Tarkovsky, SCULPTING IN TIME
---> better to read as one long thing though.
given the competition with commercial cinema, a director has a particular responsibility towards his audiences. i mean by this that because of cinema's unique power to affect an auditorium- in the identification of the screen with life- the most meaningless, unreal commercial film can have just the same kind of magical effect on the uncritical and uneducated cinema-goer as that derived by his discerning counterpart from a real film. the tragic and crucial difference is that if art can stimulate emotions and ideas, mass-appeal cinema, because of its easy irresistible effect, extinguishes all traces of thought and feeling irrevocably. people cease to feel any need for the beautiful or the spiritual, and consume films like bottles of coca-cola. the contact between film director and audience is unique to cinema that it conveys experience imprinted on film in uncompromisingly affectie and therefore compelling forms. the viewer feels a need for such vicarious experience in order to make up in part for what he himself has lost or missed; he pursues it in a kind of 'search for lost time'. and how human this newly gained experience will be depends only on the author. a grave responsibility.!
i therefore find it very hard to understand it when artists talk about absolute creative freedom. i dont understand what is meant by that sort of freedom, for it seems to me that if you have chosen artistic work you find yourself bound by chains of necessity, fettered by the tasks you set yourself and by your own artistic vocation.
-
in the course of my work i have noticed time and again, that if the external emotional structure of a film is based on the author's memory, when impressions of his personal life have been transmuted into screen images, then the film will have the power to move those who see it. but if a scene has been devised intellectually, following the tenets of literature, then no matter how conscientiously and convincingly it is done, it will still leave the audience cold. in fact even though it may strike some people as interesting and comelling when it first comes out, it will have no vital force and will not stand the test of time.
in other words, since you cant use the audiences experience in the way that literature does, allowing for an 'asiesthetic assimilation' to take place in the consciousness of each reader- in cinema this is actually not feasible- you have to impart your own experience with the greatest possibhle sincerity. not that this is easy, you have to steel yourself to do it
! that is why even today when all sorts of people, many of them barely literate professionally, have the possibility of making films, cinema can still only count a handful of masters in the entire woorld.
---
'I trust, engineer, that you have nothing against malice? I consider it to be reason's most brilliant weapon against darkness and ugliness. Malice, my dear sir, is the soul of criticism, and criticism - the source of progress and enlightenment.' The artist seeks to destroy the stability by which society lives, for the sake of drawing closer to the ideal. Society seeks stability, the artist- infinity. The artist is concerned with absolute truth, and therefore gazes ahead and sees things sooner than other people.
--
I see it as my duty to stimulate reflection on what is essentially human and eternal in each individual soul, and which all too often a person will pass by, even though his fate lies in his hands. He is too busy chasing after phantoms and bowing down to idols. In the end everything can be reduced to the one simple element which is all a person can count upon in his existence: the capacity to love. That element can grow within the sould to become the supreme factor which determines the meaning of a person's life. 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.
given the competition with commercial cinema, a director has a particular responsibility towards his audiences. i mean by this that because of cinema's unique power to affect an auditorium- in the identification of the screen with life- the most meaningless, unreal commercial film can have just the same kind of magical effect on the uncritical and uneducated cinema-goer as that derived by his discerning counterpart from a real film. the tragic and crucial difference is that if art can stimulate emotions and ideas, mass-appeal cinema, because of its easy irresistible effect, extinguishes all traces of thought and feeling irrevocably. people cease to feel any need for the beautiful or the spiritual, and consume films like bottles of coca-cola. the contact between film director and audience is unique to cinema that it conveys experience imprinted on film in uncompromisingly affectie and therefore compelling forms. the viewer feels a need for such vicarious experience in order to make up in part for what he himself has lost or missed; he pursues it in a kind of 'search for lost time'. and how human this newly gained experience will be depends only on the author. a grave responsibility.!
i therefore find it very hard to understand it when artists talk about absolute creative freedom. i dont understand what is meant by that sort of freedom, for it seems to me that if you have chosen artistic work you find yourself bound by chains of necessity, fettered by the tasks you set yourself and by your own artistic vocation.
-
in the course of my work i have noticed time and again, that if the external emotional structure of a film is based on the author's memory, when impressions of his personal life have been transmuted into screen images, then the film will have the power to move those who see it. but if a scene has been devised intellectually, following the tenets of literature, then no matter how conscientiously and convincingly it is done, it will still leave the audience cold. in fact even though it may strike some people as interesting and comelling when it first comes out, it will have no vital force and will not stand the test of time.
in other words, since you cant use the audiences experience in the way that literature does, allowing for an 'asiesthetic assimilation' to take place in the consciousness of each reader- in cinema this is actually not feasible- you have to impart your own experience with the greatest possibhle sincerity. not that this is easy, you have to steel yourself to do it
! that is why even today when all sorts of people, many of them barely literate professionally, have the possibility of making films, cinema can still only count a handful of masters in the entire woorld.
---
'I trust, engineer, that you have nothing against malice? I consider it to be reason's most brilliant weapon against darkness and ugliness. Malice, my dear sir, is the soul of criticism, and criticism - the source of progress and enlightenment.' The artist seeks to destroy the stability by which society lives, for the sake of drawing closer to the ideal. Society seeks stability, the artist- infinity. The artist is concerned with absolute truth, and therefore gazes ahead and sees things sooner than other people.
--
I see it as my duty to stimulate reflection on what is essentially human and eternal in each individual soul, and which all too often a person will pass by, even though his fate lies in his hands. He is too busy chasing after phantoms and bowing down to idols. In the end everything can be reduced to the one simple element which is all a person can count upon in his existence: the capacity to love. That element can grow within the sould to become the supreme factor which determines the meaning of a person's life. 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.