Tarkovsky: Cinema as Poetry

"Maja Turovskaja was a contemporary of Tarkovsky’s at VGIK, and she’s of that generation (and we know how important generations were in Russia) that came up through the thaw, and then emerged just at a moment when it was possible to do new things, before being repressed. It’s really a book about the poetics of Tarkovsky’s cinema, and what influenced him and what shapes it. I think the one to focus on is Mirror, because it’s such a complex, layered film, reaching back into the forbidden areas of Russian experience. And the fact that she’s of the same generation meant that she could appreciate that in the same way. She says, ‘It felt like a culmination of all Tarkovsky’s previous work. It had come to fruition deep within him and emerged from the climax and catharsis of all these motifs.’ So she’s just confirming that in quite an eloquent but also in a passionate way. Yes, I think that’s absolutely true. What she does say is: yes, it is terribly rooted in his personal, his family experience, and also in the experience of the generation that lived through those events. But she also says it’s always reaching out towards the universal concerns that stand behind them. Turovskaja is immensely sympathetic to what Tarkovsky’s trying to do. She doesn’t necessarily think that he’s as great as people have come to think he is – it doesn’t put him on a pedestal, but really tries to talk about him as a film maker who’s partly produced by a certain unique cultural moment in Russia . He had great freedom and opportunities, which I think people are always forgetting, to create the kind of defiantly artistic cinema that he wanted to. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter There was a period when all that people could say in the West was: this poor persecuted man who’s struggled against all the odds, etc – baloney! He didn’t face the problems that many Western filmmakers have to try and realise their vision. Turovskaja understands all that, and helps you understand Tarkovsky from a Russian point of view. It’s mainly about how a Russian member of the intelligentsia sees him, and I think that’s unique. No other person has written about Tarkovsky in that way: her book is a kind of essential companion. She started writing it when Tarkovsky had gone into exile and finished it at the first high tide of perestroika. In fact the last chapter was written just when it was possible to speak about Tarkovsky again, and about the films he made in exile, and that makes it a very exciting book."