Andrei Tarkovsky is rightly called the icon of Soviet cinema. This director and screenwriter has authored such cult films as Solaris, Ivan's Childhood and Sacrifice. Films that Tarkovsky made are valued worldwide and translated into a dozen languages.
In this article you will get acquainted with the phrases of Andrei Tarkovsky about cinema, learn about his attitude to love and loneliness. You will also receive a brief reference about his life in order to understand what kind of person he was, what he had to endure, and what influenced his worldview in such a way. Quotes by Andrei Tarkovsky are filled with great wisdom and an interesting look at simple things.
Andrey Tarkovsky - the man of the era
In order to understand this great artist, it is necessary to know some details of his biography. Andrey Tarkovsky was born in the family of the famous Soviet writer Arseny Tarkovsky and the proofreader of the printing house, Maria Yuryevna. Father left the family when the boy was only three years old, and terrible poverty began. Later, mom and little Andrei moved to Moscow. Tarkovsky recalls that despite the fact that it was a very difficult time, he owes a lot to his mother. During the teenage years of Andrei Tarkovsky, the Great Patriotic War fell, but the mother was able to save her son.
Then there was study at VGIK, the world-famous film “Andrei Rublev”, shot together with Konchalovsky, then the shooting of “Stalker”, “Mirrors”. In addition, Tarkovsky managed to work on theatrical productions and on the radio.
In the early eighties, Tarkovsky began to work a lot in Italy, where the works “Nostalgia” and “Travel Time” appeared. Then there was a big trip across Europe and at one of the conferences organized by the press, Andrei Tarkovsky declared that he did not intend to return to the Soviet Union. For the last film in his life “Sacrifice,” the director received the main prize of the Cannes Film Festival and a number of famous awards, most of which he did not manage to find out about. He died of cancer, clinging to life to the last and undergoing chemotherapy in Paris, but to no avail. In 1986, the master of cinema was gone.
Andrei Tarkovsky was married twice: his first wife was Irma Raush, who gave the wife of his son Arseny, the marriage broke up due to the director's relationship with a young girl Larisa Kizilova, who became his second wife and was devotedly in love with him all her life. Larisa died after her great husband.
Quotes by Andrei Tarkovsky on the meaning of life
Tarkovsky’s quotes are piercing about what he put into the concept of “meaning of life”. Most of them are taken from his diaries, which he led most of his earthly existence. These diaries were published after the death of Tarkovsky and became another bridge to the knowledge of the great personality of this man.
"The soul longs for harmony, and life is disharmonious."
Tarkovsky talked a lot about the soul and how difficult it is to be a person who is always in the grip of external circumstances.
In various publications, the following quotation by Andrei Tarkovsky is often given:
“It doesn’t matter how much you have lived, it is important how you have lived.”
These words were uttered by him before the screening of his film “Ivan childhood” and was repeatedly repeated by his biographers as a credo of his life: to live every day as the last.
And then in the book “Martyrology,” Tarkovsky generally stated:
"Life has no meaning."
Tarkovsky about the movie
The main love of Andrei Tarkovsky’s life, of course, was the movie. Once he said:
“Even if there are eight people left in the hall during the screening of my film, I will work for them.”
Such a return to his work was transmitted to the audience, although his work was not always clear to the majority. This lack of focus on the mass public was expressed in one of his phrases, which stated that creativity, in a deliberate installation on the viewer, becomes anything but an art. He believed in cinema and believed that it was not subject to any crises, the only thing that shocked art, according to the director, was development.
Andrei Tarkovsky quotes about loneliness
Despite the fact that there were always a lot of people near Tarkovsky, he felt lonely and created, remaining inside himself, even surrounded by a noisy crowd. Thoughts about his loneliness are clearly expressed in a quote from his book Martyrology, which states that the artist feels lonely, because he is really lonely, and it’s time to stop forgetting about it.
"The trouble with today's youth is that they are trying to unite on the basis of some noisy actions, sometimes aggressive."
Tarkovsky wanted to teach everyone to be alone: it is not easy to be alone, and not to be bored alone with yourself, to be interesting to yourself. In people who aspire to society, so as not to feel alone, Andrei Tarkovsky saw danger from a moral point of view.
Andrey Tarkovsky about happiness
Quotes about the happiness of Andrei Tarkovsky practically did not remain either in literature or in the memoirs of those who knew him. Relatives said that the director had his own understanding of ordinary human happiness. He said that we were not made for happiness, and that there are more important things in life than happiness. The eternal search for truth in the question of a happy life, he considered painful.
Thoughts of love
Quotes were said by Andrei Tarkovsky about the relationship between a man and a woman. He said that “a single woman is not normal” and considered the female inner world only in connection with the male one. It is interesting that, making a movie filled with human feelings and causing a variety of emotions in the audience, Andrei Arsenievich himself was a stingy person to display emotions. Once he even said that he was afraid of a funeral, because there were people around who showed their feelings:
"I can’t look at people who feel something."
To the question of what love is, Tarkovsky never answered. He said that he was familiar with her, "but does not know how to determine."
Tarkovsky books
During his life, the director has written many books. Most of them in Russian were published many years after his death. The universally recognized best among the books of Andrei Tarkovsky are rightfully considered “Martyrology”, “Nostalgia”, “Sealed Time” and “White, White Day”. Even for those who are simply fond of cinema, and not engaged in it professionally, it will be useful to familiarize themselves with the information, reasoning, and conclusions of Tarkovsky in books on directorial art: “Director's Lessons” and “Lectures on Film Director”.
Quotes by Andrei Tarkovsky - a kind of bridge that connects us with the departed figure. They reveal his extraordinary outlook on life. Quotes about happiness, as well as about love, are few in number, but they are especially valuable, and his thoughts about the meaning of life and loneliness give reason to stop and think. Together with Tarkovsky, an entire era passed, but he remained in his films, books and, of course, dozens of quotes.