This volume about the Soviet Russian director Andrei Tarkovskii (1932–1986) is part of ReFocus: The International Directors Series of Edinburgh University Press, which presents new research on a single well-known director in each volume. As the editor Sergey Toymentsev outlines in his introduction, the starting point for this volume was to address the relative lack of theoretical approaches to Tarkovskii and his films compared to the significant number of studies about him in both English and Russian. According to Toymentsev, most English-language studies on Tarkovskii “are methodically limited to film history and formalist analysis“ and “fail to capture the rich complexity of his work while being heavily descriptive and undertheorized” (3). In contrast, Russian-language research on Tarkovskii tends to “[idolise] the director as a spiritual teacher, just as his films are uncritically viewed as incarnations of divine truth” (6). After describing the non- and sometimes even anti-theoretical stances of many Tarkovskii scholars, Toymentsev suggests that this collection “hopes to offer new directions and insights for the study of the film-maker by opening up the field to various interdisciplinary approaches” (6). Drawing on the ideas of philosophers, rather than concentrating exclusively on empirical research, the volume strives at “[understanding] his [Tarkovskii’s] films in their multifaceted complexity” (6). It mainly consists of original contributions, only two of which were previously published: Chapter 13 by Mikhail Iampolski originally appeared in Russian in 2013 (Iampol’skii 2013), while Chapter 9 by Slavoj Žižek is a slightly abridged and revised version of his article from 1999 (Žižek 1999).
The volume is composed of fifteen chapters grouped into four parts, covering Tarkovskii’s biographical background (part I), his film methods (part II), theoretical approaches to his work (Part III) and his legacy as found in the works of film directors like Lars von Trier and Andrei Zviagintsev (Part IV).
Part I, which covers the director’s biographical background, eschews typical biographical facts: Evgenii Tsymbal’s essay on Tarkovskii’s childhood (Chapter 1, 16–29) focuses on family constellations: Tsymbal dwells on the importance of the absence of Tarkovskii’s father to his life and interprets his mother’s role in “a hypothetical reconstruction” (20) as a “dead mother complex” (15), according to a model developed by the French psychoanalyst André Green, a disciple of Lacan.
Tsymbal’s chapter provides a good preview of the chapters that follow. Dwelling on philosophers, cultural theorists and psychoanalysts like Aristotle, Henri Bergson, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Lacan, they concentrate on particular aspects of the director’s work, proposing new approaches to them. The chapters cover all major aspects of Tarkovskii’s life and work. Even if, for instance, the contributors to Part II concentrate on a single film and analyse only specific aspects of them, the reader is still provided with an overview not only of Tarkovskii’s work, but of film theory in general. For example, in Chapter 4 (69-84), Sara Pankenier Weld discusses one film, Ivanovo detstvo / Ivan’s childhood, 1964, concentrating on how the protagonist views the world through his eyes, but also introduces cultural studies theory and film theory, drawing on the ideas of theorists and critics like Philippe Lejeune, Gaston Bachelard, Gilles Deleuze and Béla Bálasz. Other contributors to this section follow this general methodology. Zdenko Mandušić (Chapter 5, 85–101) concentrates on Tarkovskii’s Andrei Rublev (1966), positioning the film within the 1960s discourse about Soviet documentary style. Donato Totaro analyses Stalker (1979), concentrating on temporality and long shots (Chapter 6, 102–118). Elizaveta Goldfarb Moss covers Nostalghia (1983) and the concept of infinity in this film (Chapter 7, 119–134). Julia Shpiritskaia examines the realistic sound design in his films (Chapter 8, 135–152). After Part 2, the reader will not only have learnt much about both Tarkovskii’s films but also about film theory and relevant concepts in the theory of culture and philosophy. This is true throughout the volume.
It is important to note, given that we are dealing with cultural theory, that these interpretations are not right or wrong but rather more or less plausible. Accordingly, the reader may not agree with Toymentsev that Tarkovskii was an “anti-intellectual” (Chapter 3, 46–66) or with Anne Eakin Moss (Chapter 12, 209–224), who finds an analogy between the concept of “cosmic consciousness” by the French philosopher Pierre Hadot and Tarkovskii’s films. The concepts outlined in this volume should be understood as propositions that may (or may not) turn out to be good tools in serving the understanding of Tarkovskii’s works. As the chapters were written independently of each other, the reader should not expect to find a unified concept of film theory in them – this was clearly not the editor’s goal. Accordingly, the individual chapters have to be judged on their own merits.
If we look, for example, at Evgenii Tsymbal’s chapter on Tarkovkii’s childhood, we have to conclude that his argumentation is often highly speculative. Formulations like “Even though the reason for the father’s sudden desertion was never discussed in the Tarkovsky family, it is possible to suggest that it had something to do with his perception of Maria Vishnyakova’s personality” (19) are revelatory about the way Tsymbal introduces arguments into his discourse. When such arguments are the foundation for an entire article, the analysis remains on shaky ground. In contrast, Zdenko Mandušić’s chapter on Tarkovskii’s Andrei Rublev manages both to position the director in the artistic context of The USSR at this time and to demonstrate that the filmmaker’s decisions concerning the choice of costumes or the language used in the film reflect “[the] desire to make the world of Andrei Rublev appear authentic” (93). By underscoringt that Tarkovskii’s seminal 1967 essay Zapechatlennoe vremia / Imprinted Time “was a scholarly, critical essay”, “defining his theory of film and the aesthetics of his troubled production [Andrei Rublev]” (85), Mandušić undermines Sergey Toymentsev’s assertion that Tarkovskii was an anti-intellectual. Yet, although one might raise objections to claims made by some of the authors, the volume nevertheless offers reader the opportunity to get an overview of the outstanding work of a major Soviet director. In sum, Refocus: The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky serves a double purpose: it not only presents the works of this renowned filmmaker to a new generation, but it serves as an introduction to important concepts in film theory and certain currents in philosophy. It should certainly contribute to opening a dialogue on the role of theory in analysing Tarkovskii’s oeuvre.
Sebastian Cwiklinski
Freie Universität Berlin / FernUniversität in Hagen
Sebastian Cwiklinski holds a PhD in Turkish Studies and History. Until recently, he was a part-time lecturer in Turkish studies at Freie Universität Berlin and is now finishing his MA studies in Modern German Literature at FernUniversität in Hagen. His research interests include history and identity politics in the post-Soviet space, in Germany and in Eastern and Central Europe; German, Turkish, and Russian literature and cinema studies.
Iampol’skii, Mikhail. 2013. “Andrei Tarkovskii. Pamiat’ i sled”. https://seance.ru/articles/yampolsky_zerkalo_speech June 17 [ accessed September 24, 2024]
Žižek, Slavoj. 1999. “The Thing from Inner Space. On Tarkovsky”. Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 4 (3): 221–231.
Cwiklinski, Sebastian. 2024. Review: “Sergey Toymentsev (ed.): ReFocus: The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky”. Apparatus. Film, Media and Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe 19. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.17892/app.2024.00019.372.
URL: http://www.apparatusjournal.net/
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