SCFZ poll: Andrei Tarkovsky

[Umbugbene]

I've got 6 Milestone, 9 Zhang, 6 McCarey, 7 Porter, and more by Ron Howard than I care to admit, though not enough to help qualify.

[flip]

i have 9 porter, 11 mccarey, 8 howard, and four or five from milestone and zhang. i'd guess they'd all work except maybe milestone - is he your first choice?

[...]

I'd like to try Milestone someday, but we can go with one of the others this time, no problem. Whoever works is fine with me.

[Joks Trois]

The spiritual element is likely at the root of the issue, which tends to lead towards a view of the world, and beyond, that I have some disagreement with, but not so much as that alone would put me off, it's more how that view seems to color his view of people, particularly in the way he seems to view women as "other" in some ways that aren't so readily set aside as a spirituality alone. It's something that comes up in Stalker, Solaris, Nostalgia, and The Sacrifice and also seems to effect how he views the mother in The Mirror in a different sort of way. In Stalker, for example, it's the rather extraordinarily filmed scene with the wife right before the end where see explains the motivations of the events, more or less, in Solaris and Nostalgia its more directly in the disagreements between the men and the women in their lives and how they play out and tone of the overall encounters, while in The Sacrifice the whole story is colored by the conceptual issue of the "witch" and how that relates to the man. The Mirror just sort of flips it to making the mother almost saintly, which is just the other side of the coin, still "othered".

It would maybe be less of a deal if Tarkovsky didn't seem so serious about this as a value, if he had just followed the general tendency of movies and the world to treat women differently without really thinking about it deeply, then it might be able to be written off a little bit more as just being a systemic issue, but Tarkovsky is more adamant than that in putting the conflict or view at the center of the stories. It's something that also bugs me about some other movies like Tree of Life, for example, the way the spiritual is used as excuse to seemingly cover some questionable attitudes that held just short of being made completely explicit, but are still brought forth to be seen. On the other side, there is some similarity to my objections to the two Abuladze films I've seen, where that same kind of attention to the spiritual leads to some questionable ideological claims, but which are better understood, perhaps, as coming from the Soviet system that repressed religions in ways very different than in the US and West more generally. The thought that through religion one can critique the state has some validity in that model, but still can lead to overestimation when it is treated as somehow apart from other aspects of social order, as if it too couldn't be part of a system of control and domination. Trying to account for both the cultural difference and universals involved and dealing with some purposeful obscuring of what values are underlying the films makes me want to keep a little distance from them.

After reading your first paragraph I immediately thought 'I bet he has the same objection to recent Malick too', and that was simply confirmed after reading your second paragraph This tendency bugs me far more in recent Malick than it does in Tarkovsky. In To The Wonder, the female characters are constantly running around with their arms open being spontaneous and joyful and/or bathed in warm light etc.

To some degree these views are generational, but I also think that some men really want to believe it's the truth deep down.

[...]

Heh. Yeah, I'm not all that thrilled with the more recent Malicks I've seen, but that's as much due to his choice of imagery, and/or how he films it as much as the content of the movies, as much as that can be made out. There's a kind of wholesome cleanliness to his vision that grates on me for seeming like its suggesting the ineffable is a Hallmark product writ large as much as anything else. It's a weirdly narrow aesthetic in a troubling way. It kinda works in The New World and Thin Red Line, but gets progressively more irksome as it goes on.

It doesn't help matters when he does stuff like have Sean Penn's revery triggered by his office mate's talk about his relationship, which ends with Penn asking him what he'll do next and the guy responds "experiment", which has the connotation of suggesting trying a non-traditional sexual relationship, making the connection to Penn's reassessment of his own life and embrace of the pretty as an alternative a bit more troubling. That isn't even going into the Oedipal stuff or who makes the cut for the "afterlife" party and who doesn't, like his current girlfriend not getting an invite, but scarred boy somehow has to be there, as if Penn's character would be a big deal to him in some bizarre fashion. If it's intended to invoke the idea of perfect love, it's a questionable and banal way to view it, as if that kind of "Endless Love" entails no consideration for what one's relationship was in this world as you'll "Love" everyone when the time comes. Kind of a nice deal for assholes to get, personal gain now, complete forgiveness later, while those that suffered get the fun of meandering along the sainted seashore in perfect harmony with their abusers.

Tarkovsky's a genius, I mean whatever the possible meanings of the path that gets him to the ending of Nostalgia, the ending is amazing as a thing in itself. The same for much of Stalker and the others, I just get a bit twitchy when I feel like I'm being asked to accept a worldview because of how fantastic the wrapping looks without considering more exactly what it is that package contains. I think it's fair to argue that the movies are meant as more personal expression than solicitation, which might be true for Malick as well, so I don't want to go overboard in knocking them necessarily, just find some of the elements seem more insistent than one might expect for something only meant personally.

[rischka]

7 milestone, 6 zhang, 10 mccarey, 11 porter, will boycott howard lol

[...]

But, but, Grand Theft Auto! Splash! Apollo Whatever#!, that Moby Dick looking movie! Parenthood! Nightshift! and Tom Hanks in those Vatican movies from the awful books! Howard deserves his shot! I mean if not enough people have watched those other fine directors, there needs to be some accounting for that, and that's what Ron Howard is for.

[wba]

I've got:

Lewis Milestone: 4
Yimou Zhang: 10
Leo McCarey: 6
Edwin S Porter: 2
Ron Howard: 9

[Curtis, baby]

I have 10+ of McCarey and Porter

[flip]

I'd like to try Milestone someday, but we can go with one of the others this time, no problem. Whoever works is fine with me.

okay i don't like to be the one who chooses, but i will use a random number generator to make the pick. since you described ron howard as a fallback, i'll exclude him, and since it's not clear milestone has the views (we can check that properly for a future poll) i'll leave him out. so i'll use random.org to pick from:

1. Zhang Yimou
2. Leo McCarey
3. Edwin S Porter

... and the winner is...

[flip]

Edwin S Porter!

[sally]

hmmm. i'd have liked to do milestone, but i want to watch more of his films first, just to get more of a sense of what he was up to (i have vague hints, but...i think i'd like to get more cohesive) so if he doesn't have enough viewers yet, that isn't so bad. and there was me thinking i was so cool having 0 ron howard views until i looked closer and realised i just hadn't rated them. i'll never be cool.

as for tarkovsky (the greg/joks discussion noted, nodded at, and applied to 1000's of other directors) i can't really rank him because stalker was the first 'foreign' film i ever watched in my youth that wasn't just for the sex (this was before the internet) and it was a revelation that films might be about something, a genuine revelation so immense i'm still stuck in its bubble and much as i nobly ignore it, the anguish in that film is flushed into my bones. i watched his other films, but they were just films and not, ha ha, a religious experience.

so my list would be:
stalker
'ideas'
the rest of cinema

[St. Gloede]

For what it is worth I have seen 7 Milestones, I don't mind seeing an 8th this week (or before next time he is nominated).

[flip]

good to know, if tdm has seen several milestone and st gloede has seven, we can do a milestone poll too, so when any of the names (milestone, zhang, mccarey, howard) greg suggested earlier are proposed again, we'll just go ahead with those polls without checking views

[flip]

it's interesting to run a poll where most people here have seen the same films -- a bit surprisingly, no two ballots were identical. we will need to have a runoff vote to get to a top ten, because only the eight major features got support. if anyone has seen at least two of the three films with 0 points, if you could post a ranking of the two or three films that you've seen (all of them please), i'll figure out what to do with those votes. thanks!

results

1. Andrei Rublev (1966) -- 45 pts
2. Stalker (1979) -- 44 pts
3. Mirror (1975) -- 35 pts
4. Solaris (1972) -- 31 pts
5. The Sacrifice (1986) -- 18 pts
6. Nostalgia (1983) -- 16 pts
7. Ivan's Childhood (1962) -- 14 pts
8. The Steamroller and the Violin (1961) -- 1 pts
9. Tempo di Viaggio (1983) -- 0.03 pts
10. Murderers (1956) -- 0.02 pts
11. There Will Be No Leave Today (1959) -- 0.01 pts

[FLABREZU]

Seen 7

Stalker
Solaris
Ivan's Childhood

[St. Gloede]

Ranking the 3 zero vote films:

Tempo di Viaggio (1983)
Murderers (1956)
There Will Be No Leave Today (1959)

[flip]

i'll still take votes on the final three films for a day or two, but if no other votes come in, the top ten is set

[flip]

up at letterboxd:

https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-183/