Contemplation & Conversation — 5 Tarkovsky Quotes
I’m always looking for inspiration. Today, let’s look at 5 quotes from Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986). I hope you’ll find a few interesting ideas to contemplate. I’ll offer my take below each quoted passage. Feel free to add your thoughts in the comment section.
Here we go…
The artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn’t look for harmony but would simply live in it.
I see the world as always being in process. Individual people are always in a state of change. We get older. We grow and get stronger. We shrink and get weaker. Our moods change. Our circumstances change.
My understanding is that an artist first seeks and finds meaning somewhere. He then crafts a product which transmits that meaning to his audience. The artist’s expertise is to find meaning and to recreate it for others.
(I haven’t seen it but my guess is that the recent Barbie movie does not do this).
Never try to convey your idea to the audience—it is a thankless and senseless task. Show them life, and they’ll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it.
Tarkovsky’s idea here is to avoid directly telling your audience what to think. Even if you’re convinced that you know exactly what they ought to think and how they ought to act; even if they are headed straight for disaster—don’t lecture your audience. Tell a story. Ask a question. Make an observation. But don’t lecture. The audience has to see for themselves. Yes, the artist has seen for himself. The audience deserves the opportunity for the same rich experience.
It is obvious that art cannot teach anyone anything, since in four thousand years humanity has learnt nothing at all. We should long ago have become angels had we been capable of paying attention to the experience of art, and allowing ourselves to be changed in accordance with the ideals it expresses. Art only has the capacity, through shock and catharsis, to make the human soul receptive to good.
For those who are immersed in art for years it feels as if people would learn this way. In fact, something is learned through art and those on the periphery of art have no awareness of it. Fundamental questions of existence, meaning, purpose, freewill, self-esteem, god, nature, Nature's God, and countless others are raised in art.
What nobody seems to understand is that love can only be one-sided, that no other love exists, that in any other form it is not love. If it involves less than total giving, it is not love. It is impotent; for the moment it is nothing.
I have always found love to be full of conditions. Perhaps I was mistaken. I wonder.
In the end, everything can be reduced to the one simple element which is all a person can count upon in his existence: the capacity to love. That element can grow within the soul to become the supreme factor which determines the meaning of a person's life. My function is to make whoever sees my films aware of his need to love and to give his love, and aware that beauty is summoning him.
I believe Tarkovsky is referring to love of existence itself here. I have a fierce love for existence. For nature. For living things. For the process of existence as such. I try to live in alignment with nature. I don’t fight against it.
When it comes to loving specific individuals in that same way, well…it is possible and I think nature directs us toward expressing that. However, the tides of man-made modern living pulls individuals apart in a variety of ways.
Tarkovsky was an earnest Christian and I expect the beauty he refers to is connected to his idea of god.
For me, I’m grateful for my life on this earth right now.