AM Film Club #10: Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky, 1966)

[ordinaryperson]

IMDb/Wikipedia/Can I Stream It?
"Its greatness as moviemaking immediately evident, Andrei Rublev was the most historically audacious production in the twenty-odd years since Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible. Tarkovsky’s epic—and largely invented—biography of Russia’s greatest icon painter, Andrei Rublev (c. 1360–1430), was a superproduction gone ideologically berserk. Violent, even gory, for a Soviet film, Andrei Rublev is set against the carnage of the Tatar invasions and takes the form of a chronologically discontinuous pageant." - J. Hoberman, Criterion
You can review the film, discuss the film, do anything you want to do!

[whuntva]

Very good film.

I knew almost nothing of Tarkovsky beforehand, but after Rublev, I have since become obsessed with him.

He took subject matter I otherwise would not have been interested in and greatly expanded on it. the scene with the balloon in particular is one of my favorite moments in film.

The acting and writing are good, but Tarkovsky's style just overshadows everything else. It made my jaw drop in sheer awe at how it was put together.

I suppose if I had one complaint...maybe it is a bit long for its own good. But I still greatly admired its direction and scope.

10/10 Made my updated all-time list at #41.

[Jirin]

Andrei Rublev is one of my top ten films of all time.

The incredible cinematography is obvious, but what stands out most about the film is the emotional core. The child of a bell maker who stakes his life on knowledge that his father never transferred to him. The man who has a man's tongue cut off for vulgar entertainment. The film seamlessly explores human emotion with a political and religious backdrop inspired by a great Russian artist. I can not watch this film enough.

[babydoll]

Andrei Rublev is just one of those films that is somehow so revolutionary. From the opening sequence of the church and the way the camera pans, Tarkovsky just rivets you. And the way he separated the incidents into separate vignettes - I think I can probably recall them all now even after a couple of years. Oh, and that ending with the montage of the Andrei Rublev icons - the choral combined with the martyrdoms and the gold! I remember reading about a critic who had gotten so drunk one night that he hallucinated that entire ending. While I could write a full page essay detailing the film's odd mystique, I just say that this is a film to be revered even if you're not a fan.