# I want to watch Andrei Tarkovsky’s films

6 Feb 2023, 7:30 PM

I first encountered the work of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky via the video game The Witness. There’s an easter egg in the game where you unlock a number of video clips. One of them is a ten-minute clip from the Tarkovsky film Nostalghia.*

There’s no dialogue in the clip. The first part is a long shot of a man trying to carry a candle across a courtyard. The second long shot is of a man and a dog sitting next to a pond, with a house in the background. As the shot slowly zooms out, you can see that the whole scene is within the ruins of a large, roofless church.

The awesome shot from Nostalghia

I sat through the entire clip when I encountered it in-game, and I thought it was cool. I’m not into cinema, so I hadn’t seen much like it. I was fascinated that such long shots where so little happened could hit you so hard. It made me want to see the rest of the film.

I don’t watch movies very often, so I haven’t actually gotten around to watching any of his films. But I did read about another film of his that I’d like to see. It’s called Solaris and it’s an adaptation of a science fiction story of the same name by Stanisław Lem.

A little while ago, I found Andrei Tarkovsky’s Wikiquote page. I really liked his perspective on art, especially a lot of the things he said in his book Sculpting in Time, so now I want to read that too. To finish this post off, I’ll include a few of my favorites:

> Never try to convey your idea to the audience — it is a thankless and senseless task. Show them life, and they'll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it.

> If you try to please audiences, uncritically accepting their tastes, it can only mean that you have no respect for them: that you simply want to collect their money.

> The more hopeless the world in the artist's version, the more clearly perhaps must we see the ideal that stands in opposition — otherwise life becomes impossible! Art symbolises the meaning of our existence.

Have you seen any Andrei Tarkovsky films? Do you have any suggestions for other ones I should check out? Are there any movies you’re interested in but haven’t gotten around to? Let me know your thoughts at my Ctrl-C email: `gome ​@ ​ctrl-c.club`.

* I’ve read articles that said The Witness was pretentious for including stuff like this, but I personally thought it was a cool thing to do in a puzzle game.