All that evidence of violence...

Years ago, before I was married, I often went to visit my mother in the country. She was still alive in those days. Her house, a little cottage, was surrounded by a garden a little garden, dreadfully neglected and overgrown. No one had tended it for many years and I don't think anyone had ever been in it. Even then, my mother was very ill. She almost never left the house. Still, amidst the ruin of the garden there was something that was, in its way, beautiful. Yes, now I know what it was. When the weather was fine, she often sat at the window looking out at the garden. She even had a special chair by the window. Once, though, I decided that I would tidy things up... in the garden, that is. I wanted to mow the grass, burn the weeds, prune the trees. On the whole, I wanted to redo the garden in my own taste with my own hands. Yes, simply to please my mother. And for two solid weeks I went at it with shears and a scythe. I dug and cut and sawed and weeded. I kept my nose to the ground, literally. And I took great pains to get it ready as soon as possible. My mother's condition grew worse, and she kept to her bed. But I wanted her to be able to sit by the window and see her new garden. In short, when I was finished and everything was ready, I took a bath put on fresh underwear, a new jacket, even a tie. Then I sat down in the chair to see what I'd made, through her eyes, as it were. I... I sat there... and looked out through the window. I had prepared myself to enjoy the sight. Anyway, I looked out the window and saw... What did I see? Where had all the beauty gone? The naturalness of it? It was so disgusting. All that evidence of violence...

Erland Josephson, The Sacrifice

Catastrophe / катастрофа

I've just finished reading Serhii Plokhy's excellent 2018 book Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe, and watching some remarkable footage this morning of the liquidators - the brave civil and military personnel tasked with cleaning up the radioactive debris ejected from the stricken reactor 4. Looking at pictures of taken from within Chernobyl’s Zone of Exclusion, the discarded, disintegrating military vehicles; abandoned residential blocks being slowly reclaimed by the wilderness, my thoughts are inevitably drawn to Tarkovsky’s film Stalker and the eerie way the film anticipates life after the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster. As per the film, the photographers who took these pictures may well have sneaked into the Zone (strict permission is required to pass thru the military checkpoints), and perhaps a guide or a stalker was required to lead them around pockets of radiation - apparently the poisonous radioactive dust that coats the Zone is more prevalent on foliage than asphalt roads. Something else to reflect on was the high number of crew members, including Tarkovsky, who developed cancer in the ensuing years – most probably from working in the poisonous ruins of the Estonian power station where Stalker was filmed. Seeing the film nowadays I can’t help but wince when I see the actors wading thru pools of dirty water (think of the famous shot of Alexander Kaidanovsky dozing in the stream), or negotiating their way thru spaces filthy with toxic dust. Perhaps one can draw a parallel between the Chernobyl liquidators and the Stalker crew - both groups heroically struggling in the face of adversity to complete their missions; the liquidators working to limit the environmental damage, and the Stalker crew battling to get Tarkovsky's film made after the catastrophic loss of the first draft of the film...

"The Planet Where Nightmares Come True"

My Facebook feed is adorned with serious eye-candy this morning, a meme is doing the rounds prompting folks to post their favourite movie posters. I've been asked for my nomination and any reason to indulge in one's obsessions is always welcome. So today, I've chosen the British quad poster for Solaris. Tarkovsky's film has been blessed with several fine posters - Andrzej Bertrandt's austere design for the Polish release, and Renato Casaro's Italian poster which sidesteps the complexities of Tarkovsky's film in favor of a beautifully illustrated Boy's Own Sci-Fi adventure painting. Both good examples of just how differently the same film can be presented by its advertising materials. The British poster is my favourite though, dispensing with artwork entirely and featuring two striking stills from the film nicely overlaid with some barnstorming blurbs: "The Planet Where Nightmares Come True" and The Spectator's erroneous yet irresistible "Russia's answer to 2001". And I like the comment from the contemplative Daily Express critic: "Mindstorming in its implications"

One incidental thought... The tagline on the Solaris poster “The Planet Where Nightmares Come True…” felt oddly familiar to me and it seems I was thinking of the UK quad poster for Eraserhead which had the tagline “Where your nightmares end…” I thought this emphasis on nightmares might be some quaint English thing but a quick search reveals the German Eraserhead poster also features the same line: “Wo die ALPTRAUME enden…” I don’t believe the line is present on any of the original American posters.

Rerberg and Tarkovsky: The Reverse Side of Stalker

With the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster inching closer, I plan to revisit Tarkovsky's Stalker, a film that seems indelibly twinned with the catastrophe, and to preface this screening, I watched the 2009 documentary Rerberg and Tarkovsky: The Reverse Side of Stalker, at the w/end, a long and engrossing film about the troubled production of Tarkovsky's great work. Georgi Rerberg who photographed Mirror and was originally assigned to shoot Stalker was sacked from the production when the footage he shot was deemed unsatisfactory. Worse still, Rerberg was blamed for not adequately testing the film stock when it was discovered to be unusable, resulting in the scrapping of Stalker draft 1. Tarkovsky burned thru a second cameraman and a second abandoned version of Stalker before completing the version released in 1979, but Rerberg’s reputation was destroyed by the experience, compounded by Tarkovsky’s snide and harmful comments made about Rerberg in the French edition of his diaries.

Georgi Rerberg on the camera platform with Tarkovsky and actor Alexander Kaidanovsky to the left

Igor Mayboroda’s documentary is a harsh rebuttal of those diary entries and unsurprisingly Tarkovsky doesn’t come out of it particularly well, the director placing the blame for the disaster of Stalker on his cameraman, after Tarkovsky himself pushed Rerberg beyond the limits of what the film stock could handle. Tarkovsky’s wife Larissa actually emerges worst from the film, the consensus was that she was an arch manipulator, bitter about not landing the role of the Stalker’s wife. Having watched the documentary, I feel like Margarita Terekhova from Mirror, sitting on the fence. Rerberg was treated terribly by Tarkovsky but I can’t take the leap of faith that Rerberg was a genius, a reputation which rests by and large on his extraordinary work in Mirror. Ironically though it’s the finished version of Stalker that earns the shoddiest treatment, the film is all but dismissed along with Alexander Knyazhinsky’s stunning camerawork, apart from one singled-out shot of Rerberg’s that survived the reportedly 19 final cuts - the memorable pan across the scummy toxic lake. Still, for Stalker and Tarkovsky fans, the film is required viewing and can be seen here  (with excellent English subs).

Mirror - the Definite Article

I wonder are there any Russian speakers reading this ? Artificial Eye are set to release Tarkovsky's 7 feature films on BR later this year, kicking off with Ivan's Childhood in April and culminating with The Sacrifice in July. No further details so far but all 7 covers have been posted online and I'm liking them very much. Which brings me to Mirror. Previous AE editions of Tarkovsky's film, the VHS and DVD, have been under the title of Mirror but the new BR artwork suggests they've gone for the inferior title of The Mirror. This necessitated some investigation as to whether the film comes with a definite article or not and I'm still not sure - some territories added the definite article, others didn't. Foreign language titles are fluid of course, but I'm curious to know if the Russian title зеркало translates as Mirror or The Mirror... I posed the question on my Facebook page and Michael Brooke, who's reliably knowledgeable about Eastern European and Russian Cinema chimed in with:

Russian doesn't have articles, so Mirror, The Mirror and indeed A Mirror are all valid translations. Had his last film been made in Russian, it might well have reached English-speaking markets as Sacrifice - and that's undoubtedly how Tarkovsky himself would have thought of it.

Zona

Finished reading Zona: A Book about a Film about a Journey to a Room, Geoff Dyer’s 2013 book about Tarkovsky’s film Stalker. Dyer’s book is not a scholarly study of the film but a scene-by-scene commentary on a film that has fascinated and obsessed the author for the past 30 years. It’s a short, breezy read (the book can easily be digested in one sitting), and while Tarkovsky students might feel frustrated that the book reveals little new about the film, Dyer has left me with at least one notion that I will take to my next screening of the film. With tongue firmly in his cheek Dyer imagines the mysterious black dog, possibly abandoned or separated from its owner in the Zone, has in fact ventured into the Room and has had its heart’s desire – of being adopted by a loving family – granted. Hence his reappearance in the final act of the film, back in the industrial wasteland of the Stalker’s home, happily lapping milk and finding a gentle companion in the Stalker’s daughter. It’s a lovely idea and it’s a measure of the brilliance of Dyer’s short book that it has increased my love of the film even more. Highly recommended reading.