Andrei Rublev is one of the films that I was the most excited about revisiting. I watched it years ago, before seeing Solaris and Stalker and becoming a fan of director Andrei Tarkovsky's style, and I distinctly remember finding it to be boring as shit. I can take slow-moving sci fi, but on the first go it's typically pretty hard for me to dig a slow-moving historical. Thankfully, now that I like his style, this viewing was much easier going, and I ended this three-hour odyssey looking forward to watching it again. That's a special kind of film.
The film is split into eight chapters, and if I can be completely honest here, chapters 1-5 are still somewhat rough going for me. I can dig the art, and I like the slow build of Andrei's character here, but a lot of it feels like set up for the disaster around the corner with the raid. Much of the early story didn't feel all that clear to me, and I kept forgetting who Andrei was for awhile. It isn't until Andrei goes into the forest and sees the nude dancing pagans that I was finally able to follow his personal/spiritual journey. Maybe the nudity was able to help me concentrate. Whatever it was, from that point I was back in the story and ready to dive into the second half of the film.
The Tartar raid is one of those majestic scenes that you kind of just watch with slack-jawed awe. The camera swoops around as horses storm into town, setting homes on fire and slaughtering civilians. When they break into the church and start their search for gold it shifts into a torture scene that doesn't show a lot, but it hard to take given the context. This entire chapter is brilliant from beginning to end, and ranks as one of the best things Tarkovsky's ever done. This is shortly followed by the second best thing he's ever done: the Bell chapter. This sections deals with a bellmaker's son constructing a gigantic bell that apparently only he knows how to make. Sounds dull, but when you watch it it's fucking amazing. Andrei shows up less in this section and most of it concerns the son, but it's such a powerful section with a great ending that it kind of envelops you in it.
The film ends with some color shots of Andrei's paintings, then goes back to black and white for a shot of some horses kicking it by a river. To give you an idea of Tarkovsky's pacing, this scene goes on for 10 minutes. That's 10 minutes of dialog-free camera pans over old paintings. If you can hang with that, then this movie's for you. Surprisingly, this time around, I loved it. I mean, I just spent three hours hanging out with this guy and seeing all the shit he dealt with in his life. I felt like he earned several minutes of contemplation over his work.
My favorite Tarkovsky film is still Stalker, but this one's a masterpiece and required viewing. I can't stress enough how engrossing this film becomes as you stick with it, and once again, I want to rewatch it sometime soon. That's an impressive feat for a long, slow historical film about a painter. This one's a top ten film right now, and I'm having a bitch of a time figuring out where to put it. My inclination for right now is to sandwich it between High and Low and Shock Corridor. It's a better film than Shock Corridor, but I love High and Low so much that I'm struggling to put this above it. You know what? Fuck it. I'm going to place this at #8, between Grand Illusion and High and Low. I didn't feel like immediately rewatching High and Low the last time I saw it, so Andrei Rublev has the edge here.
1. Beauty and the Beast (1946)
2. Robocop (1987)
3. Seven Samurai (1954)
4. The Seventh Seal (1957)
5. M (1931)
6. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
7. Grand Illusion (1937)
8. Andrei Rublev (1966)
9. High and Low (1963)
10. Shock Corridor (1963)
11. Hard Boiled (1992)
12. Sid and Nancy (1986)
13. The 400 Blows (1959)
14. Walkabout (1971)
15. The Killer (1989)
16. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
17. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
18. Dead Ringers (1988)
19. Great Expectations (1946)
20. The Naked Kiss (1964)
21. A Night to Remember (1958)
22. The Lady Vanishes (1938)
23. The Samurai Trilogy (1954-1956)
24. The Long Good Friday (1980)
25. Blood For Dracula (1974)
26. Flesh for Frankenstein (1973)
27. Amarcord (1973)
28. Oliver Twist (1948)
29. Nanook of the North (1922)
30. Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
31. Summertime (1955)
32. Alphaville (1965)
I'm noticing that, at 32 entries, constantly posting the list is starting to get unwieldy. I'm not sure how to remedy this. I should probably keep the list saved on another site and just keep updating it there instead of including it with every single post. Hopefully I'll have something figured out by next week.
Next time: I start yet another double feature! This time it's Henri-Georges Clouzot, and I start with his classic horror film Les Diaboliques.
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