Stanley Kubrick’s favourite Andrei Tarkovsky movies
Nobody seems sure with 100% certainty of what Stanley Kubrick‘s favourite movies actually were, which, if anything, is supremely fitting given the filmmaker’s enigmatic reputation and status as somebody who would always keep their cards very close to the chest as it related to their personal life.
Over the years, though, several people with intimate knowledge of the directorial genius have come forth and listed a slew of titles that appealed directly to Kubrick’s sensibilities as an audience member, while various interviews the man himself had partaken in over the years offered further insight into the films that impacted him in a manner of different ways.
As the creator of one of the greatest science fiction films ever made in 2001: A Space Odyssey, it would make sense that Kubrick was enamoured by another film from a fellow heavyweight and legend of cinema that can stake much the same claim. However, the feeling wasn’t entirely reciprocated.
In addition to crafting a seminal narrative that bridges the past, present, and future through an exploration of human history rooted in the very essence of mankind, 2001 wouldn’t have existed in the way it does without Kubrick’s technological innovations, which culminated in his one and only Academy Award win when he was rewarded with an honorary trophy for its cutting-edge visual effects.
Although it’s regarded as one of the most influential and important movies ever made, regardless of genre, Andrei Tarkovsky didn’t hold it in particularly high esteem. The two may have been active during the same period and independently curated some of the medium’s all-time greats, but Tarkovsky favoured a more humanistic and emotionally-driven approach to his stories, an arena in which he found Kubrick to be sorely lacking.
The director’s 1972 masterpiece Solaris finds Donatas Banionis’ Kris Kelvin investigating the death of a doctor on the titular space station and the continued fallout affecting the mental health of its other crew members, opening the door to an enthralling existential mystery punctuated by jaw-dropping visuals and an examination on the human condition. The similarities between Solaris and A Space Odyssey are there to see, thematically at least, but Tarkovsky favoured his own approach to Kubrick’s.
Blasting 2001 as “cold and sterile”, Tarkovsky went so far as to brand it “phoney on many points”. His film was rooted in the experience of its characters, whereas he believed Kubrick’s was too interested in blazing a new technological trail, outlining the differences between the two by saying that in Solaris, “everything would be as it should” through the way its underlying themes “would be conveyed to the viewer through the perception of the film’s characters”.
The two have often been pitted against each other in the annals of sci-fi history, which is fair enough considering they were released just four years apart and have stood the test of time as inarguable classics made by a pair of iconic directors working at the top of their game. Still, Kubrick’s appreciation of Tarkovsky’s feature hardly opened the doors to a two-sided love-in, not that it prevented him from celebrating another one of his peer’s works.
Kubrick’s long-time executive producer and brother-in-law Jan Harlan named Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice as being “very important” as it applies to the Full Metal Jacket architect’s personal favourites, with his second candidate hailing from the Russian filmmaker telling an altogether different – but equally powerful – story as Solaris. Hardly an in-depth explanation of why he liked it, then, but such is the scarcity of concrete opinions from Kubrick on other films that it was basically a five-star review.
Self-appointed as a religious parable by its co-writer and director, The Sacrifice sees Erland Josephson’s Alexander attempting to strike a bargain with god in an effort to stave off the impending apocalypse. It proved to be Tarkovsky’s final feature, and he passed away just seven months after its release in 1986, although Kubrick must not have harboured any lingering resentment from his opposite number’s scathing takedown of 2001 to celebrate it as a phenomenal work of cinema.
