Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema

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Cada vez que usted vea en el cine -aunque cada vez es más escaso- un plano fijo larguísimo, en el que parece que no pasara nada, es Tarkovski. Puede ser un Tarkovski deformado, pero es él. Él es el hombre que esculpió en el tiempo. Es la mejor definición de su cine dada por él mismo, y que da título a este libro. Una gran influencia para muchos cineastas que quisieron seguir/copiar su estilo. Aún recuerdo siendo una estudiante universitaria, la mística alrededor de Tarkovski. Seguía siendo un outsider ya a finales de los noventa y entrado en los dosmiles. Ver sus películas era una especie de ritual para pocos, pero, a la vez, para algunos no era más que un snobismo trasnochado. Los Bergmans, Antonionis, Buñeles y Bressones estaban en ese punto de quiebre que marcaba el nuevo milenio, y que empezaba a darle una fuerza irreductible a la entrada de las nuevas tecnologías, llámese la revolución de lo digital. Entonces, todo aquello con un ritmo análogo y con intención de "el arte por el arte"parecía entrar al terreno de lo caduco, para algunos enfrascados en la novedad y el ritmo cada vez más acelerado de los tiempos.

Music used correctly goes beyond intensifying the image by paralleling it with the same idea -- done correctly it transfigures the image into something different in kind. Properly used, music has the ability to change the whole emotional tone of a filmed sequence. La fórmula de "esto no lo entiende el pueblo" siempre me ha indignado profundamente. ¿Qué se quiere conseguir con ello? ¿Quién se toma el derecho de hablar en nombre del pueblo, de verse a sí mismo como la encarnación de la mayoría del pueblo? ¿Y quién sabe qué es lo que comprende el pueblo y qué deja de comprender, qué necesita y qué rechaza? ¿O es que alguien en alguna ocasión ha hecho si quiera una sencillísima pero honrada encuesta entre ese pueblo, para ilustrarse acerca de sus verdaderos intereses, reflexiones, deseos, esperanzas y decepciones? Yo mismo soy una parte de mi pueblo. Yo he vivido con él en mi patria y yo he tendido (de acuerdo con mi edad) las mismas experiencias históricas de ellos, yo he observado las mismas experiencias vitales que él y sobre ellos he reflexionado. Y también ahora, viviendo en el mundo occidental, sigo siendo hijo de mi pueblo. Soy una pequeña gota, una partícula diminuta de él, y espero que pueda expresar sus ideas, ideas profundamente ancladas en sus tradiciones culturales e históricas” Instead, he writes, “rhythm . . . is the main formative element of cinema” (119). He uses a short film by Pascal Aubier to illustrate his point. The ten-minute film contains only one shot: the camera begins on a wide landscape, then zooms in slowly to reveal a man on a hill. As the camera gets closer, we learn first that the man is dead, then that he has been killed. “The film has no editing, no acting and no decor,” Tarkovsky writes. “But the rhythm of the movement of time is there within the frame, as the sole organising force of the — quite complex — dramatic development” (114). Like the Aubier example, Tarkovsky’s films are marked by long takes (most notably in the bookends of The Sacrifice) and slow, beautifully choreographed camera movements. Scenario and Shooting Script Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema (1986) by Andrei Tarkovsky translated by Kitty Hunter-Blair (1989, University of Texas Press)a piece of magical sound metamorphosis in which the single “clink” of two whisky glasses [borrowed from Jonty Harrison’s piece et ainsi suite…] gradually metamorphoses into a multitude of other sounds, eventually alluding to the sounds of birdsong, a junkyard gamelan, the ocean and the human voice, but never entirely abandoning its links to this minimal source. At the time I was simply a sunburnt young boy, entirely unknown, son of the distinguished poet Arseniy Tarkovsky: a nobody, merely a son. It was the first and last time I saw Landau, a single, chance meeting; hence such candour on the part of the Soviet Nobel Prize winner. Robinson, Harlow (19 July 1987). "Sculpting in Time: REFLECTIONS ON THE CINEMA by Andrey Tarkovsky". Los Angeles Times. In his book Sculpting in Time, Andrei Tarkovsky distills the essence of his perspective on cinematic sound into the following statement: ​1​ Aparece como una revelación, como un deseo momentáneo y apasionado de comprender intuitivamente de golpe todas las leyes de este mundo

Art, in a broad sense, is spirituality. It seeks to awaken the spirituality of the spectator, to uplift them, to make them feel more alive. The modern world, with its material comforts and technology, is in desperate need of the spiritual awakening promised by great art. I tend to approach the world at an emotional and contemplative level. I don't try to rationalize it. I perceive it as an animal or child can do - not as an adult who draws his own conclusions.” was a bare response of Andrei Tarkovsky when asked what was his attitude to the world. David Kollar's guitar is marked with AT initials along with the title of one of the most significant European movies - "Stalker". Cabe destacar que este poeta en el cine, fue llevado al exilio por su renuncia a acatar dogmas culturales y las limitaciones ideológicas de su país en ese entonces, por lo que se dedicó en esos lentos años de angustia a escribir su libro "Esculpir en el tiempo" donde explica detalladamente sus ideas acerca de, no solo creo yo, del séptimo arte, sino de sus inquietudes respecto a la vida misma. Sculpting in Time (Russian "Запечатлённое время", literally "Captured Time") is a book by Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky about art and cinema in general, and his own films in particular. It was originally published in 1985 in German shortly before the author's death, and published in English in 1987, translated by Kitty Hunter-Blair. [1] The title refers to Tarkovsky's own name for his style of filmmaking.

Tarkovsky a través de sus obras, nos hace entender que está al tanto de la intangibilidad del ser humano, el potencial que tiene para experiencias emocionales profundas que no se puede comprender a través de la lógica o la razón, pero que se puede sentir íntimamente. Alexander, an actor who has given up the stage, is perpetually crushed by depression. Everything fills him with weariness: the pressures of change, the discord in his family, and his instinctive sense of the threat posed by the relentless march of technology. He has grown to hate the emptiness of human speech, from which he flees into a silence where he hopes to find some measure of truth. Alexander offers the audience the possibility of participating in his act of sacrifice, and of being touched by its results. (Not, I hope, in the sense of that ‘audience participation’ which is all too current among directors in both the USSR and the USA—and therefore also in Europe—and has become one of the two main trends of current cinema: the other being the so-called ‘poetic cinema’ where everything is deliberately made incomprehensible and the director has to think up explanations for what he has done.) Curiously, while the images of the film were being conceived, and indeed all the time the first version of the scenario was being written, regardless of the current circumstances of my life, the characters began to stand out more and more clearly, the action grew steadily more specific and structured. It was almost an independent process that entered my life of itself. Furthermore, while I was still making Nostalgia I could not escape the feeling that the film was influencing my life. In the Nostalgia scenario, Gorchakov had only come to Italy for a short time, but he fell ill and died. In other words, he failed to return to Russia not of his own volition, but by a dictate of fate. Nor did I imagine that after finishing Nostalgia I would remain in Italy; like Gorchakov, I am subject to a Higher Will. Another sad fact came to underline these thoughts: the death of Anatoliy Solonitsyn, who had played the lead in all my previous films and who, I assumed, would have the parts of Gorchakov in Nostalgia and of Alexander in The Sacrifice. He died of the illness of which Alexander was cured, and which a year later was to afflict me.

I am interested above all in the character who is capable of sacrificing himself and his way of life—regardless of whether that sacrifice is made in the name of spiritual values, or for the sake of someone else, or of his own salvation, or of all these things together. Such behaviour precludes, by its very nature, all of those selfish interests that make up a ‘normal’ rationale for action; it refutes the laws of a materialistic world view. It is often absurd and unpractical. And yet—or indeed for that very reason—the man who acts in that way brings about fundamental changes to people’s lives and to the course of history. The space he lives in becomes a rare, distinctive point of contrast to the empirical concepts of our experience, an area where reality is all the more strongly present. Tarkovsky argues that such an image is captured only when the director abandons all attempts at objectivity, building instead from his own personal storehouse of memory and experience. The Mirror is the most obvious example of this principle put to practice — it is a film filled with images from Tarkovsky’s own childhood. His approach to the film image (in a nutshell) is that an image based on Truth (even a completely subjective truth) will resonate much more strongly with an audience than will a cliched image that comes pre-loaded with supposedly objective symbolism. Works for me. I can barely make it through The Mirror without crying. Time, Rhythm and Editing For Tarkovsky, the greatest challenge associated with developing a script is maintaining the integrity of the film’s inspiration — “it almost seems as if circumstances have been deliberately calculated to make [the director] forget why it was that he started working on the picture” (125). For this reason, he argues that the director must also be the writer, or he must develop a partnership that is founded on complete trust. The majority of this section is devoted to The Mirror — Tarkovsky uses it as a case study of his method. Fascinating reading. The Film’s Graphic Realisation

Interesting books

These words could be interpreted as a rejection of the use of music in film altogether. In contrast to such a reading, however, I will argue that Tarkovsky’s vision of an “organisation of sounds and noises” exhibits remarkable parallels to larger developments in musical aesthetics of his time. In the form of fixated and sometimes manipulated everyday sounds, music is literally woven into Tarkovsky’s films and “available to the ear that wishes to perceive it”. ​3​ As such, the clinking glasses in The Sacrifice and Stalker, the singing shower in Mirror (1975), or the ubiquitous sounds of dripping water in his films reflect a plurality of concurrently developing musical practices.

My function is to make whoever sees my films aware of his need to love and to give his love, and aware that beauty is summoning him. — Tarkovsky David Kollar and his solo album “Sculpting in Time“ (Hevhetia 2019) – extraordinary guitar player composing/sculpturing extraordinary music with exceptional collaborators: Erik Truffaz and Arve Henriksen (both trumpet), Christian Fennesz (guitar & electronics), Pat Mastelotto (drummer of King Crimson, this time even reading Pasternak´s poem…). This piece of musical art is inspired primarily by the poetics of legendary film director Andrey Tarkovsky in many explicit and implicit levels: nevertheless Kollar´s inclination to his movies (especially Stalker and Mirror) is not either accidental, neither conjectural, but significative. It is connected with inner energy of nostalgia, desire and constant searching for deeper sense of our unpredictable lives. His introspective musical compositions are an expression of questioning our the most hidden, burning existential tensions. Sometimes they sounds conciliatorily, sometimes very disquietly, gradually they will bring you over deeply inside, where you can find maybe something forgotten, but important ultimately evoking unusual catharsis.." And then, in a matter of days, a new house was built, identical to the first. It seemed like a miracle, and proved what people can do when they are driven by conviction—and not just people, but the producers themselves. Para el cineasta, lo que define el montaje ya lo contiene cada escena rodada. El tiempo que transcurre en cada una de ellas determina el tiempo general de la estructura total de escenas en el montaje. Si ambos tiempos no coinciden, la película no funcionará. Esto lo ilustra con una película de Eisenstein, en la que éste quiso reproducir el propio tiempo dinámico de una batalla, pero lo hizo cortando escenas y editándolas una tras otra con velocidad. Según Tarkovski, ello es un fallo, ya que no dejó que cada escena contenga en sí misma el ritmo de la batalla y lo que hizo resultó artificioso y sin sentido. Para él, la escena debe rodarse ya con la intención del montaje y no buscarlo después, más bien, debe hallarse el espíritu de la escena.Y respecto a ello, a lo material, al materialismo (visto desde la filosofía, y desde la cultura de masas y el consumismo), Tarkovski, que salió de la URSS en 1983, se sitúa en un espacio cuasi paria al criticar a ambos sistemas, aunque no los nombre. No nombra al Capitalismo y al Comunismo, pero sí habla de Occidente y su materialismo (lo cierto es que también critica a ese cine comprometido y político de la URSS con el que no quería tener nada que ver), y cree que la materia amenaza con devorar el espíritu del hombre. También equipara el avance de la tecnología con esa pérdida de espíritu (de ahí que esté relacionado con la introducción de este texto, en el que hablo de la entrada de la tecnología en los dosmiles, cosa que de alguna manera Tarkovski predijo, pese a que murió en los aún analógicos ochentas). Para Tarkovski el cine comercial no tiene valor alguno más que como fuente de generación de dinero y según su idea, el artista no está ahí por enriquecerse. Su visión del arte es totalizadora y metafísica (en el sentido no-místico, sino de trascendencia de lo humano): el arte es lo que salva al hombre de la pérdida de su espíritu. "Y por eso, quizá realmente consista el sentido de la existencia humana en la creación de obras de arte, en el acto artístico, ya que este no posee una meta y es desinteresado". I once talked to the late Soviet physicist Landau on this subject. The setting was a shingle beach in the Crimea. If this word “music” is sacred and reserved for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century instruments, we can substitute a more meaningful term: organization of sound. What moved me was the theme of the harmony which is born only of sacrifice, the twofold dependence of love. It’s not a question of mutual love: what nobody seems to understand is that love can only be one-sided, that no other love exists, that in any other form it is not love. If it involves less than total giving, it is not love. It is impotent; for the moment, it is nothing.