INTRODUCTION
Andrei Tarkovsky was a filmmaker and screenwriter who left an indelible mark on the cinema and his influence has been felt across the globe. Tarkovsky was a risk-taker. He did not make films that catered to the changing tides of popular demands or fell into neatly categorized labels. His films are works of art that cause the viewer to create their own meaning. What the viewer takes away is largely personal and Tarkovsky planned it that way.
No study of Tarkovsky would be complete without mention of the conditions he was working under. His works were often banned or released in such low numbers that the public scarcely knew of them. But in time, the public at large came to know of Tarkovsky, a gifted screenwriter and renegade filmmaker whose works included themes that are relevant to all of humanity. In examining his films, we can see the experimental and startling ways he plays with human emotion and our quest for permanence and immortality.
THE THEME OF TIME IN TARKOVSKYS WORKS
Among the themes in Tarkovskys work is that of time. In his body of work, many films include time as an overarching theme. We will look at three of Tarkovskys films here Solaris (1972), The Mirror (1974) and Stalker (1979). We will examine these three films not only because they are superb examples of Tarkovskys portrayal of time on film, but also because they were made sequentially from 1972 to 1979. It is interesting to study the filmmakers evolution as a storyteller and theorist about human life.
Tarkovskys works are mainly about human beings struggling to survive in a fallen world. Each film portrays people in anguish and misery. It seems they have taken the world upon their shoulders and feel as though no one can relate to them. One person against the world at large. As darkness closes inliterally and figurativelyfor these characters, time is a cruel mocker.
Tarkovskys films are slow by American standards. Today, we expect and demand action. Audiences want fast-paced, heart-pounding scenes with loud effects and a swiftly moving plot. Tarkovsky would have none of that. He would not change his art for the sake of popularity. He takes his own sweet time delivering his message. His films are slow and methodical, lacking any real action. Large chunks of film are spent in staring at one person or object. How, then, do we feel the passage of time in a Tarkovsky film Therein lies the genius of Tarkovsky.
SOLARIS
Tarkovskys Solaris in 1972 marks a breakthrough in science fiction that would forever impact the future of the genre. Tarkovsky takes us to a world we have never seen before, yet recognize instantly. It is our inner landscape. He is playing with our minds and has somehow gotten inside to deliver his message time is irrelevant.
When Solaris begins, we have no idea what year it is. Is it 2010 1960 1980 Thats left for the viewer to decide. And Tarkovsky doesnt much care to give us any details or background. We being by being thrown into nature, a theme that Tarkovsky used in many of his films, including all three that we will discuss here. Kelvin, a psychologist, is walking out in nature when we meet him. He is pensive and heavy with anguish. We later learn that this is the eve of his flight to Solaris to check on a failing mission. But for now, Kelvin is just a man lost in time. We see him meandering, in no hurry. We are forced to wait to see who he is, where he is. Our impatient minds want to tell him to hurry. But he is in no rush to meet his destiny.
Part of the genius behind a Tarkovsky film is his use of uninterrupted time. He asks the viewer to invest close to three hours in the viewing of this film. He makes no apology for it. He does not zip past the necessary at the cost of his art. We are asked to think with the character.
As Kelvin takes his contemplative walk outside, it begins to rain. Rain and water are important themes in Tarkovsky films. Water has power. It has the power to cleanse and to divert. It is unchangeable and unstoppable. Kelvin does not run inside when it begins to rain on his thoughts. He stays outside getting drenched as the camera pans over to a half eaten apple crawling with ants, teacups still full of tea spilling over with rainwater. Has someone just been sitting here The apple has barely turned brown. We wonder how much time has passed. Have the tea-drinkers just run inside to escape the rain Who were they Tarkovsky doesnt answer. But the scene upsets Kelvin. Time has indeed passed. Is he remembering the people who sat there Was he one of them Does he know he has lost that moment forever and wish it back The apple core is such a small detail, but in Tarkovskys hands, it speaks volumes. Time is not limited to the events on the screen and what you see in the frame hints of a larger story.
In all three films, Tarkovsky plays with the theme of immortality. In Solaris, the astronauts have gone to the planet Solaris to a space station that was designed to hold 85 people. When Kelvin arrives, there is no one about. He slowly realizes that one member of the crew has committed suicide and the two others are reticent and hidden. They are not willing to let Kelvin in on their bizarre world. Soon, Kelvin will realize that time has been cruel to him. When his dead wife appears to him, somehow slipping through a locked door, he must readjust his perspective. Do people live forever Is the time he is currently experiencing reality Where does time go Does the human spirit live on forever From the moment we see Hari, his wife who committed suicide, with her haunting eyes and eerie silence, we realize that time has been suspended. We are asked to fill in the details surrounding the present we are watching Kelvin in. He is being held hostage in a capsule where time has stopped. Hari is not Hari any longeror is she Has she come back from the grave, complete with the needle mark from the fatal injection she inflicted upon herself Or is she a spector sent to haunt him and make him doubt his sanity
Time proves to be irrelevant here. We spend most of the film with Kelvin as he takes a thorough look at his conscience. We do not know how much time has passed. We do know that Kelvin spends every moment with Hari, but not entirely by choice. Hari demands to be by his side and even crashes through a steel door to get to him when he leaves the room. Does Hari exist only in the time and space that she is with Kelvin
Kelvin is pained by his conscience. He did not love Hari on earth, when he had all the time in the world to do so. He finds he loves her now, as a ghastly spirit who torments his psyche. We can see how Tarkovsky shows us the passage of time in that Kelvin is becoming more and more dishevelled. He is sweating and unkempt, so unlike the suave and polished young psychologist who first boarded the space station. But Tarkovsky doesnt flash any news of time having passedis it six months A year He lets us decide. But slowly as the almost three hours of this film, Tarkovsky drags us along on an uncomfortable ride with Kelvin. We feel his anguish and fatigue as he wrestles with time. Will he spend his life on the space station with the spector of Hari Or will he return to Earth where time is normal We are left wondering until the final scene where Kelvin makes his choice.
We find Kelvin back in nature at the close of Solaris. We are led to believe that he is back where he started, at his fathers pond and home. He is again walking in the woods there. He sees his old childhood dog running towards him. He has returned to Earth unscathed by his harrowing experience. Had Tarkovsky stopped here, we would be left to fill in our own details of what has transpired. As Kelvin peers in the window all appears as he left it. His father is puttering around inside as normal. The birds are in the cage. But suddenly, it begins to rain inside the house. The father doesnt feel a drop. Kelvin is beside himself with disbelief.
As the camera slowly pulls out from the front door of the fathers house, we realize that the house is floating on an island in the middle of the Solaris ocean. Kelvin clutches his fathers legs, sobbing. Time has ceased to exist. He cant return to what he had before. There is no going back. He is lost in a dimension that does not recognize time. So much is left unsaid with that one shot of the house as it bobs in the Solaris ocean. We know Kelvin will forever be a floater himself, a victim of the cruelty of time, unable to ground himself in reality.
Tarkovsky also plays with the concept of time in his transitions from black and white and sepia to full color. We are given no warning. And the past isnt necessarily represented by black and white as we would imagine. The past can be a full-spectrum blossom of colors. The present can be a nightmare of light and dark, shadows and corners. In Tarkovskys hands, time is irrelevant. We are simply a captive audience as he challenges us to decipher where we are in time. We conclude that it doesnt matter in the scheme of things what day or time it is. Has the entire film taken place in an afternoon or over several years Whats left out of the shot is more important often than whats in it.
While on Solaris, Kelvin and Hari experience thirty seconds of weightlessness. They float freely and grasp onto each other in a sad and loving embrace. Why does Tarkovsky include this bit of footage It shows once again that time, space, the laws of physics, its all irrelevant. We are weary travellers through life and we must find meaning somewhere, but it has no basis in the logical. We must think on a higher plane, one that we cannot touch or feel. It is purely in the mind that we create our own meaning.
One of the other crew members on board the space station, Snaut, says, We have lost our sense of the cosmic. Tarkovsky is saying that we no longer believe in the possible. We are each living in our small boxes, prisoners of time shackled by our own self-imposed limitations. The brain stores all the potential. When Snaut tries to harness Kelvins brainwaves to make the apparitions disappear, we see that indeed, it is the brain that holds all the power. The power to transcend time, the power to store memories, the power to recreate those we have lost. Its all cerebral. Where does immortality live Is it in the memories of those we have loved in life Is it somewhere outside floating in the universe and able to reappear at will as Hari has
Hari exists outside of time. She inhabits a body that can be touched, but she is impossible to kill. When she thinks Kelvin doesnt love her, she drinks liquid oxygen. In a harrowing backwards reversal we watch her return to life from a frozen state. Her return is painful, as though she doesnt want to come back. Kelvin then realizes that he does love her and she says, You love that which you can lose, Kelvin. He cant keep this creature-version of Hari who lives outside of the laws of nature. He cant return to his normal life. He is locked in between what was and what cant be.
Tarkovsky leaves us to work out our own mortality. Would we stay with someone we loved Would we want to return home without them Clearly, there is no choice to be made as Kelvin gets neither a life with Hari or a return to his old life. Time has control over his destiny.
THE MIRROR
Tarkovsky has once again bended time in his 1974 film, The Mirror. This film asks the viewer to suspend all they know to be real. With an eerie score by Bach, we are treated to flashbacks and scenes from a life that existed only in the protagonists mind. The boy, presumably Tarkovsky himself, is the only common thread through the sequence of this film. Time does not flow in a linear fashion and flashbacks take center stage right alongside the present day.
Tarkovsky forces us to stop once again and wait with him as he slows reality down. The doctor that meets the boys mother outside by a fence at the opening of the film asks, Did you ever wonder about plants perceiving Theyre in no hurry while we rush around. Its because we dont trust our inner natures. The doctor is never seen again in the film after he delivers his contemplative statements. We must think about what he has said, and so does the mother.
Nature is never in a rush, and Tarkovsky uses it brilliantly again in this film. Like the opening of Solaris, we find the main character outside in nature. She is pondering with a heavy heart. She, too, has suffered. The mother spends most of the film with an icy glare on her face. She is a contrast to the warm tones of nature, the grasses rustling in the breeze. She is hard and unmovedeven when the barn is burning. She simply walks to the well and has herself a drink of water. Tarkovsky puts the burning barn in the scene as a juxtaposition between the stony resolve of the mother and the sweeping charge of nature. Nature has its own plans that cannot be thwarted by the wishes of people. Once again, people walk through life in a cosmic daze, unaware that the flowers are growing around them and time is seeping out all around them.
Once again, Tarkovsky uses the metaphor of rain to convey the absolute hopelessness of the film. We see the mother many times throughout the film soaking wet. She is caught in the rain in her flimsy dress and high heels. She looks cold throughout much of the film. When she is dry, we know that time has passed. But shortly thereafter she is we againsoaked by rain or washing her hair. Is she trying to wash away some iniquity
Tarkovsky uses the harsh contrast of indoors versus outdoors in all three of these films. Here, he shows dismal interiors with little to be glad about. The outdoors is shown both in color in lush grandeur or abysmal grey tones. We are not ready when the color switches back on nor are we prepared to have that color taken away so swiftly. Time has passed once again before our very eyes.
The mother appears several times in the film as different characters. She is both the boys mother and grandmother. In one scene, she looks in the mirror and her reflection is that of an old woman. The contrast is startling. Here, Tarkovsky once again asks us to suspend time in our minds. The mother is all at once old and young, vital and decaying. That one scene, perhaps more than any in the three films, speaks to Tarkovskys statement what you see in the frame is not limited to its visual depiction. There is so much meaning in that mute reflection, more than volumes of worlds could convey.
Again, as in Solaris, it is raining inside the house. In this film, the mother is washing her hair in a bowl, and when she lifts her head up, she stands happily in the rain inside the house. She is standing by the window and a muted light is shining on her. It is all shadows and grey-tones around her. She looks at the camera. We must decide what she is thinking.
Tarkovsky was a filmmaker who appreciated the intelligence of his audience. He does not spoon feed us the meanings of his art. He has his characters turn and blankly stare straight into the camera. The effect is almost chilling. The eyes are vacant and unblinking. Time is stopped for just that moment. We are forced to step inside the characters mind and feel their pain.
Where the characters are in time seems to be of no importance in a Tarkovsky film. Are they in Russia or space America or Siberia It really makes no difference. The flashbacks in this film give us brief hints into history in their images of war. We as viewers are forced to figure out which war and what the characters are doing there. Its not explained to us. Bombs explode, then ticker tape. Its cold, then its not. Its 1960, then its not.
Again, Tarkovsky shows us that rushing gets us nowhere. In a film like this, we want closure. We want a plot line that agrees with our limited viewpoints. We want action and drama. But, in fact, very little happens in this film that we can classify. Are we seeing a dream Is it present day Since the same actress plays many parts, we are further asked to stretch our imaginations to conclude that she is the boys memory of his mother and his grandmother.
A few brilliant moments in this film show time elapsing. One is when the condensation from a tea cup slowly evaporates, showing that an unnamed woman has been in the room but vanished. This is the only trace that she has been there. As it slowly evaporates, the boys hopes seem to evaporate with it. The other moment is when the boy throws a dud grenade and the commanding officer jumps on it to protect the lives of the boys. As we hold our breath waiting to see if it will detonate, we hear a slow heartbeat pulsing in the officers head. Rhythmic thumping as all action is stopped. Time frozen.
The boy treads water in a pond in another scene. This is a metaphor for all of humanity, buying time here on this earth. Rushing and hoping all will be well. Never really moving ahead. Times captives.
Both Solaris and The Mirror end in the same wayback out in nature. We see through a window fields and a forest. Nature swallows up the characters in her embrace. There are woods, birds, decomposing trees. We humans never really had the control over time that we thought we did. Nature is in control and pulses forward inch by inch without us.
STALKER
Had Tarkovsky ended his career with Stalker, no one could have blamed him. He outdid himself in what has now become a classic and opened new worlds in science fiction. Today we have special effects that can imitate reality, transport us to alternate worlds and dazzle the mind in their complicated likenesses of humanity. But Tarkovsky used none of that. His was a world populated by sparse landscapes and deserted fields. He didnt have to rely on smoke and mirrors to covey an otherworldly scene. He shot scenes that relied on the actors expressions, not cheap effects.
A stalker in this film is a guide to the Zone, a place where your innermost wishes come true. He is a guide to immortality, yet he cannot partake of that immortality himself. His problem is that no one wants it, as he says. He is afraid that he has used up his chances at bringing people to this miraculous Zone. But, in his leading others he discovers a richer inner life for himself.
The first line of the film is uttered by the Stalkers wife, Why did you take my watch This is very telling as the Stalker is trying to stop time and avert her and their daughter, the Monkey, from further pain and suffering. As if by removing her watch, she will not notice his absence and his breach of promise as he once again endangers himself in a trip to the Zone.
The film smacks of despair. The greys and sepia tones are so deep that it is almost hard to see the characters. They are in dark clothes against shadowy backgrounds. The shadows of their living spaces and the bar they meet in are melancholy and dismal. All hope seems to have been abandoned.
We join the Writer and Professor as they meet the Stalker for their journey to the hope of the Zone. The Writer says to the Professor as they drink before embarking, That must be very boring, searching for the truth. What he fails to notice is the irony that he himself is searching for an inner truth that has eluded him all his life. The characters are all running from themselves and their own minds hold them captive. They are stilled in time and forced to seek refuge in the Zone that promises happiness.
Once again, the film slips from black and white to color to sepia to shadows. We are never ready for it when it happens. Our brightness is pulled out from under us as we are left in the shadows. We feel the shift of time as the tones change. When they arrive at the Zone, the color instantly illuminates the screen in greens and blues. Here we are. Home at last, is the line that accompanies the change.
Tarkovsky once again places his characters out in nature. Just like in the other two films, the characters find themselves walking in fields next to trees and grasses and water. There is a great deal of water in this film. It rains, as in the other films, at points where the despair is unutterable. The rain is their only solace. The characters have to slog through water up to their necks at times. They sleep in shallow puddles with no comforts. Their clothes are damp and dank and yet, they trudge on. We can see the passage of time in the dryness of their clothes. We notice that time has passed in the stubble of their beards and the solemnity of their expressions. Its getting worse. Much worse.
As the film shows the three characters on their journey, we discover that each has come for their own reason. The Writer has come because he wants relief. He has a dismal life in that he hates writing. He wants what he thinks will bring him true freedomhappiness. The Professor has come, we find out, to bomb the place and destroy it forever. The Stalker is on a mission to bring other people the happiness that he himself is not able to partake in.
How much time has passed How long is the journey Three days Two weeks The only clues we have are outside the shot. As Tarkovsky said of time, it becomes tangible when you sense something significant, truthful, going on behind the events on the screen. By modern standards, nothing happens on the journey. There are no car crashes, no gun fights, no blood and guts. But we have lived eons with these characters by the time we reach the Zone with them. We are all road weary. And as the Stalker says, No one goes back the way they came. The characters cant just leave. They have to press on. Their lives are no longer the same, much as Kelvins life was no longer the same once he encountered the hallucination of Hari.
The Stalker, a man with a prison record who seemingly is afraid of nothing, begins showing signs of deep apprehension. He throws scarves with nuts attached to them as they walk towards The Room they are aiming for. Are there land mines Or worse He is sweating and agitated at the thought of his charges becoming injured. He says, Things change here every minute. We have to go. The others dont take much heed of his fear. They dont know what he knows. He has seen what the Zone can do to people. The Stalker sees the Zone as alive and swiftly changing. The others just see a long walk ahead of them.
The three characters are trying to cheat time. They want immortality. They want the elusive holy grail of happiness. The Writer ends up realizing in a monologue of self-pity as they near the Zone, I wanted to change them, but its them who changed me. Now the future and the present are one. He is speaking about his readers that he writes his books for. This is yet another example of time colliding with itself. We see a change in the Writer, though its all off screen. He is now caught between the past and his uncertain future. Tarkovsky is a master at allowing the viewer to only see snippets. We only hear brief conversations, but we understand that the character has changed. Time has marched on while we werent looking.
The black dog that appears in the Zone befriends the Stalker. He ends up taking him home to live with him at the end. The dog represents all that is haunting in our own psyches. He cannot get rid of him. The dog follows him around and even takes a liking to him. The dog is the only other living being there with the three characters as they approach the Zone. He is a spector of their consciences. He appears more as they get closer to the Zone and appears not to be in any sort of hurry. Hell wait as they work through their own demons.
The Writer says to the Stalker in a fit of rage, Its like youre God Almighty yourself. And he dons a crown of thorns saying, I am not going to forgive you. These obvious references to Christ are not to be overlooked. Is the Stalker playing God with peoples lives Is he helping them become immortal And what of his mentor, Porcupine, who hung himself after reaching the Zone and getting his innermost wishes Is he deciding who lives and dies
The Stalker, upon reaching the final place outside The Room, tells the Writer and Professor to think back over their whole lives. He says, When a man thinks of the past he becomes kinder. Again, time is being reviewed, reworked. Time is changing people. It is the Writer then who admits that he will not become kinder by reviewing his past. He seems to become only more bitter.
The professor, upon almost reaching The Room says, Never do anything that cant be undone. He has travelled all this way with the intention of blowing the Zone up with a bomb. He finds what his colleagues have hidden---the rest of the bombin a room that has links to the past and present. Where there is no human living, we hear a phone ringing. It is an unwelcome interruption as it brings the modern world back into the silence of the Zone and the bliss that is waiting. The Professor calls a colleague that has wronged him, bringing his past back into the present. There is electricity in this remote shambles of a house. And then the light bulb blows. The light goes out. There was one last hope, but the present has crushed it.
On the threshold of The Room, the three wrestle with themselves and their darkest fears and desires and hopes. The Stalker tells them, This is the most important moment of your lives. This gives them pause. What before had been a ruthless hunting down of The Room, now demands contemplation. Tarkovsky has them quietly reflect in short sentences and telling facial expressions. It is dark again and stark. It begins to rain, then pour as the three sit and digest their fates. They will not go into The Room, not one of them. They have travelled through time in great danger of being discovered, yet no one can go in. The Stalker cannot go in because immortality is not allowed. He knows it will kill him as it has his mentor Porcupine. He knows that, only your innermost wishes come true here. And his wishes arent purely unselfish. The Writer has a moment of angst as he realizes he, too, has come under the auspices of being doused in happiness, but his selfish black desires wont allow him happiness either. The Professor, whose aim it was to blast the Zone out of existence, takes hold of his senses and refuses. He wants there to be one refuge of hope left for people.
As the shot pulls away from the three soaked characters, stewing in their own decisions, we see a fish swimming into a puddle of water that slowly is blackened by oil. As the black creeps in, we know that humanity will always have darkness and one person cant remove it from the Earth. The three are doomed to return to their lives. Time has not been kind to them. As the oil slick widens, we think that the film has ended, but it still has one important piece to go.
Back home, the three have returned to the dismal bar where they began their journey. The dog, the spirit of sin and the darkness in humanity, is now with them. The Stalkers wife comes in and takes him home. We know time has passed, but again, we have no idea how much. Nor does it matter, as Tarkovsky reminds us that time is irrelevant. We see the family together and know that the daughter, Monkey is not well.
The wifes powerful soliloquy at the end of the film sheds light into a dark scene. She will go on loving the Stalker, and they will still be a family. She knows its been awful, but that with the bad she has been able to experience the good as well. She says, It is better to have a bitter happiness than a grey, dull life. Time will go on with them and for them. Life has not ended at the Zone. Although, it has rendered their child an outcast.
We see the Monkey in full color. She is draped in a golden scarf, the one colourful presence in a dingy world. The Monkey has special powers of telekinesis. She can move objects with her mind and we watch a glass move and then a vase crash to the ground. And its said that she has no legs, though we never are certain of that. She has been changed by the Zone. Stalkers children are never normal once their father has been to the Zone. As the camera pans out and away from the child we are left with the feeling that while the Stalker has returned, life will be anything but normal.
TARKOVSKYS POETRY
Tarkovsky stands in a class by himself. His films are hauntingly beautiful and especially memorable for their sparse images and lonely people. His use of poetry stands in stark contrast to the despair thats being portrayed on the screen. Not only are poems recited throughout the three films, but the use of poetic language by tormented characters is brilliant.
Tarkovsky used the poetry of his father, poet Arseny Tarkovsky in his films. One of the most brilliant uses of poetry is in Stalker. The Stalker takes a moment, while the black dog stirs in the background churning angst, to recite a bit of poetry. Reciting in a dreamlike voice, he muses
Now summer has passed, As if it had never been. It is warm in the sun. But this isnt enough. All that might have been, Like a five-cornered leaf, Fell right into my hands, But this isnt enough. Neither evil nor good, Had vanished in vain, It all burnt with white light, But this isnt enough.
Part of the awesome brilliance of Tarkovsky is his juxtaposing the lovely with the desolate, beauty with ashes. The viewer does not expect to hear eloquent poetry from this roughened Stalker who is a former convict. Nor do we expect to hear it on the threshold of entering The Room. The message is quite clear, it is not enough. The Room cannot solve all the problems of any individual. The Room will not eliminate human suffering and the need for morality. As Burton, one of the astronauts on Solaris says, Knowledge is only valid if its based on morality. These characters are about to be given the key to immortality and riches. They can ask for whatever they want. But what good is having the answers to the big questions in life if your choices are going to harm others This is the dilemma the Writer and Professor must wrestle with.
In another poem entitled First Meetings, also by his father, Tarkovsky weaves nature once again into the stark backdrop of suffering. The Mirror features this poem as a voice over heard above the din of the squalor.
We were led to who knows where.
Before us opened up, in mirage,
Towns constructed out of wonder,
Mint leaves spread themselves beneath our feet,
Birds came on the journey with us,
Fish leapt in greeting from the river,
And the sky unfurled above
While behind us all the time went fate,
A madman brandishing a razor.
It is no wonder that the mother weeps as she thinks of these lines. The thought of towns constructed out of wonder and mint leaves spread beneath their feet is enough to make even the most hardened listener dream of a better life. The contrast is startling. This mother has suffered. Where is her city of wonder complete with mint green grass
The conclusion of the poem hits us once again with the contrast. Behind us all the time went fateA madman brandishing a razor. This perfectly rounds out a discussion of who Tarkovsky was on film. He was a man who set out to illuminate suffering and the human condition to an art form. His images are cold and severe. His characters feel deeply and anguish over their lives. The settings are sparse and floating in time. The characters could be Anyman.
CONCLUSION
The universal questions humans ask themselves are magnified on screen in seamless grace in the films of Tarkovsky. These films are as essential and relevant to the human condition as they were when they came out some thirty-odd years ago. And knowing that Tarkovskys works were banned for a time makes them all the more meaningful. What were the censors trying to eliminate from public view Were they hoping people would not reflect on their own mortality Not challenge the status quo Perhaps they were seeking to wash all ideas of freedom of mind and spirit from the publics collective mind.
In our examination of the three films Solaris, The Mirror and Stalker, we have seen how Tarkovsky has treated the passage of time. His use of long, slow, dramatic shots ask the viewer to read the characters minds. What he leaves out of his shots is as important as what he chooses to include. The brilliance of a Tarkovsky film is that he has captured on film something that cannot be harnessed time. We spend two hours looking through the eyes of the director and we gain a deeper understanding of things that are unknowable. Tarkovskys contribution to Russian films and the making of movies in general is staggering. He was a maverick in a land of censorship, pushing forward tirelessly for the cause of great art.
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