What becomes most apparent during the watching of 'Andrei Rublev', is that director Andrei Tarkovsky seems to be in love with himself. Rarely have i seen such pretentiousness and pseudo intellectuality in a major motion picture, but Andrei Rublev is definitely up there as one of the highest in that regard.
As usual in a Tarkovsky film, there is no conventional narrative in Andrei Rublev, thus making sure it is not personally accessible in any way. The film starts with a guy escaping in a hot air balloon while being chased by an angry mob of people. What does this scene mean? Nobody knows. But we can't understand it, so it must be art, right?? I reckon this is how many of these pretentious fanboys of this film view this matter. What Tarkovsky is doing in this entire film does not require any kind of imagination or creativity. He loosely creates short stories which have no cohesive connection with eachother, and he implements a lot of random dialogue or events that make it seem like it is actually a very clever film, while in reality it is devoid of all substance. A film that is not decipherable does not automatically make it 'art'. It just makes it meaningless, devoid of life & empty. Of course, all Tarkovsky films have this narcissistic kind of pretentiousness ( Even a good movie like Solaris ), but it is in this case painfully obvious that is is purely there to cover up the creative and emotional emptiness that this motion picture is full off.
Having seen the full 205 minute version of Andrei Rublev, it also became quite clear that there were numerous scenes and shots that simply held no value at all. The intro as stated before is an example, but there was also a shot of a horse tripping ( Which made no sense whatsoever ), the actual stabbing of an actual horse during one of the Tartar invasion scenes ( Which also made no sense ), and the fact that the final hour of the film suddenly brings forth a character nobody has seen before building a bell ( Again, there is very little structure at work here ). It is true that some of the shots during this final hour are phenomenally choreographed and created, also featuring a lot of dynamic crane camera movements which truly do make me wonder about how that was shot, but again, in substance, it is lacking severely. Not to mention the weird 15 minute outro by showing colorized iconographs. There's no doubt that pseudo intellectuals and self proclaimed 'film buffs' will find some hidden meaning there, but there really isn't any.
Tarkovsky uses a lot of biblical quotations and uninspired pseudo intelligent dialogue to make sure people are fooled into thinking this empty lifeless exercise in his narcissistic nature can be considered 'art'. With people today claiming that everything can be art according to the person in question, this is something that's not very hard to do. The truth is, not everything can be art, and Andrei Rublev is one of them, as it is the equivalent to a modern painting with 2 lines on it being called 'innovative', 'daring' & 'genius'. Both have no meaning.
Even though Tarkovsky is not necessarily a bad director, it's obvious that his self indulgent and narcissistic nature got the better of him for most of his films, thus creating 'Andrei Rublev', a pure exercise in subjective self-indulgence and wannabe art, which holds no actual value in quality apart from some technical brilliances.
As usual in a Tarkovsky film, there is no conventional narrative in Andrei Rublev, thus making sure it is not personally accessible in any way. The film starts with a guy escaping in a hot air balloon while being chased by an angry mob of people. What does this scene mean? Nobody knows. But we can't understand it, so it must be art, right?? I reckon this is how many of these pretentious fanboys of this film view this matter. What Tarkovsky is doing in this entire film does not require any kind of imagination or creativity. He loosely creates short stories which have no cohesive connection with eachother, and he implements a lot of random dialogue or events that make it seem like it is actually a very clever film, while in reality it is devoid of all substance. A film that is not decipherable does not automatically make it 'art'. It just makes it meaningless, devoid of life & empty. Of course, all Tarkovsky films have this narcissistic kind of pretentiousness ( Even a good movie like Solaris ), but it is in this case painfully obvious that is is purely there to cover up the creative and emotional emptiness that this motion picture is full off.
Having seen the full 205 minute version of Andrei Rublev, it also became quite clear that there were numerous scenes and shots that simply held no value at all. The intro as stated before is an example, but there was also a shot of a horse tripping ( Which made no sense whatsoever ), the actual stabbing of an actual horse during one of the Tartar invasion scenes ( Which also made no sense ), and the fact that the final hour of the film suddenly brings forth a character nobody has seen before building a bell ( Again, there is very little structure at work here ). It is true that some of the shots during this final hour are phenomenally choreographed and created, also featuring a lot of dynamic crane camera movements which truly do make me wonder about how that was shot, but again, in substance, it is lacking severely. Not to mention the weird 15 minute outro by showing colorized iconographs. There's no doubt that pseudo intellectuals and self proclaimed 'film buffs' will find some hidden meaning there, but there really isn't any.
Tarkovsky uses a lot of biblical quotations and uninspired pseudo intelligent dialogue to make sure people are fooled into thinking this empty lifeless exercise in his narcissistic nature can be considered 'art'. With people today claiming that everything can be art according to the person in question, this is something that's not very hard to do. The truth is, not everything can be art, and Andrei Rublev is one of them, as it is the equivalent to a modern painting with 2 lines on it being called 'innovative', 'daring' & 'genius'. Both have no meaning.
Even though Tarkovsky is not necessarily a bad director, it's obvious that his self indulgent and narcissistic nature got the better of him for most of his films, thus creating 'Andrei Rublev', a pure exercise in subjective self-indulgence and wannabe art, which holds no actual value in quality apart from some technical brilliances.