Tarkovsky' Thinking (Ivan's Childhood)
Natalia L. Rudychev
Conference Proceedings of Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities. Available on line at http://www.hichumanities.org/AH2005.pdf (5242 - 5257) and as CD-ROM ISSN#1541-5899, Honolulu, 2005
The purpose of this paper is to look into complex ideas expressed by Tarkovsky in his highly underestimated film Ivan’s Childhood. Upon reviewing modern books in the philosophy of film I came to realization that this work of famous twentieth century director is given very little credit. Even in 1962 when this film had won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival it was misunderstood and misinterpreted by the critics. J. P. Sartre’s letter in defense of Ivan’s Childhood bears witness to this unfortunate fact. Most of the present day works on the philosophy of film do not even mention Ivan’s Childhood. I think that Ivan’s Childhood is very important not only for understanding Tarkovsky’s body of work but is a milestone for the development of cinematic thinking in the twentieth century.
Ivan’s Childhood presents us with all the main topics which Tarkovsky explores in his later work. Here I want to mention just a few of them: St. Anthony’s complex, human solitude, madness, the tragic nature of human history, human dignity, and care. Moreover, Tarkovsky, by the very way he presents Ivan’s story, raises very important questions. What is art? Who is an artist and what is his calling? In the paper I intend to give a detailed analysis of these topics and questions.
In Cinema 2 Deleuze writes “that Tarkovsky challenges the distinction between montage and shot when he defines cinema by the ‘pressure of time’ in the shot.”[1] In Ivan’s Childhood Tarkovsky abandons traditional representational approach to the cinematographic image in favor of making visible relationships of time. Thus through his own medium Tarkovsky expresses general tendency of modern philosophy to break with the reign of representational thinking.
It seems to be an odd coincidence that both Russian authorities and Italian journalists blamed Tarkovsky for the same things. They referred to the film as unrealistic, and reproached the director for Ivan’s dreams. In his book Sculpting in Time Tarkovsky writes, “Working on Ivan’s Childhood we encountered protests from film authorities every time we tried to replace narrative causality with poetic articulations.”[2] J. P. Sartre in his letter to the editor of L’Unita quotes Italian critics, “The dreams! We, in the occident; have long since stopped using dreams! Tarkovsky is slow: That used to be fine between the wars!”[3] But at a deeper look this is not a coincidence. Critics from both sides approached Tarkovsky’s film with certain ideological presuppositions. The ideology of all ideologies is that there is something in the world and we can fully grasp it. It is either you are with us, or you are against, and, therefore, do not have the right to exist. To put it in Heideggerian terms, this is the approach of calculative thinking which turns everything that it casts its glance on into a standing reserve. Everything that cannot be used as a standing reserve is discarded as having no value. Tarkovsky was accused of betrayal of reality. By that the critics meant that Tarkovsky abandoned linear succession of events, merged dreams with reality, and replaced “narrative causality with poetic articulations.” I want to address these accusations and show their inconsistency.
First of all I am going to describe a personal experience of a well-know Russian film critic Olga Surkova which she retells in her book Tarkovsky and I. In 1962, when Ivan’s Childhood was released, Surkova was a 17 year old high school student aspiring to become a mathematician. But after watching Ivan’s Childhood she underwent a spiritual transformation and made a decision to devote her life to the study of film. Surkova writes that one shot from Ivan’s Childhood changed her entire life. This was the shot of an apple in an out-stretched child’s hand wet with drops of summer rain. In the context of this film the shot united in itself abundance of life and premonition of frightening and inescapable end, greatness of the world and fragility of our presence in it, heartbreaking love towards the world and nostalgic pain of its inevitable loss[4]. Surkova feels that you cannot measure harmony with algebra and changes her career plans. What more reality can you expect from a film? What reality is more real then a reality of encounter like this one? Surkova reacts to the film not as if it is a thing which has to be consumed by her, but as if it is a real person with whom she can have a dialogue. In this dialogue her true self is revealed. This is not the situation of calculative thinking in which everything is represented as a thing to be grasped and consumed. This is the situation of meditative thinking in which cinematic text fully realizes itself as a semiotic person. Russian philosopher Y. Lotman expressed this thought in the following way: “The structural parallelism of textual and personal semiotic characteristics allows us to term the text of any level as a semiotic person, and the person of any sociocultural level as a text.”[5] In fact, every text of every level has a potential to be a semiotic person, only in the context of calculative thinking both the creator and the preserver of the text block this possibility by turning it into a standing reserve. Whenever the creator treats the audience as a mere means for making more money (not that there is anything bad in gaining profit from your work) or for enforcing of a particular ideology (needless to say that no work of art is completely free from the ideological aspect), the audience treats him back in the same way. You have to read certain books and to watch certain films in order to be acknowledged as a part of a particular sociocultural group, just as you have to follow an excepted dress code when you go to a particular social event. This is how logos, the law reveals itself in our lives. But life is not exhausted by the law (scientific, political or economic). Life, as A. Hitchcock articulated it in the title of his film, is “rich and strange.” The question of relationship between the life and the law is probably as old as philosophy itself. Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics gives a really deep insight in to this matter when he ponders over the equitable and the law. Aristotle writes “that all law is universal but about some things it is impossible to make a universal statement which will be correct… for the error is not in the law nor in the legislator but in the nature of the thing… the nature of the equitable, a correction of the law owing to its universality” (NE 1137b 12-27). The equitable speaks for everything that is not universal, for everything which is unique, concrete, and personal. It takes into account personal history. And personal history given in words (pictures, sounds, films) is mythos[6]. This is how mythos reveals itself in our lives. Mythos, as personal history, is not identical to a person but is inseparable from it. And as Russian philosopher A. Losev puts it, “The person is first and foremost self-consciousness and intelligibility.”[7] Self-consciousness exists only when it is acknowledged by another self-consciousness[8] and therefore is social in its nature. Thus, personal history, as it is inseparable from a person, is social in its nature, too. Mythos is the ever stepping back horizon of logos.
The fact that personal history is social in its nature is very important for Tarkovsky’s cinematic thinking. In Sculpting in Time Tarkovsky points out, “I am firmly convinced of one thing (not that it can be analysed): that if an author is moved by a landscape chosen, if it brings back memories to him and suggests associations, even subjective ones, then this will in turn affect the audience with particular excitement.”[9] The director also mentions that the landscapes that moved him in Ivan’s Childhood include the birch wood, the one that appears in the background of the last dream, and the swamp in the forest. Let us take one of them and consider it more closely. The birch wood stands out for me because the director shows it in such a way that his art goes beyond its formal function of representation, beyond the visible. It creates a mood, an invisible aura that cannot be represented and grasped as a picture. The birch wood appears in the film several times. I want to look at the scene in which Captain Kholin takes Masha for a walk in the birch wood. This is a scene that is full of tension. On the one hand, we have Kholin’s almost aggressive desire for Masha’s affection, and on the other Masha’s innocence and confusion. The birch wood is not a mere background in this scene; it is a character in its own right. The maze of identical trees produces hypnotizing and disorienting effect and the mechanical sound reminiscent of the woodpecker seems to be echoing the uneven beat of Masha’s heart. At the same time the gathering of white, slender, innocent trunks amazes with its breathtaking beauty. When Masha runs in confusion after her first kiss every tree becomes an obstacle in her way. For Tarkovsky it was important to show not the realism of the outward objects but the realism of the invisible, of that which goes on inside a person.
It is crucial that mise en scène, rather than illustrating some idea, should follow life – the personalities of the characters and their psychological state. Its purpose must not be reduced to elaborating on the meaning of a conversation or an action. Its function is to startle us with the authenticity of the actions and the beauty and depths of the artistic images – not by obtrusive illustration of their meaning. As is so often the case, undue emphasis on ideas can only restrict the spectator’s imagination, forming a kind of thought ceiling beyond which there yawns a vacuum. It doesn’t safeguard the frontiers of thought, it simply makes it harder to penetrate into its depth.[10]
When the critics demanded realism from Tarkovsky they apparently reduced realism to the careful reproduction of the visual manifestations of real events. Tarkovsky understood realism in a very different manner. His vision of realism includes in itself very insights into the nature of the creative process. I intend to survey the most important of them. Although talent, skill and hard work are prerequisites for the creation of the work of art, Tarkovsky thinks they are useless if the artist is not honest in his work. “Even when the problems shown are most complex, the sequence of images, formal structure of the work most complicated – for the creator the fundamental problem will always be honesty.”[11] If the creator is himself moved by that which he is trying to communicate to his audience, then he would be heard, if not by his contemporaries, then by later generations. If the creator is moved by a landscape, a story, an emotion then it becomes a part of his personal history. Personal history is social in its nature and therefore exists only in being acknowledged. Personal history is a fact and it does not become any less real if it does not quite fit into the conceptual framework of the moment. August Roden gained acceptance only when he was fifty; Van Gogh was understood only after his death. “It is very difficult to be both useful to the society and at the same time truthful, it is difficult to be convinced about uselessness of one’s work if nobody needs it. Nevertheless, there is but one path: to do what seems proper.”[12] The creator is always facing the St. Anthony’s complex. “It is a conflict between spirit and matter. It is a conflict between the ideal and that which is possible, which is realistically possible.”[13] The highest level of realism that can be achieved in the work of art is the realism of the creator’s being true to himself. In fact the creator, just like Camus’ Sisyphus, is ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of the mountain in spite of the absurdity of the situation, and thus preserves his dignity and humanity.
The film Ivan’s Childhood is based on Bogomolov’s short story Ivan. In Sculpting in Time Tarkovsky admits that a personality of a twelve-year-old boy moved him to the bottom of his heart. “He immediately struck me as a character destroyed, shifted of its axis by the war. Something incalculable, indeed all the attributes of childhood, had gone irretrievably out of his life.”[14] The personal history of the writer found its audience in the face of the filmmaker, was broken through the prism of his perception, and became his personal history, which yet had to find its audience. This is the logic of art. In science you can use a non-contradictory logical construction, demonstrate your discovery on an experiment, show its practical value, and thus convince your audience. In art this simply does not work. You can use the most beautiful idea, illustrate your idea with vivid imagery, ague for its practical value, and still fail if you leave your audience cold. This would mean one of the two things: either you yourself were not moved by that which you were trying to communicate or you failed to communicate it. But if you manage to move your audience, then you achieve the highest realism possible in a work of art. Now we can see that Tarkovsky understood realism in a very different manner than his critics. Rethinking the making of Ivan’s Childhood, Tarkovsky wrote, “The explanation is that the pattern of life is far more poetic than it is sometimes represented by the determined advocates of naturalism.”[15] Limitations of coherent logic and schematism of linear sequentiality drain life from the work of art. Tarkovsky argues that art cannot be reduced to illustration of laws of conventional logic. Its realm is the realm of poetic reasoning. Coherent logic is always an abstraction. Poetic reasoning is the thought in act. Tarkovsky stresses that poetic reasoning and associative linking is the special virtue of cinema. And although reproduction of thought in act is not an end in itself it can infuse the work of art with life and provide a horizon for self-discovery and an attentive attitude towards the world. “Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality. So poetry becomes a philosophy to guide a man throughout his life.”[16] It is amazing how close Tarkovsky’s thinking comes to the ideas expressed by Heidegger about art. Both the philosopher and the director point out that all art is essentially poetic and poetry is the founding of truth, and they agree on the fact that the work of art comes into being through equal efforts of both creators and preservers. That is what Heidegger writes about it in The Origin of the Work of Art:
Art, as the setting-into-work of truth, is poetry. Not only the creation of the work is poetic, but equally poetic, though in its own way, is the preserving of the work; for a work is an actual effect as a work only when we remove ourselves from our commonplace routine and move into what is disclosed by the work, so as to bring our own nature itself to take a stand in the truth of what is.[17]
Tarkovsky called Ivan’s Childhood his qualifying examination. He thought that if he managed to move the audience with that by which he himself was moved in Ivan’s story, then he would have the right to work in the cinema. The creation of this film became an ethical matter, a matter of artist’s responsibility towards his audience.
The film tells a story of a twelve-year-old orphan boy-soldier and follows it up to his death. J. P. Sartre was deeply moved by this film. That is what he writes in a letter to Alicata:
Ivan is mad, that is a monster; that is a little hero; in reality he is the most innocent and touching victim of the war: this boy, whom one cannot stop loving, has been forged by the violence he has internalised. The Nazis killed him when they killed his mother and massacred the inhabitants of his village. Yet, he lives. But somewhere else, in that irremediable moment when he saw his neighbour falling[18].
While following Ivan’s story in the film, one cannot stop feeling uneasy, almost frightened. There is something truly deviant and abnormal when a lovable little boy is a perfect soldier with only one thing on his mind - revenge. Human history is not a happy march towards a perfect future, because there is Ivan. In the film Ivan appears from dark, dirty waters of the swamp and disappears into it. He comes having accomplished one war mission and goes away to die in another. He is just a ripple on the dark waters of history. Ivan is a little feather that falls into a deep well in his second dream. But can we forget him? Can we forget the eyes that were wide open with wonder and excitement in Ivan’s first dream? Can we erase the memory of the pure joy of his run in the river in the last dream and not shiver from horror, upon realizing that that was a dream of a dead boy? Ivan is a real monster. He is horrible, abnormal and frightening. He frightens even his comrades in arms. What can be more frightening than a little boy who was forged by the war, lived for revenge and died in the war? Ivan is a monster, a warning. Tarkovsky created one of the most powerful works of art that makes us aware of the madness of war, of its monstrous nature. “Madness? Reality? Both of them: in war, all soldiers are mad, this child monster is an objective testimony of their madness.. It is neither a question of expressionism nor that of symbolism, but a certain manner of narration demanded by the subject.”[19] Tarkovsky skillfully immerses us into this mad reality by merging real events of the combat with boy’s nightmares. Ivan is a monster but in a monstrous world. For him, just like for the star in his second dream, there is no difference between day and night. All soldiers that surround him are affected by the war. But they are “normal.” That means after war they can return to a peaceful way of life. For Ivan this possibility is irrevocably lost. The only thing that connects him to life is his usefulness for revenge. Ivan has no place in the “normal” world. His death is inevitable and in fact he is already dead when we first meet him. In Sculpting in Time Tarkovsky writes, “It is with Ivan, that the dénouement is inherent in the conception and comes about through its own necessity.”[20]
Ivan is not the only child that we meet in this film. There is his little sister who is dead and has reality only in Ivan’s dreams. She is a beautiful, tender creature that was sucked in by the dark swamp of the war. In the last dream we see Ivan’s playmates. Thoughts about them turn into question marks: did they perish with other inhabitants of his village or did they live? In the crypt there is a sign on the wall:
THERE ARE 8 OF US HERE
EACH OF US IS NO OLDER THAN 19
IN AN HOUR WE WILL BE KILLED
AVENGE US
In destroyed Berlin we see the images of dead children of the offices of the Third Reich. They were murdered by their own parents. That is the monstrosity of war in act. Ivan’s last dream is happy. That is the only dream which is not a nightmare for Ivan, but it is the dream of a dead boy. So the audience lives through it as through its own real life nightmare. Ivan is a monster – that is a warning (monere - in Latin has a meaning “to warn”). He is that bell that he mounts in the crypt. Ivan is the bell that tells for us, for our consciousness.
Sartre is right. What Tarkovsky creates is not a symbolist or an expressionist representation of reality. It is a myth, the myth in a Barthean sense. Tarkovsky takes a little boy and shows him as a war hero in order to make us aware of monstrous nature of the war. Tarkovsky uses two languages: the language-object and metalanguage. If we abstract from the myth, created by the film, for the purpose of analysis we can say that the first sequence of Ivan’s Childhood uses the language-object, and through a series of beautiful images presents us with that which means to be a little boy (curiosity, tenderness, playfulness, wonder, and excitement of sharing your discoveries). This meaning is sucked in by the form of the metalanguage. When it is joined with the concept “little war hero” we find ourselves in the realm of myth. In this particular case it is the myth of the monstrous nature of the war. Myth escapes representation due to the double nature of its form which is always and at the same time the meaning of the language-object. In other words, myth has an alibi for the representational thinking. In Myth Today Barthes writes:
Myth is a value, truth is no guarantee for it; nothing prevents it from being a perpetual alibi: it is enough that its signifier has two sides for it always to have an “elsewhere” at its disposal. The meaning is always there to present the form; the form is always there to outdistance the meaning. And there never is any contradiction, conflict, or split between the meaning and the form: they are never at the same place. ..But the result of this alteration is constant… ..In mythical signifier: its form is empty but present, its meaning absent but full.[21]
In Ivan’s Childhood the little boy is at the same time the absent full meaning and the present empty form. It is no wonder that an ambiguous nature of the subject demanded from the director specific means that would make the audience aware of this ambiguity. In Sculpting in Time Tarkovsky says that “art is a meta-language”[22] and “the image is not a certain meaning, expressed by the director, but an entire world reflected as in a drop of water.”[23] Bearing this in mind we can see why Tarkovsky could not adopt Eisenstein’s montage of attractions which is directed towards meaning, and is representational in its nature. In the montage of attractions, editing produces a structural organization that generates meaning and is subordinated to a particular idea. But myth is not an idea. It is ambiguous in its nature. The audience can be introduced into the realm of myth only through constancy of alteration of meaning and form. This means that structural organization gives way to rhythmical. Each shot is organized not according to the idea it is supposed to support in the whole of the film, but according to the rhythm that is demanded by the subject. In traditional montage time is linear. In Tarkovsky’s rhythmical alteration time is non-linear and multi-faceted. In Ivan’s Childhood this affect is achieved through constant alteration of dream and reality, so that the audience is no longer able to separate them and to impose a fixed chronological order on the events of the film. Thus the events of the film get their alibi and escape representation and the director achieves his goal of non-imposing a ready-cooked concept upon his audience, instead Tarkovsky turns his spectators into co-creators.
Ivan’s Childhood was Tarkovsky’s stepping stone. “After I had finished Ivan’s Childhood I felt I was somewhere on the very edge of cinema. A miracle had happened – the film had worked. Now something else was being demanded of me: I had to understand what cinema is.”[24] The six films that followed all grew up from the seeds that were planted in the production of Ivan’s Childhood which made the director aware of the fact that the subject of the film is at the same time present and absent on the screen.
[1] Gilles Deleuze. Cinema 2. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989, 12).
[2] Andrei Tarkovsky. Sculpting in Time. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987, 30).
[3] Jean Paul Sartre. “A letter addressed to Alicata, the editor of L’Unita. The French Letters, no 1009”, Nostalghia, 1963, www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/Sartre.html (24 Oct 2004).
[4] Olga Surkova. Tarkovsky and I. (Moscow: Zebra E / Exmo / Decont +, 2002, 25).
(О. Суркова. Тарковский и Я. (Москва: Зебра Е / Эксмо / Деконт + , 2002, 25).
[5] Yuri Lotman. Towards Building of the Theory of Interactions of Cultures. Vol. 1 of Selected Articles. (Tallinn, Russia: “Alexandria”, 1992) 116. (Ю. Лотман. К Построению Теории Взаимодействия Культур. Т. 1. Избранные Статьи. (Таллинн: «Александрия»., 1992), 116.
[6] Aleksei Losev. Philosophy. Mythology. Culture. (Moscow: Publishing House of Political Literature., 1991, 134). (А. Лосев. Философия. Мифология. Культура. (Москва: Издательство Политической Литературы., 1991, 134).
[7] Aleksei Losev. Philosophy. Mythology. Culture. (Moscow: Publishing House of Political Literature., 1991, 134). (А. Лосев. Философия. Мифология. Культура. (Москва: Издательство Политической Литературы., 1991, 74).
[8] Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Phenomenology of Spirit. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977, §178).
[9] Andrei Tarkovsky. Sculpting in Time. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987, 28).
[10] Andrei Tarkovsky. Sculpting in Time. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987, 25).
[11] The Jerzy Illg and Leonard Neuger. “"I'm interested in the problem of inner freedom...", Tarkovsky Interview, p.3, 1985, www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/interview.html (24 Oct 2004)
[12] The Jerzy Illg and Leonard Neuger. “"I'm interested in the problem of inner freedom...", Tarkovsky Interview, p.14, 1985, www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/interview.html (24 Oct 2004)
[13] The Jerzy Illg and Leonard Neuger. “"I'm interested in the problem of inner freedom...", Tarkovsky Interview, p.23, 1985, www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/interview.html (24 Oct 2004)
[14] Andrei Tarkovsky. Sculpting in Time. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987, 17).
[15] Andrei Tarkovsky. Sculpting in Time. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987, 22).
[16] Andrei Tarkovsky. Sculpting in Time. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987, 21).
[17] Martin Heidegger. “The Origin of the Work of Art,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, 74-75. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers., 1975.
[18] Jean Paul Sartre. “A letter addressed to Alicata, the editor of L’Unita. The French Letters, no 1009”, Nostalghia, 1963, www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/Sartre.html (24 Oct 2004).
[19] Jean Paul Sartre. “A letter addressed to Alicata, the editor of L’Unita. The French Letters, no 1009”, Nostalghia, 1963, www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/Sartre.html (24 Oct 2004).
[20] Andrei Tarkovsky. Sculpting in Time. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987, 16).
[21] Roland Barthes. “Myth Today” in A Barthes Reader, 109-100. New York: Hill and Wang, 1996.
[22] Andrei Tarkovsky. Sculpting in Time. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987, 40).
[23] Andrei Tarkovsky. Sculpting in Time. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987, 110).
[24] Andrei Tarkovsky. Sculpting in Time. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987, 94).
Natalia L. Rudychev
Conference Proceedings of Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities. Available on line at http://www.hichumanities.org/AH2005.pdf (5242 - 5257) and as CD-ROM ISSN#1541-5899, Honolulu, 2005
The purpose of this paper is to look into complex ideas expressed by Tarkovsky in his highly underestimated film Ivan’s Childhood. Upon reviewing modern books in the philosophy of film I came to realization that this work of famous twentieth century director is given very little credit. Even in 1962 when this film had won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival it was misunderstood and misinterpreted by the critics. J. P. Sartre’s letter in defense of Ivan’s Childhood bears witness to this unfortunate fact. Most of the present day works on the philosophy of film do not even mention Ivan’s Childhood. I think that Ivan’s Childhood is very important not only for understanding Tarkovsky’s body of work but is a milestone for the development of cinematic thinking in the twentieth century.
Ivan’s Childhood presents us with all the main topics which Tarkovsky explores in his later work. Here I want to mention just a few of them: St. Anthony’s complex, human solitude, madness, the tragic nature of human history, human dignity, and care. Moreover, Tarkovsky, by the very way he presents Ivan’s story, raises very important questions. What is art? Who is an artist and what is his calling? In the paper I intend to give a detailed analysis of these topics and questions.
In Cinema 2 Deleuze writes “that Tarkovsky challenges the distinction between montage and shot when he defines cinema by the ‘pressure of time’ in the shot.”[1] In Ivan’s Childhood Tarkovsky abandons traditional representational approach to the cinematographic image in favor of making visible relationships of time. Thus through his own medium Tarkovsky expresses general tendency of modern philosophy to break with the reign of representational thinking.
It seems to be an odd coincidence that both Russian authorities and Italian journalists blamed Tarkovsky for the same things. They referred to the film as unrealistic, and reproached the director for Ivan’s dreams. In his book Sculpting in Time Tarkovsky writes, “Working on Ivan’s Childhood we encountered protests from film authorities every time we tried to replace narrative causality with poetic articulations.”[2] J. P. Sartre in his letter to the editor of L’Unita quotes Italian critics, “The dreams! We, in the occident; have long since stopped using dreams! Tarkovsky is slow: That used to be fine between the wars!”[3] But at a deeper look this is not a coincidence. Critics from both sides approached Tarkovsky’s film with certain ideological presuppositions. The ideology of all ideologies is that there is something in the world and we can fully grasp it. It is either you are with us, or you are against, and, therefore, do not have the right to exist. To put it in Heideggerian terms, this is the approach of calculative thinking which turns everything that it casts its glance on into a standing reserve. Everything that cannot be used as a standing reserve is discarded as having no value. Tarkovsky was accused of betrayal of reality. By that the critics meant that Tarkovsky abandoned linear succession of events, merged dreams with reality, and replaced “narrative causality with poetic articulations.” I want to address these accusations and show their inconsistency.
First of all I am going to describe a personal experience of a well-know Russian film critic Olga Surkova which she retells in her book Tarkovsky and I. In 1962, when Ivan’s Childhood was released, Surkova was a 17 year old high school student aspiring to become a mathematician. But after watching Ivan’s Childhood she underwent a spiritual transformation and made a decision to devote her life to the study of film. Surkova writes that one shot from Ivan’s Childhood changed her entire life. This was the shot of an apple in an out-stretched child’s hand wet with drops of summer rain. In the context of this film the shot united in itself abundance of life and premonition of frightening and inescapable end, greatness of the world and fragility of our presence in it, heartbreaking love towards the world and nostalgic pain of its inevitable loss[4]. Surkova feels that you cannot measure harmony with algebra and changes her career plans. What more reality can you expect from a film? What reality is more real then a reality of encounter like this one? Surkova reacts to the film not as if it is a thing which has to be consumed by her, but as if it is a real person with whom she can have a dialogue. In this dialogue her true self is revealed. This is not the situation of calculative thinking in which everything is represented as a thing to be grasped and consumed. This is the situation of meditative thinking in which cinematic text fully realizes itself as a semiotic person. Russian philosopher Y. Lotman expressed this thought in the following way: “The structural parallelism of textual and personal semiotic characteristics allows us to term the text of any level as a semiotic person, and the person of any sociocultural level as a text.”[5] In fact, every text of every level has a potential to be a semiotic person, only in the context of calculative thinking both the creator and the preserver of the text block this possibility by turning it into a standing reserve. Whenever the creator treats the audience as a mere means for making more money (not that there is anything bad in gaining profit from your work) or for enforcing of a particular ideology (needless to say that no work of art is completely free from the ideological aspect), the audience treats him back in the same way. You have to read certain books and to watch certain films in order to be acknowledged as a part of a particular sociocultural group, just as you have to follow an excepted dress code when you go to a particular social event. This is how logos, the law reveals itself in our lives. But life is not exhausted by the law (scientific, political or economic). Life, as A. Hitchcock articulated it in the title of his film, is “rich and strange.” The question of relationship between the life and the law is probably as old as philosophy itself. Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics gives a really deep insight in to this matter when he ponders over the equitable and the law. Aristotle writes “that all law is universal but about some things it is impossible to make a universal statement which will be correct… for the error is not in the law nor in the legislator but in the nature of the thing… the nature of the equitable, a correction of the law owing to its universality” (NE 1137b 12-27). The equitable speaks for everything that is not universal, for everything which is unique, concrete, and personal. It takes into account personal history. And personal history given in words (pictures, sounds, films) is mythos[6]. This is how mythos reveals itself in our lives. Mythos, as personal history, is not identical to a person but is inseparable from it. And as Russian philosopher A. Losev puts it, “The person is first and foremost self-consciousness and intelligibility.”[7] Self-consciousness exists only when it is acknowledged by another self-consciousness[8] and therefore is social in its nature. Thus, personal history, as it is inseparable from a person, is social in its nature, too. Mythos is the ever stepping back horizon of logos.
The fact that personal history is social in its nature is very important for Tarkovsky’s cinematic thinking. In Sculpting in Time Tarkovsky points out, “I am firmly convinced of one thing (not that it can be analysed): that if an author is moved by a landscape chosen, if it brings back memories to him and suggests associations, even subjective ones, then this will in turn affect the audience with particular excitement.”[9] The director also mentions that the landscapes that moved him in Ivan’s Childhood include the birch wood, the one that appears in the background of the last dream, and the swamp in the forest. Let us take one of them and consider it more closely. The birch wood stands out for me because the director shows it in such a way that his art goes beyond its formal function of representation, beyond the visible. It creates a mood, an invisible aura that cannot be represented and grasped as a picture. The birch wood appears in the film several times. I want to look at the scene in which Captain Kholin takes Masha for a walk in the birch wood. This is a scene that is full of tension. On the one hand, we have Kholin’s almost aggressive desire for Masha’s affection, and on the other Masha’s innocence and confusion. The birch wood is not a mere background in this scene; it is a character in its own right. The maze of identical trees produces hypnotizing and disorienting effect and the mechanical sound reminiscent of the woodpecker seems to be echoing the uneven beat of Masha’s heart. At the same time the gathering of white, slender, innocent trunks amazes with its breathtaking beauty. When Masha runs in confusion after her first kiss every tree becomes an obstacle in her way. For Tarkovsky it was important to show not the realism of the outward objects but the realism of the invisible, of that which goes on inside a person.
It is crucial that mise en scène, rather than illustrating some idea, should follow life – the personalities of the characters and their psychological state. Its purpose must not be reduced to elaborating on the meaning of a conversation or an action. Its function is to startle us with the authenticity of the actions and the beauty and depths of the artistic images – not by obtrusive illustration of their meaning. As is so often the case, undue emphasis on ideas can only restrict the spectator’s imagination, forming a kind of thought ceiling beyond which there yawns a vacuum. It doesn’t safeguard the frontiers of thought, it simply makes it harder to penetrate into its depth.[10]
When the critics demanded realism from Tarkovsky they apparently reduced realism to the careful reproduction of the visual manifestations of real events. Tarkovsky understood realism in a very different manner. His vision of realism includes in itself very insights into the nature of the creative process. I intend to survey the most important of them. Although talent, skill and hard work are prerequisites for the creation of the work of art, Tarkovsky thinks they are useless if the artist is not honest in his work. “Even when the problems shown are most complex, the sequence of images, formal structure of the work most complicated – for the creator the fundamental problem will always be honesty.”[11] If the creator is himself moved by that which he is trying to communicate to his audience, then he would be heard, if not by his contemporaries, then by later generations. If the creator is moved by a landscape, a story, an emotion then it becomes a part of his personal history. Personal history is social in its nature and therefore exists only in being acknowledged. Personal history is a fact and it does not become any less real if it does not quite fit into the conceptual framework of the moment. August Roden gained acceptance only when he was fifty; Van Gogh was understood only after his death. “It is very difficult to be both useful to the society and at the same time truthful, it is difficult to be convinced about uselessness of one’s work if nobody needs it. Nevertheless, there is but one path: to do what seems proper.”[12] The creator is always facing the St. Anthony’s complex. “It is a conflict between spirit and matter. It is a conflict between the ideal and that which is possible, which is realistically possible.”[13] The highest level of realism that can be achieved in the work of art is the realism of the creator’s being true to himself. In fact the creator, just like Camus’ Sisyphus, is ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of the mountain in spite of the absurdity of the situation, and thus preserves his dignity and humanity.
The film Ivan’s Childhood is based on Bogomolov’s short story Ivan. In Sculpting in Time Tarkovsky admits that a personality of a twelve-year-old boy moved him to the bottom of his heart. “He immediately struck me as a character destroyed, shifted of its axis by the war. Something incalculable, indeed all the attributes of childhood, had gone irretrievably out of his life.”[14] The personal history of the writer found its audience in the face of the filmmaker, was broken through the prism of his perception, and became his personal history, which yet had to find its audience. This is the logic of art. In science you can use a non-contradictory logical construction, demonstrate your discovery on an experiment, show its practical value, and thus convince your audience. In art this simply does not work. You can use the most beautiful idea, illustrate your idea with vivid imagery, ague for its practical value, and still fail if you leave your audience cold. This would mean one of the two things: either you yourself were not moved by that which you were trying to communicate or you failed to communicate it. But if you manage to move your audience, then you achieve the highest realism possible in a work of art. Now we can see that Tarkovsky understood realism in a very different manner than his critics. Rethinking the making of Ivan’s Childhood, Tarkovsky wrote, “The explanation is that the pattern of life is far more poetic than it is sometimes represented by the determined advocates of naturalism.”[15] Limitations of coherent logic and schematism of linear sequentiality drain life from the work of art. Tarkovsky argues that art cannot be reduced to illustration of laws of conventional logic. Its realm is the realm of poetic reasoning. Coherent logic is always an abstraction. Poetic reasoning is the thought in act. Tarkovsky stresses that poetic reasoning and associative linking is the special virtue of cinema. And although reproduction of thought in act is not an end in itself it can infuse the work of art with life and provide a horizon for self-discovery and an attentive attitude towards the world. “Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality. So poetry becomes a philosophy to guide a man throughout his life.”[16] It is amazing how close Tarkovsky’s thinking comes to the ideas expressed by Heidegger about art. Both the philosopher and the director point out that all art is essentially poetic and poetry is the founding of truth, and they agree on the fact that the work of art comes into being through equal efforts of both creators and preservers. That is what Heidegger writes about it in The Origin of the Work of Art:
Art, as the setting-into-work of truth, is poetry. Not only the creation of the work is poetic, but equally poetic, though in its own way, is the preserving of the work; for a work is an actual effect as a work only when we remove ourselves from our commonplace routine and move into what is disclosed by the work, so as to bring our own nature itself to take a stand in the truth of what is.[17]
Tarkovsky called Ivan’s Childhood his qualifying examination. He thought that if he managed to move the audience with that by which he himself was moved in Ivan’s story, then he would have the right to work in the cinema. The creation of this film became an ethical matter, a matter of artist’s responsibility towards his audience.
The film tells a story of a twelve-year-old orphan boy-soldier and follows it up to his death. J. P. Sartre was deeply moved by this film. That is what he writes in a letter to Alicata:
Ivan is mad, that is a monster; that is a little hero; in reality he is the most innocent and touching victim of the war: this boy, whom one cannot stop loving, has been forged by the violence he has internalised. The Nazis killed him when they killed his mother and massacred the inhabitants of his village. Yet, he lives. But somewhere else, in that irremediable moment when he saw his neighbour falling[18].
While following Ivan’s story in the film, one cannot stop feeling uneasy, almost frightened. There is something truly deviant and abnormal when a lovable little boy is a perfect soldier with only one thing on his mind - revenge. Human history is not a happy march towards a perfect future, because there is Ivan. In the film Ivan appears from dark, dirty waters of the swamp and disappears into it. He comes having accomplished one war mission and goes away to die in another. He is just a ripple on the dark waters of history. Ivan is a little feather that falls into a deep well in his second dream. But can we forget him? Can we forget the eyes that were wide open with wonder and excitement in Ivan’s first dream? Can we erase the memory of the pure joy of his run in the river in the last dream and not shiver from horror, upon realizing that that was a dream of a dead boy? Ivan is a real monster. He is horrible, abnormal and frightening. He frightens even his comrades in arms. What can be more frightening than a little boy who was forged by the war, lived for revenge and died in the war? Ivan is a monster, a warning. Tarkovsky created one of the most powerful works of art that makes us aware of the madness of war, of its monstrous nature. “Madness? Reality? Both of them: in war, all soldiers are mad, this child monster is an objective testimony of their madness.. It is neither a question of expressionism nor that of symbolism, but a certain manner of narration demanded by the subject.”[19] Tarkovsky skillfully immerses us into this mad reality by merging real events of the combat with boy’s nightmares. Ivan is a monster but in a monstrous world. For him, just like for the star in his second dream, there is no difference between day and night. All soldiers that surround him are affected by the war. But they are “normal.” That means after war they can return to a peaceful way of life. For Ivan this possibility is irrevocably lost. The only thing that connects him to life is his usefulness for revenge. Ivan has no place in the “normal” world. His death is inevitable and in fact he is already dead when we first meet him. In Sculpting in Time Tarkovsky writes, “It is with Ivan, that the dénouement is inherent in the conception and comes about through its own necessity.”[20]
Ivan is not the only child that we meet in this film. There is his little sister who is dead and has reality only in Ivan’s dreams. She is a beautiful, tender creature that was sucked in by the dark swamp of the war. In the last dream we see Ivan’s playmates. Thoughts about them turn into question marks: did they perish with other inhabitants of his village or did they live? In the crypt there is a sign on the wall:
THERE ARE 8 OF US HERE
EACH OF US IS NO OLDER THAN 19
IN AN HOUR WE WILL BE KILLED
AVENGE US
In destroyed Berlin we see the images of dead children of the offices of the Third Reich. They were murdered by their own parents. That is the monstrosity of war in act. Ivan’s last dream is happy. That is the only dream which is not a nightmare for Ivan, but it is the dream of a dead boy. So the audience lives through it as through its own real life nightmare. Ivan is a monster – that is a warning (monere - in Latin has a meaning “to warn”). He is that bell that he mounts in the crypt. Ivan is the bell that tells for us, for our consciousness.
Sartre is right. What Tarkovsky creates is not a symbolist or an expressionist representation of reality. It is a myth, the myth in a Barthean sense. Tarkovsky takes a little boy and shows him as a war hero in order to make us aware of monstrous nature of the war. Tarkovsky uses two languages: the language-object and metalanguage. If we abstract from the myth, created by the film, for the purpose of analysis we can say that the first sequence of Ivan’s Childhood uses the language-object, and through a series of beautiful images presents us with that which means to be a little boy (curiosity, tenderness, playfulness, wonder, and excitement of sharing your discoveries). This meaning is sucked in by the form of the metalanguage. When it is joined with the concept “little war hero” we find ourselves in the realm of myth. In this particular case it is the myth of the monstrous nature of the war. Myth escapes representation due to the double nature of its form which is always and at the same time the meaning of the language-object. In other words, myth has an alibi for the representational thinking. In Myth Today Barthes writes:
Myth is a value, truth is no guarantee for it; nothing prevents it from being a perpetual alibi: it is enough that its signifier has two sides for it always to have an “elsewhere” at its disposal. The meaning is always there to present the form; the form is always there to outdistance the meaning. And there never is any contradiction, conflict, or split between the meaning and the form: they are never at the same place. ..But the result of this alteration is constant… ..In mythical signifier: its form is empty but present, its meaning absent but full.[21]
In Ivan’s Childhood the little boy is at the same time the absent full meaning and the present empty form. It is no wonder that an ambiguous nature of the subject demanded from the director specific means that would make the audience aware of this ambiguity. In Sculpting in Time Tarkovsky says that “art is a meta-language”[22] and “the image is not a certain meaning, expressed by the director, but an entire world reflected as in a drop of water.”[23] Bearing this in mind we can see why Tarkovsky could not adopt Eisenstein’s montage of attractions which is directed towards meaning, and is representational in its nature. In the montage of attractions, editing produces a structural organization that generates meaning and is subordinated to a particular idea. But myth is not an idea. It is ambiguous in its nature. The audience can be introduced into the realm of myth only through constancy of alteration of meaning and form. This means that structural organization gives way to rhythmical. Each shot is organized not according to the idea it is supposed to support in the whole of the film, but according to the rhythm that is demanded by the subject. In traditional montage time is linear. In Tarkovsky’s rhythmical alteration time is non-linear and multi-faceted. In Ivan’s Childhood this affect is achieved through constant alteration of dream and reality, so that the audience is no longer able to separate them and to impose a fixed chronological order on the events of the film. Thus the events of the film get their alibi and escape representation and the director achieves his goal of non-imposing a ready-cooked concept upon his audience, instead Tarkovsky turns his spectators into co-creators.
Ivan’s Childhood was Tarkovsky’s stepping stone. “After I had finished Ivan’s Childhood I felt I was somewhere on the very edge of cinema. A miracle had happened – the film had worked. Now something else was being demanded of me: I had to understand what cinema is.”[24] The six films that followed all grew up from the seeds that were planted in the production of Ivan’s Childhood which made the director aware of the fact that the subject of the film is at the same time present and absent on the screen.
[1] Gilles Deleuze. Cinema 2. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989, 12).
[2] Andrei Tarkovsky. Sculpting in Time. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987, 30).
[3] Jean Paul Sartre. “A letter addressed to Alicata, the editor of L’Unita. The French Letters, no 1009”, Nostalghia, 1963, www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/Sartre.html (24 Oct 2004).
[4] Olga Surkova. Tarkovsky and I. (Moscow: Zebra E / Exmo / Decont +, 2002, 25).
(О. Суркова. Тарковский и Я. (Москва: Зебра Е / Эксмо / Деконт + , 2002, 25).
[5] Yuri Lotman. Towards Building of the Theory of Interactions of Cultures. Vol. 1 of Selected Articles. (Tallinn, Russia: “Alexandria”, 1992) 116. (Ю. Лотман. К Построению Теории Взаимодействия Культур. Т. 1. Избранные Статьи. (Таллинн: «Александрия»., 1992), 116.
[6] Aleksei Losev. Philosophy. Mythology. Culture. (Moscow: Publishing House of Political Literature., 1991, 134). (А. Лосев. Философия. Мифология. Культура. (Москва: Издательство Политической Литературы., 1991, 134).
[7] Aleksei Losev. Philosophy. Mythology. Culture. (Moscow: Publishing House of Political Literature., 1991, 134). (А. Лосев. Философия. Мифология. Культура. (Москва: Издательство Политической Литературы., 1991, 74).
[8] Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Phenomenology of Spirit. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977, §178).
[9] Andrei Tarkovsky. Sculpting in Time. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987, 28).
[10] Andrei Tarkovsky. Sculpting in Time. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987, 25).
[11] The Jerzy Illg and Leonard Neuger. “"I'm interested in the problem of inner freedom...", Tarkovsky Interview, p.3, 1985, www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/interview.html (24 Oct 2004)
[12] The Jerzy Illg and Leonard Neuger. “"I'm interested in the problem of inner freedom...", Tarkovsky Interview, p.14, 1985, www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/interview.html (24 Oct 2004)
[13] The Jerzy Illg and Leonard Neuger. “"I'm interested in the problem of inner freedom...", Tarkovsky Interview, p.23, 1985, www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/interview.html (24 Oct 2004)
[14] Andrei Tarkovsky. Sculpting in Time. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987, 17).
[15] Andrei Tarkovsky. Sculpting in Time. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987, 22).
[16] Andrei Tarkovsky. Sculpting in Time. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987, 21).
[17] Martin Heidegger. “The Origin of the Work of Art,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, 74-75. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers., 1975.
[18] Jean Paul Sartre. “A letter addressed to Alicata, the editor of L’Unita. The French Letters, no 1009”, Nostalghia, 1963, www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/Sartre.html (24 Oct 2004).
[19] Jean Paul Sartre. “A letter addressed to Alicata, the editor of L’Unita. The French Letters, no 1009”, Nostalghia, 1963, www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/Sartre.html (24 Oct 2004).
[20] Andrei Tarkovsky. Sculpting in Time. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987, 16).
[21] Roland Barthes. “Myth Today” in A Barthes Reader, 109-100. New York: Hill and Wang, 1996.
[22] Andrei Tarkovsky. Sculpting in Time. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987, 40).
[23] Andrei Tarkovsky. Sculpting in Time. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987, 110).
[24] Andrei Tarkovsky. Sculpting in Time. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987, 94).
Bibliography
Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989
Tarkovsky, Andrei. Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987.
Surkova, Olga. Tarkovsky and I. Moscow: Zebra E / Exmo / Decont +, 2002
Lotman, Yuri. Selected Articles. Vol. 1. Tallinn: Alexandria, 1992.
Losev, Aleksei. Philosophy. Mythology. Culture. Moscow: Publishing House of Political Literature, 1991.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Phenomenology of Spirit. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.
Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989
Tarkovsky, Andrei. Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987.
Surkova, Olga. Tarkovsky and I. Moscow: Zebra E / Exmo / Decont +, 2002
Lotman, Yuri. Selected Articles. Vol. 1. Tallinn: Alexandria, 1992.
Losev, Aleksei. Philosophy. Mythology. Culture. Moscow: Publishing House of Political Literature, 1991.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Phenomenology of Spirit. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.
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