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The Tarkovsky Test: Hang In For The Long Shots
by | Feb 25, 2024 1:16 pm
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Posted to: Film
Andrei Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia
Film Forum
West Village, NYC
Feb. 23, 2024
The average shot length in contemporary, big-budget films — both your Marvel slogs and flacccid A24 pseudo-arthouse meanderings — is, by my very cursory research, somewhere between six and two seconds.
If one were to replace the images enlivened within these frames with, say, slides of alternating color, most modern films would be rendered nothing so much as strobing lights, never lingering on one slide long enough to even allow the color to register in any quality other than their constant shifting. It is, quite frankly, a small miracle that the goopy hardware in our skulls — no longer though as the mystical seat of a soul, but only soup solid enough for neurons to carve permanent impressions through — has stood up to this test, this shift in our mode of storytelling. The simple fact that we can still hold narrative cohesion together through all of this astounds me. But, it has perhaps come at a cost. And even if not at a cost, it would still very likely behoove us to realize there are other ways to experience the totalizing art of cinema.
Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (1932 – 1986) is perhaps one of the great long-takes champions. Over his entire oeuvre, time is his primary concern, joining like glue his other recurring thematic obsessions: God, the common good, the poetry of the image… hell, poetry in general.
There are many more pet themes in Tarkovsky’s work, but these will suffice for now as they seem sufficiently “retrograde” to further the modest case I’d like to build.
Whether it’s as in the film screened Friday night, Nostalghia (1983), where time is star and principle in the film’s longing for days past, or as in others where the story (Andrei Rublev) takes place within history that’s been lost (destroyed, moreover) or where escaping the present is the motivator (Stalker), Tarkovsky is obsessive. It’s the game he’s always playing. How long a scene is, how distant in the narrative time is it from the scene previous, what’s the ratio in the weight between beginnings and endings.
The most obvious rendering of this obsession, though, is in his long shots: If Tarkovsky is filming a brick wall, he’s gonna hold you there until you start counting the bricks.
There’s a glorious disorientation that arises here. So used to having images flash by, having exposition spoon-fed to us by dialogue spoken almost directly to the camera — so used to art apologizing for itself, for making so little demand on our “real” time— a contemporary and uninitiated viewer of Tarkovsky’s work will often find themselves bored or lulled even to sleep, confused by the continuity being broken the largesse of his pacing.
But, if you can hang — if you can put your failing attention span to the real test of holding everything Andrei gives you — the depths of something great, heavy, and — here’s the kicker — fucking true about yourself, the film, and your fellow human animals will be revealed to you. Full stop.
Friday’s story was simple: Russian poet is in Italy on a research grant (Maybe? Maybe he’s exhiled? Doesn’t matter, he’s not home). While in Italy he meets a religious mad-man. They talk. The Russian is moved. The rest of the movie happens. There’s Beethoven, fire, and a final shot for the ages. Two hours gone. The end. Incredible stuff. Beyond the written word.
It’s a blessing places like Film Forum exist. The opportunity to see these films on the silver screen, trapped in the theater and undistracted, is a privilege that all New York nerds should remind themselves of. Home viewing is nothing compared to this. The movie is playing until Thursday — go, give yourself the test. Can you hang, or has your brain been broken by flashing lights?
