Andrei Rublev

Andrei Rublev begins with a vignette about a man who climbs onto a balloon, filled with the hot air of a bonfire, and floats over the countryside, reveling in his newfound freedom until his journey comes to a crashing halt. Tarkovsky returns to the sky with his camera throughout Andrei Rublev, looking down on his subjects like a caring God; the aerial shots suggest that the myriad events, people, and animals that populate his film (populate is a poor word: they live in the film – with all the blood, sweat, and tears that existence entails – functioning in the kind of perfect chaos that people-watchers go to malls for) are merely part of a larger history that flows through time, no different than the million million individual atoms that collide in a stream of water.

Tarkovsky uses the structure of a life, in this case a mostly fictional account of the icon painter Andrei Rublev, in order to make a bigger case for how one develops an identity within the context of nation and religion, and the ever-changing belief in and reliance on both. Tarkovsky suggests that belief in oneself, however, is the most necessary element in creating anything, be it an icon of Biblical scenes, a great cast-iron bell, or a sprawling film about Russia both past and present. That theme reminds of a quote I heard a while back: “anything worth doing is an act of hubris.”

Ultimately, Andrei Rublev is a hopeful film because it shows that even though a person may have lost faith in themselves through fell circumstances – represented in Rublev by the falling horse in a horrific second act scene of wanton destruction that stirred me to angry tears – their belief may be reawakened by the best of humanity around them; like a bell ringing from far away, sound the way to safety, a person can rediscover what it means to have purpose and to pursue its call without reservation or fear. As Tarkovsky showed the viewer the worst of humanity in the hellish scene as Vladimir, so too does he raise them back up again to believe in the goodness of mankind through the tale of the lucky bell maker and the redemption of Andrei the painter.