlvan's Childhood andAndrei Rubley. The ubiquitous rainfal1 in his films isuncannay inconstant.. Tarkovsky's own characters are aware of thesedistortions; at the end of 'The Raid' Andrei tel1s Theophanes, 'Nothing ismore terrifying than when snow fal1s in a church'.

In episode four, Andrei's anxiety over the looming apocalypsebecomes the centre of his creative persona .. It is in many respects a falsedilemma; the icon painter is not at liberty to adapt his compositions topersonal preference, and any visitor to Vladimir can attest to the fact thatthe his10rical Rublev succeeded in painting the Last Judgement fi:escoes ..But if hitherto Rublev has he1d his painting to an absolute standard, thetreacherous raid demonstrates the icon's more worldly aspect.. This isconfirmed by Theophanes' words when he pays Rublev a visit frombeyond the grave in the desecrated church. Although he is now face toface with God, he cannot tear his eyes off the singed icons: 'Still, it's al1 sobeautiful!'

Henceforth the purity of vision is no longer Andrei's paramountconcern.. 'Love' is the title of the fol1owing episode and the name of whatcomes to replaces both the eye and the brush in his life. This had beenforeshadowed by Andrei's reading from St Paul in episode four: 'Lovenever fails .. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether thereare 1Ongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanishaway' (1 Corinthians 13: 9).. Over the course of episodes four and five,prophecies do fail and Andrei is abandoned by his faith .. His silence

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signals the cessation of language, and his disavowal of painting - thedisappearance of knowledge. Love is not an instantaneous achievement;Andrei is unable to deal with the holy fool in a compassionate andunderstanding manner. He will never be able to reconcile himself toKirill, who to the end remains embittered by Andrei's skill and entrancedby Andrei's impenetrable souL But after years of silence, Andrei doeslearn to see in love, which means accepting communication as the limit ofhis arto 'Such a joy you have created for people', he tells Boriska" Thislimitation transfigures Boriska into a bellfounder, the holy fool into anoble matriarch, and Andrei - into an icon painter.

The glorious exhibition of icons in the Epilogue to the film is notthe overcoming of earthly limitations or the cancellation of the narrative.The viewer never gains a c1ear and total vision of Rublev's icons, whichare presented in motion and in part, and they are not the film's final word.If colour film really implies 'fiction', as Tarkovsky c1aimed, then at thismoment the fiction almost bursts its limits and becomes a real fact of theviewer's inner life" The final shot is a benign apocalypse, the four horsesfreed from their hellish riders.. But our vision of ir is still not total and wemust now rid ourselves of the grainy film which envelops these finalrealities"

The film, in the end, does not break through to eternal stillness andtranscendent truth" It remains bound by time and by the camera's limited- if liberated - perspective, But this is a time pregnant with eternity, anemptiness pregnant with meaning, and a fiction which is pregnant withthe icono

of angelic silence suggests a paradigm for understanding his own films. Itis not that the uneasy calm ofA ndrei Rublev expresses heavenly silence onthe threshold of suffering; the desolation of the film is too unforgiving.However, his c10sing words in this speech suggest another framework forhis religious and apocalyptic film-making: '1 haven't meant to revealanything new. Thinking about this in your presence in this way, 1 simplywanted to feel the importance of this moment and this process; and 1received what 1 desired,,' 90

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At a 1984 appearance in London, Tarkovsky pronounced 'A Discourse onthe Apocalypse', a free-ranging discussion of St John's Revelation,modern art and art in general, Dostoevsky and Carlos Castañeda, deathand love" He dwelt especially on the opening of the seventh seal on thescroll of divine knowledge: 'When He [the Lamb] opened the seventhseal, there was silence in heaven for about haH an hour' (Revelations 8: 1) ..Tarkovsky comments, 'What can any artist say about the way this isexpressed? How can one express both the tension and the threshold?How improbable! The absence of an image is in this case the mostpowerful image one can imagine, It's a mirac1e!'89 It would be easy todismiss Tarkovsky's amateur exegesis as the sanctimonious twaddle of aseH-indulgent auteur.. However, my inc1ination here, as it has beenthroughout this essay, is to take seriously Tarkovsky's use of religioustexts and images, Here, Tarkovsky's citation of this unimaginable image

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40 Oleg Belyavsky, 'The Filming of A ndreiRublyov', Soviet Film no. 5 1966, pp 18-19, 21(citation from p 18)41 Philip Strick, 'Releasing the Balloon,Raising the Bell', Monthly Film Bulletin voL 58,February 1991, pp 34-7: 3542 Nikolai Grin'ko, 'He Could NotForgiveInsincerity', tr ans Paula Garb,AboutAndreiTarkov5.ry, pp 89-95: 94; cf O Tarkovskom,p 6943 Rolan Bykov, 'Filosof kinematografa', OTarleovsleom, p 117; cE Rolan Bykov, 'ACinematography Philosopher', ttans PaulaGarb,AboutAndrez Tarleov5ley, p 15444 Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovskii, Parabola,amyda (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1977), pp 27-8;Alexander Mishatin, 'OnBlood, CultureandHistory', trans Paula Garb,AboutAndreiTarleo><5ley,pp 51-61:52;cf O Tarkov5leom,p38Seealso Iusov's recollection of Konchalovsky'sparticipation in Turovskaia, 7;;' p 48.45 Konchalovskii, Ni,leie l5tiny, p 124; cfKonchalovskii, Vo,vY5haiu5hchá obman(Moscow: Sovershenno sebetno, 1999) p 84;Konchalovskii, Parabola ,amY5Ia, pp 28, 15046 Konchalovskii, Ni,leie i5tiny, p 12547 Konchalovskii, Vo:¡VY5haiush,há obman,p 8448 Andrei Tarkovskii, Andrei Konchalovskii,'Andrei Rublev', 15leu55tvo lezno no 4, 1964,pp 139-200: 153; cf.Andrei Rublev, pp 26-849 Andrei Tarkovsky, Colleeted ScreenplaY5,ttans William Powell and Natasha Synessios(London: Faber and Faber, 1999), p 30250 Konchalovskii, Nitlere i5tmy, p 12851 M.. S Chugunova in Tmovskaia, 7;;'p 11652 L Soldatov, , I zapylala korova',Vecherniaza Mosleva, 24 Deeember 1966,p 353Andrez Tarkovsleá, ed Volkova, p 371; CfNikolai Burlyaev, 'One out of AlI- For All­Against All', tt ans. Paula Garb,AboUl A ndrezTarkov5.ry, pp 70-8854 Andrei Tarkovsky, T,me within Time, p 4655 Ciment el al, '1'artiste dans l'ancienneRusse', p lL Iarkovsky lists the different editsin a different OIder than most other memoirists56 Imovskaia, 7d, p 68

27 See Tarkovsky's commentson WarandPeace in Sculpting in Time, pp 41,56; Aleksandrlipkov, 'Strasti po Andreiu', Literaturnoeobo:¡renze, no 9 1988, pp 74-80: 75 OnOvchinnikov's score see: I atiana K. Egorova,Soviet FzlmMusicAnHl5toriwlSurvey, ttans.TatianaA GanfandNataliaA Egunova(Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 1997),pp 195-20228 Maia Imovskaia, 7dzlifil'my AndreiaTarleov5leogo (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1991),pp 47-829 Tm ovskaia, 71, p 7430 Michel Ciment, with Luda Schnitzer andJean Schnitzer, 'l'artiste dans l'ancienne Russeet dans l'URSS nouvelle (Entretien avec AndreiTarkovsky)', P05itij, Oetober 1969 (109),pp 1-13: 431 D S Likhachev, Kul'tura Rusi vremeniAndreia Rubleva l EpifanÚa Premudrogo(Moscow, 1962), pp 49,58 Kirill's allegedquotation from Kostenecki has no analogue inthe latter's work and reflects Likhachev'sinterpretation of his ideas. The quotationatttibuted to Epiphanius can be found in:'Zhitie Sergiia Radonezhskogo', Pamiatnileiliteratury drevner RU5i XIV~¡eredina XV veka(Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia liter atur a,1981), p 29032 Tarkovsky, Swlptlng in Time, p 7833 Ciment etal, 'L'artiste dans l'ancienneRusse', p 934 See A Nikol'skii, 'Net dyma bez ognia' ,Kroleodilno 27, 196535 Tluovskaia, Ti, pp 74-5; Nikulin, 'Strastipo Andreiu', p 55136 Interview with Aleksandr Misharin onthe RusCiCo / Artificial Eye DVD of TheMirror37 Nikolai Glazkov, Platara kmga (Moscow:Sovetskii pisatel', 1966), pp 39--40; 'Ihe FlyingPeasant' is on pp 35-8; other poems on thefilming füllow on pp 44-9,57-9 See also hispoem 'On the Fiheenth Century' (dedicated te

Tarkovsky (Dorogi l ,vezdy. wkhz [Moscow,1966] 10)38 Lidiia Novi, 'la vspominaiu rabotu na"Rubleve"', O Tarkov5leom, p 422.39 Nikulin, 'Strasti po Andreiu', p 553

17 Voznesensky, 'Rublevskoe shosse', inAntimiry., pp 10,17618Voznesensky, 'l Am in Shushenskoe' ('la vShushenskom', 1963), in Antlmiry, p. 162Voznesensky later wrote a poem on Tarkovsky;see 'The White Sweater', ttans Mark Buser,AboutAndrei Tarleov5.ry,pp 27-3119 Nikolai Glazkov, Poetograd5tilehi (Moseow:Molodaia gvardia, 1962), pp. 128-920 Fedor Dostoevsky, A Writer~5 Drary, voL 1,trans Kenneth Lantz and with an introduetorystudy by Gary Saul Morson (Evanston, I1:Northwestern University Press, 1993) voL 1:p 651.21 For example, in an interview published 10December 1966, soon aher the screening of the205 minute cut, Imii Nikulin called the film' ThePas 5ton According toAndrei (Andrer Rublev)';B. Velitsyn, '10 let v kino, ne schitaia tsirka,'M05leovskÚleom50molet< lO December 1966 Inhis later memoir Nikulin laments the loss of theearlier title; Imii Nikulin, 'Sttasti po Andreiu',Pochtlser'e,no (Moscow: Iena, 1994),pp 550-222 Andrei Konchalovskii, Nl,lere "tiny(Moscow: Sovershenno sehetno, 1998),pp 123ff23 Andrei Tarkovskii, 'Eto ochen' vazhno',L zteraturnaia ga,eta, 20 September 1962, p 1Tarkovsky refers to a decree of the Council ofPeople 's Commissars (Sovnarleom) dated 30July 1918, whieh lists individuals of variouscallings to whom monuments should beerected; Rublev is the fir st of seven Russianar tists listed24 Andrei Iarkovskii, 'Spor o geroiakh',Kom50mol'skaiapravda, 13 September 1962,pA25Andrer TarkovskÚ Arkhivy. DoleumentyVo5pommanzia, ed P. D Volkova (Moscow:Eksmo-Press, 2002), p 364; Philip Strick, 'TheRe-Shaping of Rublev', in A. Tarkovsky (edJ,AndreiRublev, ttans Kitty Hunter Blair(London: Faber and Faber, 1991), p viii (seealso 'Iranslator's note' on p 3 of this edition)26 Georgii Kunitsyn, 'K istoriiAndreraRubleva', in O Tarleovskom, ed. M.. ATarkovskaia (Moscow: Dedalus, 2002),pp 414--417

1Andrei Tarkovsky, Swlpting in Time, transKitty Hunter-Blair (Austin: University ofTexas Press, 1986), p 892 Andrei Tarkovsky, TIme wzthm T,me TheDian" 1970-1986, ttans Kitty Hunter-Blair(London: Faber and Faber, 1994), pp 122,743 Alexei Solonitsyn, 'F ilm as Magie', tr ansPaula Garb, AboutAndrer Tarkovsky (Moseow:Progress, 1990) pp 96-105; Andrei Tarkovsky,'Andrei Rublyov and the XX Centmy', SovietFzlm 8 (1965), pp. 10-134 Tarkovsky, Time wzthin Time, pp 46, 545 Aleksandr Solzhenirsyn, 'Fil'm o Rubleve',Publit<l5tlka.. V treleh tomalch (Iaroslavl':Verkhniaia Volga, 1997), voL 3,pp 157-67: 1576 Andrei Tarkovskii, 'lskat' i dobivat'sia,'Sovet<leÚ ekran no. 17, 1962, pp 9,20: 97 Tarkovskii, 'lska!' i dobivat'sia,' p 208 Historieal doeumentation on Andrei Rublevis cited flom: V N Lazar ev, Andrez Rublev lego5hkola (Moseow: lskusstvo, 1966), pp 75-89 L azarev, A ndrez Rublev, p 7710 See V Pribytkov,Andrei Rublev (Moseow:Moldaia gvardiia, 1960), especially pp 103,141-5511 Il'ia Glazunov, Na5haleul'tura-eto tradztÚia(Moseow: Sovremennik, 1991),p 18012 On this legend see: V P. Kozlov, Tamyfal'5kifzkat<Ú Analitpoddelole Í5torich"leilehl5tochnzleov XVIIl-XIX vekov (Moseow:Aspekt-Press, 1996),pp 182-513 Andrei Iarkovskii, Andrei Konchalovskii,'Andrei Rublev', Iskus5tvo kmo no. 5 (1964),pp 126-58: 126 Here, the scene opens thesecond pat! of the film and precedes the seenefilmed as 'Love '; in the translated sereenplay,the flying peasant occm s in a Prologuepreceded by a shot of Andrei (AndreiTarkovsky,Andrel Rublev, trans. Kitty Hunter­Blair, with an introduction by Philip Sttick[London: Faber andFaber, 1991],pp. 7-8)14 I arkovsky, Swlpting m Time, p 8015 I arkovsky, Swlptmg m Time, p 8016 Maya I m ovskaya, Tarleovsky. Cinema asPoetry., ttans. Natasha Ward, ed and with anintroduction by Ion Christie (London andBoston: Faber andFaber, 1989),p 37;cf. AndreiVoznesensky,Antimzry. I,brannara linlea(Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1964), p 208

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CREDITS

ANDREI RUBLEV

57 Eduard Artemyev, 'About Tarkovsky',transo Naney Lasse,AboutAndrei Tarkovsky,pp 197-209: 19958 Andrei Tarkovsky, Time wzthin Time, p. 7459 Va1edia Tomilina, 'Andrei Rublev - novaiazhizn' na ekrane', ht!p:1 Iwww.mosfi1m.tu,aeeessed 8 Mareh 2004. See discussion onnosta1ghia. eom60 Solzhenitsyn, 'Fil'm o Rubleve', p.. 16461 V<trechzs proshlym VIII (Moseow: Russkaiakniga, 1996), p. 217.62 Andrei Tarkovskii, 'Iskat' i dobivat'sia',p.963 Tarkovskii, 'Iskat' i dobivat'sia', pp 9,2064 Aleksandr Lipkov, 'Strasti po Andreiu',p7765 Turovskaya, Tarkovsky, p. 4266 On the use 01 three aetresses seeTurovskaia, 7!¿, p 76; L Novi, 'la vspominaiurabotu na "Rubleve''', O Tarkovskom, p 42067 Tarkovsky, Andrei Rublev, p.. 106;Tarkovskii and Konehalovskii, 'Andrei Rublev',lskusSlVO kino no. 41964, P 18868 Vida T Johnson and Graham Petde, TheFtlms of Andrez Tarkovsky A VISual Fugue(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994)p 27069 M. S Chugunova in Turovskaia, 7!¿, p 11670 Konehalovskii, Ni{kze istiny, p 12571 Suggested by Elizabeth Medvedovsky72 Tarkovsky, 'Andrei Rublyov and the XXthCentury', p 1373 Tarkovskii andKonehalovskii, 'AndreiRublev',lskusslVokmono. 51964,p.. 12874 Tarkovsky, Andrei Rublev, pp 13~7

75 Note the similar way that the centralper sona in Tarkovsky's The Mlrror imagineshis mother in youth as identieal to his presentwile. In laet, Tarkovsky originally planned tocasthis first wife Irma Rauseh (the holy 1001 inAndrer Rublev) as !he mother eharaeter in TheMirror76 Tarkovsky, Sculptmg m Tzme, p 6377 Andrei Tarkovskii, 'Slovo ob Apokalipsise',lskusSlVO kmo no.. 21989, pp. 95-100: 9778 Tarkovsky, Trmewlthm Tzme,p.15179 Tarkovsky was faseinated by the Westernand even dreamed 01 making one; Tarkovsky,Tzme within Time, p.. 154

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80 Yuri Tsivian, Early urlem'a "7 1'-ursza czndCultural Reeeption, trans fu<m JDO(lger, vnmforeword by Tom Gunning, ed H;c·ho,r1·ro..l~_

(London and New York, 1994); lbid, 'CensureBans on Religious Subjeets in Russian Films',R. Cosandey, A. Gaudreault and T Gunning,(eds),An ¡nvention of the Devil? Religion andEarly Cinema (Sainte-Foy, Québee: Presses deI'UniversitéLaval, 1992),pp 71--8081 Turovskaia, 7!¿, p 4782 Tarkovsky, Sculptmg m Trme, p. 5083 Ant?ine de Baeeque, Andrei Tarkovski(Paris: Editions de l'Etoile/Cahiers du cinéma,1989), p. 9884 Tarkovsky, 'Andrei Rublyov and the XXCentury', p 12; el Jeanne Vronskaya, YoungSoviet Film Maker.s, with a foreword by JohnGillett (London: George AlIen & Unwin, 1972)p.3585 Tarkovskii and Konehalovskii, 'AndreiRublev', lskusstVo kmo no.. 5 1964, P 142; el.Tarkovsky,AndreiRublev, pISO86 Pavel Florensky, The Pillar andFoundatlonoI the Truth, transo Bods Jakim (Prineeton, NJ:Prineeton University Press, 1997), p 45 Seealso Jakim's essay 'Leaps f,om the Seientifie tothe Theologieal in The Pillar and GroundoI theTruth', in PavelFlorenskij - Trodition undModeme (eds), Miehael Hagemeister etal(Frankliut am Main: Peter Lang, 2001),pp. 97-10687 Pavel Florensky, lconostasÚ, transo DonaldSheehan and OIga Andrejev (Crestwood, NY:SVS Press, 2000) 6888 Pavel Florenskii, Stat'i r issledovantiapolstorii ifilosofii isku55tva l arkheologii (Moscow,2000), p 223 Tarkovsky refers to Florensky'saesthetics 01 the ieon in 5culptmg m Time, p 82I have not been able 10 determine when this partof the text was wdtten, but it is possible thatTarkovsky knew Florensky's work, whetherditeetly or inditeetly, before beginning work onthefilm89 Tarkovsky, 'Slovo ob Apokalipsise', p 9990 Tarkovsky, 'Slovo ob Apokalipsise', p lOO

USSR1966/1969

DirectorAndrei TarkovskyScreenplayAndronMikha1kov-KonchalovskyAudrei TarkovskyDirector of PhotographyVadimlusovEditorsLiudmila Feiginova,T Egorycheva,O ShevkunenkoSet DesignEvgenii Cherniaev,with lppolit Novoderezhkin,S. VoronkovMusicViacheslav OvchinnikovProduction CompanyMosfi1m StudiosCreative Unian oí Writers andCinema WorkersProduction ManagerTamara OgorodnikovaAssistant DirectorIgar' PettovDirector InternBagrat OganesianDirector's AssistantsA Macheret, M.. Vo1ovieh,A NikolaevScript SupervisorsN, Beliaeva, L LazarevCameramanV Sevost'iauavAssistant CameramenA AndÚanov, R Ruvinov,P SudilinSpecial EffectsCameramanV, Sevost' iauavSpecial Effects ArtistP SafonovSet DecoratorE Korab1ev

Assistant Set DecoratorsT" Isaeva, L. PertsevCostume DesignersLidiiaNovi,M, Abar-BaranovskaiaMake-upV Rudina, M. Aliautdinov,S. BarsukovMusic Performed byState Cinema Orchestra andTheFull Chorus of AII-UnionRadio, eonducted byViacheslav OvchinnikovSoundL ZelentsovaConsultantsDr V Pashuto, Saveliilamshchikov, M. Mertsa10va

CastAnatolii SolonitsynAndrei Rub1evIvan LapikovKirillNikolai Grin'koDaniil the MonkNikolai SergeevTheophanes the GreekIrma Rauschthe ho1y 1001Nikolai BurliaevBoriskalurii Nazarovthe grand prince/the lesser princeRolan BykovthejesterNikolai GrabbeStepanMikhail KononovFomaStepan Krylovhead bellfounderB. BeishenalievTatar KhanNikolai GlazkovEfiml. MiroshnichenkoMary Magda1ene

B F I F I L M

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lurii NikulinPatrikeiTamara OgorodnikovaMother of JesusD.OrlovskyoId stonemasonN.SneginaMarfaB. MatysikA.ObukhovVolodia TitovK. AleksandrovS. Bardinl. BykovG. BorisovskyV.Vasil'evZ. Vorkul'V. VolkovA. TitovN. KutuzovV.Gus'kovl. Donskoil. RyskulovN. RadolitskaiaG. PokorskyG.SachevkoA. UmuralievSlava Tsarev

205 minutes (originallength)186 minutes (USSRrelease length)145 minutes 45secondsj13,100 feet(UK original 1973release; cut by BBFC)

Black and WhitejPartColour2.35:1 [Sovscope]

Prizes:FIPRESCI lnternationa1Critics Prize, Cannes, 1969Prix Moussinac 1969

Credits checked byMarkku Sa1mi

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ANDREI RUBLEV

BIBLlOGRAPHY

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WEBSITE

http://www.nosta1ghia.com

BFI FILM

ESSAYS ON RElATED TOPTCS IN TARKOVSKY

Beas1ey-Murray, Jon, 'Whatever Happened 10

Neorea1ism? - Bazin, De1euze, andTarkovsky's Long Take', Iris, vol. 23,Spring 1997, pp 37-52

Lawton, Anna, 'Artand Religion in the Films ofAndrei Tarkovskii', in William e Brumfie1dand Milos M.. Velimirovic (eds), ChrístianityandtheArts inRussia(Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1991),pp 151--64

Macgillivray,James, 'Andrei Tarkovsky'sMadonna del Parto "Revue canadienned'études cinématographiques vol. 11 no 2, Fall2002, pp 82-99

Zizek, Slavoj, 'The Thing from rnner Space', inSexuation, Renata Salec! (Durham andLondon: Duke University Press, 2000),pp. 216-59

ON PAVEl FLORENSKY, IHE !cON AND

ANDREI RUBlEV

F1orensky, Pavel, Beyond V"lOn Essays on thePercepuon of A rt, tr ans Wendy Sa1mond(London: Reaktion, 2003)

F1orensky, Pave1, Icono5tasis, trans Dona1dSheehan and OIga Andrejev (Crestwood:SVS Press, 1996)

Florensky, Pavel, The Trimty-St. Serglus Lavraand Ruma, trans. Robert Bitd (New Haven,CT: The VariablePress, 1994)

Lazarev, V N, Andrei Rublev i ego sh!eola(Moscow: rskusstvo, 1966)

Ouspensky, Leonid, Theology oI the Icon, transAnthony Gythie1, 2 vols (Crestwood, NY:SVS Press, 1992)

Pribytkov, V, Andrez Rublev (Moscow:Mo1odiaia gvardiia, 1960)

Koncha1ovskii, Andrei, Vozvyshaiu,hehir obman(Moscow: Sovershenno sekretno, 1999)

Le Fanu, Mark, The Cinema of AndrezTarkov.sky (L ondon: BFI, 1987)

Leong, Albert, 'Socialist Realism inTarkovsky'sAndrei Rublev', 5tudies mComparative Communism voL 17, nos 3-4,Fall-Winter 1984, pp 227-33

Nekhoroshev, L, "'Andrei Rub1ev": Spaseniedushi', Mzr ifil'myA ndreza Tar!eol'skogoRazmyshleniia, issledovaniia, vospominaniia,pis 'ma (Moscow: Iskusstovo, 1991),pp 37-64

Nikulin, Iurii, 'Str asti po Andreiu', Pochtiser'ezno (Moscow: Terra, 1994),pp 550-2

Solzhenitsyn, A1eksandr. 'Fil'm o Rub1eve 'Publitsi,u!ea V trekh tomakh (Yaros1av1:Verkhniaia Vo1ga, 1997), voL 3,pp 157--67

Strick, Philip, 'Re1easing the Balloon, Raisingthe Bell', Monthly Film Bulletm, vol. 58,February 1991,pp 34-7

Tarkovskaia, M. A (ed.), O Tarkol's!eom(Moscow: Deda1us, 2002)

Tarkovskaya, Marina, A boutAndrez Tarkol"ky(Moscow: Progress, 1990)

Turovskaia, Maia, 7;{,Üjil'myAndreiaTar!eovs!eogo (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1991)

Turovskaya, Maya, Tar!eol'sky Cmema a,Poezry, trans Natasha Ward, ed .. and with anintlOduction by ran Christie (London andBoston: Faber and Faber, 1989)

Vinokurova, Tat'iana, 'Khozhdenie po mukam"Andreia Rubleva"', Is!cu.5stvo kino no. 10,1989, pp 63-76

Vronskaya, Teanne, Young SOViet Frlm Makas,with a foreword by John Gillett (London:GeorgeAllen& Unwin, 1972)

Youngb1ood, Denise J, 'Andrei Rublev: TheMedieval Epie as Post-Utopian History',The Per.slstence of History Cmema,TelevÚion, and the Modan Event, in VivianSobchak (ed..), (New York and London:Routledge, 1996),pp. 127-43

GideonBachman, 'BegegnungmitAndrejTarkowskij,' Frlmkritikno 12,1962,pp 548-52

Tarkovskii, Andrei, 'Spor o geroiakh',Komsomotskaza pravda, 13 Septemberp 4.

Tarkovskii, Andrei, 'Zapechatlennoe vremia',Voprosykinoisku5StvanO 10, 1967,pp

BOOKSAND ESSAYS WlTH SIGNIFICANT

SEcnONS ONANDREIRUBLEV

Anninskii, Lev, Shestldesiatm!ei i myKinematograf·stav,shii i ne stav5hii tstoriei(Moscow: Soiuz kinematografistov SSSR,1991),pp 190-201

De Baeeque, Antoine, Andrez lal'kOl',,:i (Paltis:Éditions de l'Étoile/Cahiers du cinéma,1989)

Dalle Vacehe, Angela, 'Andrei Tarkovsky'sAndrei Rublev: Cinema as the Restoration ofIeon Painting', Cmema and Paintlng HowA rt 1, Used in Film (London: Ath1one,1996),pp.135-60

Egorova, Tatiana K Soviet Frlm Mu,ic· AnHistoncal Survey, trans. Tatiana A. Ganfand Natalia A Egunova (Amsterdam:Harwood Academic, 1997)

Ev1ampiev, Igor', KhudozhestvennaiafilolOfiiaAndreia Tarkov,kogo (St Petersburg:A1eteiia, 1991)

Fomin, V, 'Andrei Rub1ev', Polka no 2,Zapreshehennye.fil'my DokumentySvidetel'stva. Kommentarir (Moscow: NIIkinoiskusstva, 1993), pp 7-62

Green, Peter, Andrez Tarkol',ky The WindingQuest (London: Macmillan, 1993)

Iusov, Vadim ['Iz tvorcheskogo opyta], Chtotakoe zazyk !eino (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1989),pp 235-9

Johnson, Vida T and Graham Petrie, The Filmsof Andrez Tarkov.skyA VisualFugue(Bloomington: Indiana University Press,1994)

Koncha1ovskii [Mikha1kov-Koncha1ovskii),Andrei, NiZkle lItiny (Moscow: Sovershennosekretno, 1998)

Koncha1ovskii [Mikha1kov-Koncha1ovskii),Andrei, Parobola zamysla (Moscow:Iskusstvo, 1977)

ARTIClES AND INTERVIEWS BY

ANDREI TARKOVSKY ON ANDREI RUBLEV

'Andrei Rub1yov and the XX Century', SovIetFilmno 8,1965,pp 10-13

Be1yavsky, 01eg, 'The Filming ofAndreiRublyov', Soviet Film no. 5, 1966, pp 18-21

Ciment, Michel, with Luda Schnitzer and JeanSchnitzer, 'L'artiste dans l'ancienne Russe etdans l'URSS nouvelle (Entretien avecAndrei Tarkovsky),' Positij, Oetober 1969(109), pp.. 1-13

Lipkov, A1eksandr, 'Strasti po Andreiu',Literaturnoe oho{renie no. 9, 1988,pp 74--<l0

[Tarkovskii, Andrei], 'Andrei Tarkovsky on thefilm "Roublev''', Young Cmema &Theatre/Jeune Cmema & Theatre no 8/1965,pp 16-23

Tarkovskii, Andrei, 'Eto ochen' vazhno',Lueraturnaza gazeta, 20 September 1962,p 1

Tarkovskii, Andrei, 'Iskat' i dobivat'sia',Sovets!eir ekran no. 17, 1962,pp 9,20 Cf

BOOKS BY ANDREI TARKOVSKY

Andrei Tarkov,kiz Arkhivy DokumentyVo'pominaniza, ed .. P D Volkova (Moscow:'Podkova', Eksmo Press, 2002)

Collected Sereenplay" trans William Powell andNatasha Synessios (London: Faber andFaber, 1999)

Sculptmg in TIme, trans Kitty Hunter-Blait(Austin: Universityof TexasPress, 1986)

T,me withm Time The Diaries 1970-1986,trans Kitty Hunter-B1ait (London: Faberand Faber, 1994)

Uroki rezhissury Uchebnoe posobie (Moscow:Vserossiiskii institut perepodgotovki ipovysheniia kvalifikatsii rabotnikovkinematografii Komiteta RossiiskoiFederatsii po kinematografii, 1993)

PUBLISHED VERSIONS OF THE SCREENPlAY

Tarkovskii, Andrei, and Andrei Konchalovskii,'Andrei Rublev', lskusstvo kino no 4 (1964)pp 139-200; no 5, 1964, pp 126-58

Tarkovskii, Andrei,Andrei Rublev, trans.. KittyHunter-Blair, with an introduction by PhilipStrick (London: Faber and Faber, 1991)

86