Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky Through Analyzing The Sacrifice

They Light Up the House and Die

Amir Siadat

Andrei Rublev and his companions notice a single-tree while leaving for Moscow: "Every day I passed by this tree, but it had not caught my attention until now. However, when you know you won't see it again, the situation is different." And the cinema of Tarkovsky ends with the view of a single-tree that will never be forgotten, because it could have been destroyed by the outbreak of a nuclear war. Now that it’s standing there, you can watch it with fear and wish it will turn green one day. A single-tree is the embodiment of hope, but fragile and in need of care and treatment, for which a heavy price is paid: someone burned his house and cut himself off from his family. It is like a sapling that the late filmmaker left behind with pain and difficulty for us and - maybe - for the filmmakers after him. We look at this reminiscent and seek our answers in it, whilst the last words are in line with the importance of the question, a question to get a fundamental "meaning", and is asked from "Father": "At the beginning there was word. Why father?". Although, like the little boy, we are left with endless questions about the "father" who is no longer there, but we are not the previous silent observer. The Sacrifice has made us ask question. Undoubtedly, Tarkovsky's early farewell is regrettable, but this last work has such a tone of a testament and has so vigorously collected his stylistic elements and familiar motifs and brought it to a conclusion that it is hard to imagine another film by him after The Sacrifice. In this final film, eminent aspects of the previous works can be seen. With its burning, the house recalls Mirror, and the hut and the fire, which, with the appearance of motifs of the horror of war and atomic mushrooms, draw a comprehensive threat that, in the next steps, from Stalker's despondent geography to the barren world of Nostalgia intensified and took on an apocalyptic tone. The fantastic experience that Alexander goes through is also similar to Kris's journey in Solaris. Alexander, also, is connected to Domenico with his spiritual function, as a scapegoat, and to Gorchakov in Nostalgia by being away from his family. His ascetic silence at the end evokes the silence of Andrei Rublev, and faith is the link that connects him and Stalker and Gorchakov together. However, in order to explain better what the audience experiences in the company of Alexander, we can go back and remember that a few decades before he saves the world from destruction with his frenetic faith, Johannes in Ordet – who is gone mad immersing in Kierkegaard's works - takes the hands of a young girl to bring her mother back to life. Dreyer's film does not share the mystical experience of Johannes with the viewer. Before the miracle, Johannes like a ghost is coming and going, and the viewer sees him as a delirious madman and probably does not take him seriously. Ordet's viewer's perception of Johannes, in all situations, both before and after the miracle, is the same as the perception of those around him. But In The Sacrifice, the audience's relationship with the miracle-worker and those around him - at least at first glance - seems completely reversed, because Tarkovsky allows the audience to witness the "revelation" process. As a result, Alexander's actions after the return of balance to the world, which are inexplicable and neurotic in the eyes of his relatives, more or less have a clear meaning for the audience (the audience knows that burning the house and being silent is a vow that the "chosen one" is obliged to fulfill). The ones who have closely walked the steps of " journey " with Alexander, believe in his truthfulness and understand the depth of his loneliness. Alexander will remain silent forever and the audience will be his only confidant.

If we take this mystical view as the basis, the path that Alexander passes is almost the same as the Danish philosopher discussed in Fear and Trembling relying on the test of Abraham (sacrificing Ismael): stepping on a turbulent path and insisting on a belief that is incompatible with morals and wisdom, and finally the fulfillment of miracles. The Prophet has no doubt that even if he takes the son's life, Ismael will be returned to him in this world (and not in heaven) and Alexander believes that his individual action will restore peace to the world. The Intercourse of Alexander and the servant (Maria) is outside the boundaries of conventional morality and marital frameworks, and with any rational logic it will not be leading to the salvation of the world. It is not causality and reasoning, but faith or "divine madness" that explains what Abraham and Alexander did and its consequences. The purpose of this " interpretation of The Sacrifice as an invitation to revive spiritual ideals. But this interpretation is not certain. Mentioning Nietzsche, during the conversation between Alexander and Otto, cannot be an insignificant reference. The mentioning of this name, just like the mentioning of Kierkegaard's name in Ordet, serves the thematic development of the work and even presents a new perspective, contrary to the prevailing mystical perception. The world that we see in The Sacrifice (not only in The Sacrifice, in all of Tarkovsky's works and especially in Nostalgia and Stalker) is the same haven where the madman of The Gay Science wanders around it and searches for God with a lamp in his hand and rebukes people for killing the most sacred of meanings; a world where doubt has replaced ancient certainty, pious ideals have become unbelievable, and the sun of meaning has set. Darkness (in both literal and metaphorical sense) is covering all of existence, but somewhere, there is a light: In the ascetic solitude of Maria, whose proximity to the monastery has given her the image of a saint. Nevertheless, Alexander's intercourse with Maria and the subsequent accordance of the universe in terms of the formation pattern has nothing to do with Christianity and goes back to the very ancient matriarchal ritual, the Sacred Marriage; A lustful ritual that believed in a magical relationship between the human body and plant life, and as its result the earth would be fertilized and order would return to the cycle of plants. This ritual, with all its intoxication, enthusiasm and liberation, is connected to the same pre-ethical culture that Nietzsche calls Dionysian and he considered this culture the victim of the Socratic and Christian cultures (two cultures which - according to the philosopher - are the negation of intoxication and mirth, and are concerned with the metaphysic) and was determined to stand against modern nihilism by reviving it. When Tarkovsky, in a scene in Andrei Rublev, portrayed the contrast of medieval strictness with the earthly rituals of the forest dwellers, he was referring to the issue of the vanquishing of life and primitive nature in the altar of monasticism. Where Rublev calls the forest rites "satanic" to the "witch", we find the asceticism far away from his nature. This sign of asceticism can be traced in the pious of Nostalgia. Eugenia is offended because Gorchakov rejected her and did not respond to her will, because Gorchakov was always looking for the "saint" and the spiritual aspects of love, and wanted a relationship free from physical stains. The psychological dimensions of this "issue" become more evident by recalling the images and motifs and ironic Oedipal moments in Mirror, which is the film of the roots: a child stands behind a closed door and has no way in. When the door opens, we see the mother and a guard dog next to her. A bird jumps out by breaking the window of the house. A woman powerfully descends an axe to decapitate a rooster, then looks menacingly at the camera (or at the man behind the camera). Her gaze is interrupted by an image of the mother hanging above (and not on) a bed with the father standing next to it, a father who is absent (or pushed away), but his "word" is inseparable from the son and the son's narration (poetry and voice of Arseny Tarkovsky, father of the filmmaker). Otto admits while looking at the painting of Adoration of the Magi with awe and admiration that he is afraid of Da Vinci's "depth of soul", perhaps because in Da Vinci's paintings there are always hidden two-sided aspects that can guide the audience from the heart of the sacred stories to the whimsical twists and turns of mind, revealing the earthliest secrets to him (as Freud indicates ) and even sow seeds of doubt in his soul. Isn't the depth of Tarkovsky's soul just as terrifying? And can it be said that what drew Alexander to Maria was not a heavenly decree, but an inner call and the rise of suppressed desire? - a forbidden desire that has no way to emerge except to be exalted and impose itself as a spiritual message. In this way, The Sacrifice is completely emptied of its transcendental connotations and a totally opposite viewpoint opens before the eyes.

Tarkovsky seems to have provided several reasons for us to consider Alexander's story not as a "revelation" but as a "nightmare" or "spiritual turmoil": from the very beginning, Alexander's bleak isolation is felt. His long monologues addressed to a boy unable to speak (and at some moments, perhaps, addressed to a hypothetical listener), has deepened this isolation (at the same time, the lack of appropriateness of these pompous monologues with the situation of the young audience, informs the troubled thoughts of the speaker) and Otto also points to the depression tendencies in him. It seems that he is alone in the coldn house, miles away from his wife (Adelaide) and daughter, who are "closer" to Victor, the family doctor (Adelaide somewhere explicitly says she had loved another man). Alexander`s mind, as evidenced by his background, is an accumulation of philosophy and anecdotes related to ancient religions. Is it possible that he, like Johannes in Ordet, has become psycho as a result of this loaded philosophical knowledge? Is it possible that everything we hear and see about the nuclear conflict and its consequences is the expression of his creative mind and a mechanism to resolve his psychological complexes? Alexander's philosophic words, as long as he talks about the slips of civilization and the evil use of science and testifies to the "more spiritual" nature of "primitive people" (probably the same forest dwellers who are familiar with nature), have a meaningfultone. Such general and explicit propositions should never be taken as equivalent to the ultimate "message" of the film. Here the word wants to hide more than it reveals. While dealing with Alexander's personality, it offers a way to penetrate to the core of his soul and find more personal truths that he - probably - has denied. Alexander used to be an actor. A profession that is tied to concealment and disguise. The icon of the philosopher is beneficial for a "pious" actor to add a sublime and spiritual meaning ("the last hope to save the world") to the untold mysteries (related to a loveless house) and his needs (finding a lover). In the drama planned by the actor, his madness has also gained a lofty form and an epic-like effect suitable as the dignity of a philosopher: A messenger will save the world by himself! Through the projective mechanism of the narration, the dramatist can take materials from the surroundings and make them symbolic depending on their capacities: bestow a postman (Otto) the appearance of the messenger of the gods (Hermes) or make a saint out of a maid (Maria). Although here an immoral and sinful act has taken on the meaning of "sacred duty", but the punishment still remains. Alexander, who is so eloquent, keeps his mouth shut forever (like Oedipus Rex, who blinded himself, after realizing his sin) and prepares to go to the "prison" of madmen. In this way, the pattern of the ancient cult of fertility will also come to an end: the priest goes to the altar after the sacred marriage, and accomplishing his function.

Having said that, is it wrong to say that Alexander thought his illusions were revelations and by drowning into them, he cut out from logic? The positive answer brings The Sacrifice several steps closer to Solaris. There, is also the whole of that difficult path (which the slowness of "time" has embodied his suffering more than any other element), the summoning of memory and Kris's encounter with the "image" of Hari (his wife) and finally getting rid of his guilty conscience and recovering himself (after that initial disorientation), evokes the process of psychotherapy. We know that an external entity has not "appeared" on Kris and that it is the contents of his mind that is processing and embodying (the woman we see is not Hari herself, but Kris's mental Hari). Kris's unconscious mind needs to reconcile these false images and dreams with reality in order to separate or farewell (an act that has not been done before, due to Hari's death in Kris's absence), overcome the pang of conscience and descend from the clouds of illusion to the "earth". The night of the "incident" in The Sacrifice also has a very imaginary effect. The visual chaos that happens following the meeting between Alexander and Maria, sets the scene for the end of the darkness and the coming of the day, as if we are waking up from a terrible nightmare together with Alexander. From the moment Alexander wakes up, everything - except his own behavior - seems normal. The family is busy with their daily affairs and their calmness shows that they do not know anything about what we have seen up to that moment. Doubts gradually resonate: What does this normality and calmness mean? Does it mean that a miracle has really happened and everything has returned to its former state, that there is no longer a trace of terror on the face and behavior of the family? Can the ignorance of the family be seen as a sign that there was no tragedy at all and that everything just happened in Alexander's mind? Should Alexander really be called a miracle-working believer or a troubled man who believes in being the savior of the world? Should we praise him or feel pity for him? The film is based on inseparability and gives way to both paths. Alexander can be both a savior and a madman, although - probably - the viewer is in favor the savior, maybe because the savior instills hope and validates the "meaning of the world". But the relationship between the audience and Domenico in Nostalgia is reversed. He remains a ragged mystic who, in a world devoid of meaning, like Don Quixote adheres to ancient meanings. It is even possible to take a half-look at his fruitless self-immolation (which upsets only one dog and does not bother the spectators who stand motionless like statues) and consider Nostalgia to be only one step away from a nihilistic work, and be terrified of Domenico's beliefs, since he has locked his family for a long time in the darkness to be safe from the evil of the world. Such a difference comes back to the point of view (POV). If we have always watched (and judged) Domenico from the "outside", The Sacrifice has shared Alexander's "inner" world with us. It is difficult to see and judge him apart from those subjective images. So, despite the remarkable similarities of both works and their lack of certainty, we finally find one on the verge of blackness and the other bitter but - on the whole - hopeful. The Sacrifice does not reveal whether what we have seen was a true journey or the emanations of a confused mind, leaving a much more complicated question: what’s the difference between this two aspects? But for the "miracle" of Alexander, a signification other than what has been discussed can also be recognized, that has a completely reflective and filmic nature: Alexander takes refuge in the camera from the horror of the war, and prays to it, and desperately asks the "Creator" to prevent the disaster. It is not possible to consider the conventional examples of supplication in main stream cinema and ignore the unusual and meaningful relation of the camera and the charachter in this scene. If Alexander's wish is answered, maybe it is because his words are addressed to the camera (to the camera itself), with the hope that the author will break the established structure and have a hand in the fate of his characters - the miracle that cinema can fulfill. Contemplating for a while here shows that almost all the moments and ideas related to miracles in the previous works had a vague relation with the apparatus. Even if we do not want to read the candle that Gorchakov innocently tries to keep lit as a metaphor of cinema, the aspirational final frame and the juxtaposition of the Russian house with a church in Tuscany, first of all, portrays the cinema's ability to represent a desired world (in a film whose problem is "Language's inadequacy" and "the need to remove the borders". The movement of the glass through the glance of a crippled girl is reminiscent of special effects in the simplest possible form, and it is enough to remember the description of the astronauts of that mysterious planetary ocean and replace the word cinema with Solaris: "A place where the border between reality and fantasy is lost and It can give physicality to a person's thoughts". Even the dimly lit rooms that sheltered Gorchakov and Alexander in Nostalgia and The Sacrifice, apart from being correctly likened to a womb, also display a kind of dark room (Camera Obscura). While Gorchakov is gone to bed in the darkness of the guest house, the window flashes a strip of light on his face to create an atmosphere with the sound of rain and the playfulness of light and shadow, reminiscent of the projection booth and the spinning reels of the film. The dream begins, the boundaries break down and a scene that is clearly a reference to Persona (a film with a more revelatory aspect that opens with a direct displaying of the cinema apparatus) brings Maria and Eugenia together. This poetry relies on the Defamiliarization and tends to record the moment and distort the boundaries of memory and imagination (and the mind and the object), which creates ambiguity, in which impossibilities become possible and all the things that the socialist realism of the time rejected (because It was neither acceptable to the "people"/mass of the audience, nor could it be completely "mastered"), is Tarkovsky's safe haven, a place similar to the "zone" in Stalker, and a forbidden area in the eyes of statesmen and soldiers. Stalker tells his two companions that he is satisfied with his situation and has no wishes, while we have seen his life and know that he needs a miracle. He needs the zone so that - in Nietzsche's words - "reality" does not suffocate him. If the outside world is rotten and soulless and mysterious, the zone activates his imagination. There he can recreate the ancient myths and live them. Through incarnating into the archetype of the monk, he can guide passers-by across a mysterious path and warn them to be careful or "the zone will punish them." The proof-oriented look of two traveling companions does not fit with his spiritual preoccupations. "Critics" are also present in Solaris. The scientific-experimental viewpoint of Sartorius blames kris, because he is enchanted by illusions and infatuated with virtual statue. This arrogant blaming also hurts the audience, because the audience is a dreamer like kris and likes "deception" and "illusion", especially when the reality is somewhere like Sartorius's laboratory! By immersing us in the magic of the "Ocean", Tarkovsky has been able to show how much we are thirsty for illusion and magic inside. His anti-rationalism ideas and the scope of his imagination not only shapes his cinema in opposition to the cultural apparatus of communism, but also challenges the hegemony of modern thought and the myth of the rational man.

Tarkovsky's maniacal men, as if from the heart of the middle centuries, have come to the contemporary era to restore the lost spirituality in response to what the modern age has left behind. The sympathetic situation of these people is not because of the spirit of this invitation to return, but mainly is due to the inequality of the conflict they are facing, their inferior position and profound loneliness and to the fact that their simplistic and - perhaps - imaginary message has no advocate in the new era. Although Tarkovsky sanctifies these men as pious messengers, he does not hesitate to let censorious rationalists call them crazy. He is not even afraid that they will take them as his reflection and consider himself a part of this "madness". Isn’t it that with his unique approach to cinema and with that unrivaled language and message, he was as isolated and maverick as his characters? And wasn't The Sacrifice for him like a candle in the hands of Gorchakov who, despite his illness, faithfully stood "to save the world" and reached his destination with his last breaths? Is talking about "faith" and "self-sacrifice", at the end of a century full of strife and chaos and totalitarianism, crazy and unrealistic? What if there is no way out in reality? Rublev found liberation in returning to art, and when he broke his years of silence after the invasion of the Tatars and turned to painting again, the film became colorized. By falling down, Gorchakov achieved his desired "image". Kris could not let go of an unrealistic beloved and Stalker did not let them blow up the room of dreams. He knew that as long as this room exists, there is hope, a sorrowful hope. Hope as an aim, with no expectation to happen. And the creater of all these is a man who, in exile and on the verge of death, even when the sheer darkness is about to take over the “home", still talks about living and hope, even if this hope is the flame of a small candle. He and his characters are like this: "They stand against the thunder. They light up the house. and die".