When Andrei Tarkovsky got drunk with Akira Kurosawa
The names Andrei Tarkovsky and Akira Kurosawa ought to ring eternally in the ears of any cinephile. Hailing from Russia and Japan, respectively, between the two film legends, they directed several of the most important and critically admired movies ever made.
In a piece that Kurosawa wrote for the Asahi Shinbun newspaper, originally published on May 13th, 1977, the Japanese cinema icon remembered the first time he met his Russian counterpart during a visit to Soviet Russia when he also scoped out the set for Tarkovsky’s 1972 sci-fi classic Solaris.
“He was small, thin, looked a little frail, and at the same time exceptionally intelligent, and unusually shrewd and sensitive,” Kurosawa said of Tarkovsky (via Cinephilia Beyond). Kurosawa was fortunate enough to catch a preview of Solaris after visiting the wildly-expensive film set.
He wrote of the preview, “I felt my heart aching in agony with a longing to return to the earth as quickly as possible. Marvellous progress in science we have been enjoying, but where will it lead humanity after all? Sheer fearful emotion this film succeeds in conjuring up in our souls. Without it, a science fiction movie would be nothing more than a petty fancy. These thoughts came and went while I was gazing at the screen.”
Kurosawa went on to describe the brilliant moment he and Tarkovsky – who “didn’t drink usually” got hammered together, leading to Tarkovsky belting out a vocal rendition of the ‘Seven Samurai’ theme tune with all his might.
“When the film was over, he stood up, looking at me as if he felt timid. I said to him, ‘Very good. It makes me feel real fear.’ Tarkovsky smiled shyly but happily,” he wrote. “And we toasted vodka at the restaurant in the Film Institute. Tarkovsky, who didn’t drink usually, drank a lot of vodka and went so far as to turn off the speaker from which music had floated into the restaurant and began to sing the theme of samurai from Seven Samurai at the top of his voice.”
Kurosawa couldn’t help but join in the singing with Tarkovsky “as if to rival him”. He then touchingly claimed that it was at that moment that he was “very happy to find myself living on Earth.” It was the experience of getting to see the set of Solaris, watching it at a preview and then hanging out with its creator that left a deep impression on the Japanese director.
Of that happiness combined with the feeling of terror and emptiness that the film inspires, Kurosawa noted, “Solaris makes a viewer feel this, and even this single fact shows us that Solaris is no ordinary SF film. It truly somehow provokes pure horror in our souls. And it is under the total grip of the deep insights of Tarkovsky.”
It’s a brilliant story to hear of the two cinema legends coming together to celebrate two of their works. Though Kurosawa and Tarkovsky’s films are difficult to penetrate, to hear of them in genuine human situations like this is truly touching, and as Kurosawa concluded, “There can be no bright future for those who are ready to explain everything about their own film.”
