Andrei Rublev is a legendary historical film by the cult director Andrei Tarkovsky, filmed in 1966 at the Mosfilm studio. The film has won several international film awards, including the FIPRESCI Prize at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival.
Prehistory of creation
The life and works of the great icon painter became the impetus for Tarkovsky's reflections on the fate of a creative person in Russia. The creation of the film was preceded by a long and painstaking work of studying documents from the archives of the 15th century. Tarkovsky had the courage, within the limits of the oppression of the then censorship, to turn to the biography of the church artist and to approve the unknown provincial actor Anatoly Solonitsyn for the main role.
First stage
The director submitted an application for the creation of the tape back in 1961. But changes in budget and cast delayed the start of work. The script for the film was written by Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky and Andrei Tarkovsky in 1963.
For a long time they were looking for a leading actor. First, Stanislav Lyushin was approved for the main role. The director understood that a lot depends on the actor. Therefore, I went to the trick. He took photos of screen tests of various actors and asked outsiders to indicate who exactly Rublev was among them. Most pointed to Solonitsyn. The role of Rublev will be played by him.
A little about the plot
There is practically no documentary evidence of the life of Andrei Rublev. Therefore, there is no complete and logical reproduction of the biography of the icon-painter monk in the film. The film consists of eight short stories that vividly illustrate the artist's life with the reproduction of the events of that time and possible conflicts of Rublev with different segments of the population. The main character grows up and matures in his striving to serve the people and keep talented descendants, little needed and power, and suppressed ignoramuses - contemporaries.
Film short stories:
I. Buffoon. 1400.
II. Theophanes the Greek. 1405 BC
III. Passion for Andrew. 1407 g.
IV. Holiday. 1408 g.
V. The Last Judgment. 1408 g.
Vi. Raid. 1408 g.
Vii. Silence. 1412
VIII. Ringing. 1423 g.
The film was made in black and white and only the final shots are in color. Colored fragments of Russian icons are shown in an enlarged perspective.
Conflict of secular and church cultures
The film caught on several painful problems, one of which is the conflict of secular and church cultures in history. It is known that in the Middle Ages the church (in the film - Orthodox) monopolized culture. And with apostates or adherents of other ideas, it is capable of fighting until it is completely eradicated. Church culture is personified by a handful of icon-painters and Theophanes the Greek. Secular culture is personified by the buffoon - the jester and the inhabitants of the village celebrate a pagan holiday. The schism took place even among a handful of monks. Kirill secretly denounces the authorities and provokes the punishment of the buffoon. Rublev, in whose soul the passionate desire for knowledge has not yet been killed, will run to the celebrants in order to learn a phenomenon that is unacceptable in a strict monastery. The film only shows the suppression of holidays by the authorities and the return of the "prodigal son" Andrey to the bosom of the official church, one of the pillars of which he would later become.
The scenes with the buffoon, however, will become the most important in the development of Tarkovsky's tragic film.
The hostile confrontation between church and secular culture did not find a peaceful solution in the film, just as it did not find it in history. The secular culture of the Middle Ages was pushed to the sidelines of history and left practically nothing about itself in the memory of posterity.
Film perception
Official institutions took the film with hostility, bombarding the filmmaker with accusations of slandering Russian history, which, allegedly, could not be cruel and insisted on treason and crimes. The filmmakers were accused of promoting cruelty and violence. The film was cut and re-edited.
The historical documents taken by Tarkovsky as the basis for the plot of the tape were ignored (the robberies of the city of Vladimir by the Horde in 1411, the torture of the economist Patrikei - a historical figure from the chronicles, internecine wars with the practice of blinding, the cooperation of Russian princes with the Horde, and the like). The director only allowed himself to be transported by events a little earlier in time, or to make Patrick the servant of the Assumption Cathedral (the historical Patrick served in the Church of the Theotokos), and the like. Tarkovsky's artistic truth was based on real events.
Tarkovsky's film was saved only by the fact that the events took place too long ago, an icon painter who was not prestigious for the authorities, and the ignorance of their own history in the Soviet Union by broad layers of the authorities and the population, deprived of historical knowledge.
Lack of renaissance in Russian history
The film was perceived badly by fellow filmmakers. “This is not Russia! In Russia in the 14th century there was a Renaissance, flourishing. What are you showing? - they angrily asked Andrey. This was another confirmation of the lack of historical knowledge even among the then intelligentsia. A superficial non-system knowledge base played cruel jokes with its speakers.
In the history of many countries, there is no stage of the Renaissance - from Mongolia and Japan to Russia.
Rus-Muscovy also bypassed the stage of cognition of Western European humanism. The type of education in Muscovy in the 14-16 centuries did not coincide with the types of education in Western Europe at that time. The inability to do significant mathematical calculations, the lack of building skills in working with stone and brick prompted the Russians to invite engineers and architects from Northern Italy to work. The modern Kremlin fortress in Moscow was built by Italians (Pietro Antonio Solari, Aleviz da Carcano, the so-called Aleviz New) in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, during the life of Bramante, Giorgione, Raphael Santi. Even the main Kremlin's Assumption Cathedral was built by the famous architect and engineer Aristotle Fioravanti from Italy. Historically, conditions were not created in Muscovy for the emergence of specialists of the Renaissance scale, just as there were no conditions for their education.
Living and painting icons in the Renaissance does not mean mechanical inclusion in the day, automatic entry into its problems or contribution to its cultural heritage. So Rublev was neither an artist of the Renaissance, nor a genius of the Renaissance. He is the personification of the medieval icon painter and the heyday of the medieval icon painting of Muscovy, as pointed out by Russian (then Soviet) scientists. But they were not heard.
So Tarkovsky's film began to illuminate the acute problems of the Soviet present, its limitations and superficiality, which significantly went beyond the events of the film. Subsequently, all of Tarkovsky's paintings became notable events in the cultural life of the USSR, influencing the spiritual development of society.
The film "Passion for Andrei" with Anatoly Solonitsyn in the title role, was released in 1971 with abbreviations under the title "Andrei Rublev".
