2001 Tarkovsky Prize 2nd Place: Stella Lochman

IMAGES IN TARKOVSKY’S ANDREI RUBLEV

by Stella Lochman

The images in Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev may seem convoluted or unclear to the untrained eye. After first viewing the film a person feels as if they had just awoken from a dream where their mind was bombarded with more images than they could ever make sense of. But very much like a dream, after letting it settle into the mind everything begins to make sense.

It becomes clear that Tarkovsky wanted to divulge relationships between pictures and events with new and organic images. Tarkovsky believed that deliberately leaving his images open-ended would allow their meanings to continue to grow in the mind of the viewer, and refused to limit imagination with easy explanations that would manipulate the viewer. Tarkovsky had said, “What I’m interested in is not symbols, but images. An image has an unlimited number of possible interpretations.” Tarkovsky was using what is called poetic reasoning. “In my view poetic reasoning is closer to the laws by which thought develops, and thus to life itself, than is the logic of traditional drama.“

With that in mind, one can go over the recurring images in the film.

The first one that comes to mind is that of birds. The concept of flying has been haunting human minds for centuries now, but never in the same haunting way as in Andrei Rublev. The opening scene is of a man betraying all human laws and flying. Alone this could be a fairly simple image, but when you parallel it with the other images of birds in the film—including a constant rain of feathers inside a cathedral, and a disfigured swan, and any number of falling white birds—the idea of this man flying takes on a whole new level, particularly the fact that he fails. The birds in this film represent something pagan, or ritualistic. The fact that this man fails to fly could represent the downfall of all that is pagan. There is also a chicken that appears above the boy, the bell maker’s son, in the last sequence called “the Bell.” The bird is framed in a black window over the boy’s shoulder right before then men come to take him away. Though this chicken is nothing pagan, it’s docile attitude might represent something else: the end of this boy’s life on the farm, and the beginning of something big.

Another prominent symbol in Andrei Rublev is snow. Not only does the element give the film making a very “black on white” style, but it also symbolizes martyrdom of some kind. This is pure Tarkovsky to relate snow with martyrdom, a very unlikely match. Yet several times in the film people and things are seen eating snow. The first time snow is eaten is by Jesus Christ himself minutes before being crucified. The next thing to eat snow is one of the monk’s dogs, right before the dog fight scene in the “Charity” section. Minutes later the dog is attack by a Tartar’s dog. And finally snow is eaten in the Charity scene again. The deaf mute girl is shoveling handfuls of it into her mouth only minutes before being carried away on horseback by the Tartars.

Finally, there is the symbol that Andrei Rublev is famous for, the horses. Hundreds of horses of all colors and builds are seen through out the film. Tarkovsky makes a special point in his “poetic reasoning” to give each scene with a horse image a separate meaning. This first thing that’s important is the color of the horse. White horses are used in much different circumstances than black ones. Black horses bring up darker, more immoral ideals—all of the Tartars ride dark horses—where as white horses give the sense of purity. The most poignant example of the color difference is in the Crucifixion scene where in the front with the peasantry are six black horses, and alone at the top of the hill with Christ on the cross is a single white horse.

An extremely dramatic use of horses in the film is to associate them with the violence of man. During the Raid sequence, where a town is attacked and its inhabitants massacred, countless horses are slaughtered, the most stunning being, of course, the black horse that falls down a flight of stairs and then is stabbed to death with a lance. This single image stays in the mind long after leaving the film, and its meaning makes the viewer contemplate everything about life that seems unfair and horrible. There are also scenes where the horses regain their strength, as if coming to life again, and others where they buck their riders off. What all of this “horse business” comes down to is that Tarkovsky is able to change the meaning of his symbols in the running narrative of the film, while juxtaposing the images as well.

Andrei Rublev’s imagery and tone is summed up in the epilogue when the film transforms from black and white into color and scans over the real Andrei Rublev’s surviving work. What is amazing about this extraordinary sequence is that all of the images in the film reappear in this ten-minute scene. All of Tarkovsky’s imagery is paralleled in the actual work of Rublev. Two artists, hundreds of years apart, are working together to create an unforgettable dream. A dream one can always get lost in.