Andrei Tarkovsky once shared the meaning of life
When we look at the greatest filmmakers of the 20th century, Hollywood is the first port of call, with the likes of Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg and Alfred Hitchcock delivering several masterpieces throughout the decades. Yet, abroad, several other auteurs were also changing the cinematic language, with Yasujirō Ozu thriving in Japan, Swedish director Ingmar Bergman influencing creatives worldwide and Andrei Tarkovsky emerging as one of Russia’s greatest-ever artistic talents.
Often compared to Kubrick, thanks to his meticulous perfectionism and broad narratives that challenged existential life questions, Tarkovsky climbed to prominence in the 1960s with two extraordinary coming-of-age tales, 1961’s Steamroller and the Violin and Ivan’s Childhood, released just one year later. A remarkable filmmaker with a distinct artistic vision, Tarkovsky quickly gained the attention of world cinema, gaining considerably larger budgets for his projects in the process.
Throughout the 1970s, while the Brat Pack were changing Hollywood, Tarkovsky came to dominate European cinema, earning widespread critical acclaim for 1975’s Mirror and 1979’s sci-fi epic Stalker. Meanwhile, he developed a dislike for popular American cinema, even calling Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey “cold and sterile” before choosing to make a similar cosmic trip of his own in the form of 1972’s Solaris.
Although his dislike of 2001 undoubtedly disgruntled film students worldwide, this didn’t stop them from adoring Tarkovsky’s style and, in particular, his approach to complex ideas of religion, memory and existential purpose. Never afraid to discuss such concepts, Tarkovsky once took the time to speak about his stance on the meaning of life during an interview in the documentary A Poet of the Cinema.
Asked, first and foremost, about his opinion towards the concept of art in general, Tarkovsky declared: “Before defining art – or any concept – we must answer a far broader question: ‘What is the meaning of Man’s life on Earth?’…Maybe we are here to enhance ourselves spiritually. If our life tends to this spiritual enrichment, then art is a means to get there”.
His answer is, indeed, as cryptic as the enigmatic finale of his 1979 masterpiece Stalker and as mysterious as the moral quandary that sits at the centre of 1986’s Sacrifice, yet he has plenty more to add regarding the topic.
“This, of course, is in accordance with my definition of life,” he explained, “Art should help man in this process. Some say art helps man to know the world like any other intellectual activity. I don’t believe in this possibility of knowing. I am almost an agnostic. Knowledge distracts us from our main purpose in life. The more we know, the less we know; getting deeper, our horizon becomes narrower. Art enriches man’s own spiritual capabilities, and he can then rise above himself to use what we call ‘Free Will’”.
Indeed, there is no other response fans of Tarkovsky would have preferred, containing all the mysticism, stoicism and poetry of the Russian auteur.
