Andrei Rublev: A Bleak and Brutal Tale

In an interview featured on the DVD of Andrei Rublev -the bleak biopic about the life of the 15th-century Russian iconographer and monk- director Andrei Tarkovsky explains the gratuitous depiction of trauma and tragedy in his landmark film. Basically, he paraphrases author George Moore, who wrote that "the sadness of life is the joy of art."

While this certainly makes sense, particularly given the turbulent time in which the movie is based, Tarkovsky's explanation hardly justifies the overall tone of the picture. This over-blown cinematic spectacle is three and a half hours of brooding, blood-soaked melodrama, which crawls across the screen like a dying leper slogging through a mosquito-infested bog.

Yet, I cannot deny that there are elements of good film-making in Andrei Rublev. The aforementioned symbolism, while a bit overdone, is nonetheless skillfully executed. A perfect example of this is when the story opens with an unknown balloonist straining to raise a crude, unwieldy, burgeoning bubble of animal skins toward the heavens, all the while trying to avoid the throngs of hostile onlookers who wish to ground him.

Just as he seems to be floating in perfect solitude, surveying the coast in his wicker basket, down he crashes. This scene is very much indicative of the events that follow, as each step of progress or good measure is quickly crushed by an intruding iron boot.

The cinematography is an experiment that succeeds, taking the viewer both literally and figuratively to dizzying heights and depressing depths, exposing unique perspectives, points of view, revealing just enough, and sometimes too much. Although mostly filmed in black and white, a very effective vehicle for conveying the somber sense of the story, there are splashes of color thrown in at the very end, coinciding with an epiphany that the main character has.

The acting is very good, especially by Anatoli Solonitsyn, who portrays Andrei, Ivan Lapikov, as his fellow monk, Kirill, and Nikolai Sergeyev as Andrei's mentor, Theophanes the Greek. The cast really conveys the sensation of plodding through a trying century, and even with their all-too-human outbursts against "the injustice of it all," carry their crosses with resignation which even attains the status of patience at times. Eclectic characters dot the landscape -downtrodden peasants, religious fools, hedonistic pagans, terrifying Tartars, and even a frolicking jester who comes close to providing comic relief, until he is dragged off by the authorities for his "scandalous" behavior.

The story basically has Andrei slogging through life, aspiring to paint religious murals and church icons, but becoming more reluctant and more discouraged after repeated, heart-rending setbacks. Several of his fellow painters are ambushed in the woods and blinded on the orders of a prince whose cathedral they have just painted, so that they do not paint a similar one for the prince's estranged brother. That cathedral is later destroyed by the Tartars as the barbarians sack the surrounding town of Vladimir, killing everyone but Andrei and a half-crazy mute girl.

The girl, whom Andrei saves from being raped and killed, later joins another group of Tartars, enticed by her own reflection in the leader's armor. She is never seen again. The most nerve-wracking scene shows the frightened refugees of Vladimir- dozens of men, women and children- huddled together in prayer inside the locked cathedral as the invading Tartars beat at the doors with a battering ram. Even the carnage that follows when the Tartars inevitably gain ingress is almost a relief.

Even with its plusses, Andrei Rublev is a difficult, depressing film. The story could have been told in half the time and tragedy. The egregious depiction of man's inhumanity to man is almost too much to endure, and even though the violence is tame by today's standards, I have seen gruesomely graphic movies that disturbed me much less. The worst scenes by far involve cruelty to animals, and the part in which a man beats his own dog to death with a stick almost made me stop watching. This scene was not overtly gory, but emotionally devastating for animal lovers.

I understand completely what Tarkovsky was trying to accomplish, to create an enduring masterpiece that resonates with symbolism and spirituality and ultimately, leaves in the mind of the viewer a faint glitter of hope. To show the resilience of the human soul, and the gradual emergence of mankind from dark days of despotism into the dawn of a new age. The obvious parallels between the repressive age in which the film is set and that in which it was made (1966) caused the Soviet Union to ban this movie for two decades. But juxtaposed to the overwhelming darkness, that faint glitter of hope is barely visible.