Andrei Tarkovsky is one of those film makers that I have admired mainly because of his choice of themes. He has always looked inwards, into human conflicts, their mental & psychological struggles & their indomitable will, as one of the key themes. Though I am not a film expert, I have taken a lot of lessons from his cinematographic visions for my own fine art projects.
It seems to me that the conflict, and the fraught, urgent search for a spiritual ideal, will continue until humanity has freed itself sufficiently only with the spiritual.
As soon as that happens a new stage will begin in the development of the human soul, when man will be directed into his inner being as intensely, deeply, passionately, limitlessly as he has directed his efforts up till now to search for his inner freedom.
Andrei Tarkovsky
Projects like Abandoned, 16 Frames, Double Take all have some elements of Tarkovsky in them, along with other influences. Tarkovsky has used techniques like dreams & closed loop shots as a means to circumvent time, something that I am trying to conceptualize in my new projects.
The question that film-makers must ask themselves is, what distinguishes cinema from other arts? To me cinema is unique in its dimension of time.
Film fixes reality in a sense of time – its a way of conserving time.
Andrei Tarkovsky
I prefer to express myself metaphorically. Let me stress: metaphorically, not symbolically. A symbol contains within itself a definite meaning, certain intellectual formula, while a metaphor is an image. An image, as opposed to a symbol, is indefinite in meaning.
I don’t know what my symbols mean. I only desire to induce feelings, any feelings, in viewers.
Andrei Tarkovsky
His movies Andrei Rublev & Mirror have left deep impressions in me and almost inherently shows in my personal choice of both themes & compositions. From a photographer’s perspective, I find that there is almost a lyrical approach to his style while still framing the shot in all sincerity and boldness. It almost seems that he is playing with a very subtle sense of acceptance, yet romanticizing the composition to represent the beauty and chaos of real life.
However harsh life could be and how ever much torturous fate could be, Tarkovsky’s drama always handles them with some degree of patience and resilience. So there is no conflict in violence, no pain in suffering and humans seem to fall back on the holiness of their spirits to overcome such realities.