Essays on Philosophy, Narrative and Symbol in the Cinema And

The Soul that Thinks: Essays on Philosophy, Narrative and Symbol in the Cinema and Thought of Andrei Tarkovsky A dissertation presented to the faculty of the College of Fine Arts of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy Daniel O. Jones November 2007 2 This dissertation titled The Soul that Thinks: Essays on Philosophy, Narrative and Symbol in the Cinema and Thought of Andrei Tarkovsky by DANIEL O. JONES has been approved for the Interdisciplinary Arts and the College of Fine Arts by Vladimir L. Marchenkov Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts Charles A. McWeeny Dean, College of Fine Arts 3 ABSTRACT JONES, DANIELS O., Ph.D., November 2007, Interdisciplinary Arts The Soul that Thinks: Essays on Philosophy, Narrative and Symbol in the Cinema and Thought of Andrei Tarkovsky (226 pp.) Director of Dissertation: Vladimir L. Marchenkov This dissertation examines the films and philosophy of Andrei Tarkovsky in relationship to the artists that influenced him and in the context of the tradition he and those artists create. I am particularly interested in theological and philosophical aspects of his work in relation to aesthetics and in the effects of literature, painting and music on his film style. This work is part historiography and part meditation on the meanings of the films and how they are created. I suggest that, despite a reasonable popularity, Tarkovsky is widely misunderstood, and I hope to demonstrate that the cause of this misunderstanding results, at least in part, from failing to account for the broad artistic tradition to which Tarkovsky belongs. One of the most pressing concerns is the fact that critics, and indeed western viewers in general, are bound to world views that reduce both experience and conceptualization to either/or propositions. The first two chapters address this problem in detail, and both go on to suggest the proper context in which to place Tarkovsky. Chapter one covers philosophical or theoretical questions while chapter two looks mainly at artistic production. The central idea is that, contrary to the western mindset, the truth is never a choice between mind and body, between intellect and emotion or between soul and material. The first two chapters demonstrate that the philosophers and artists to whom Tarkovsky is closest understood this. 4 The next three chapters examine Tarkovsky’s film style, arguing toward conclusions often quite at odds with more established notions about his films regarding narrative framework, use of symbolism and sound design. Everything important in art is in its style. It is never the abstract idea expressed that matter most, but the way it is expressed. Style is what makes art irreducible to its supposed idea, and thus defeats the compulsion to fit it into a binary. This is how I would describe my methodology, and I would argue it is also how Tarkovsky viewed making films. The chapters dedicated to specific films detail some of the complexity and difficulty of watching films with elusive and unstable ideas. Three of the chapters engage a particular artist who features prominently in each film, using him as a touchstone for addressing Tarkovsky. The point is not that Tarkovsky has something in common with Bruegel, Leonardo or Shakespeare. Rather it is to view Solaris, Offret and Stalker as Tarkovskian dialogues with these artists that allow the viewer to understand better their works as well as his. My study of Zerkalo is a more straight-forward interpretation, employing much of what was developed in the three chapters on style to understand what seems to me to be Tarkovsky’s least accessible film. The chapter about Nostalghia and the conclusion address two major misconceptions about Tarkovsky, his attitudes about women and his religious beliefs. Taken together they consider the false binaries inherent in feminist critiques of Tarkovsky’s portrayal of women and in both dogmatically religious and skeptical views of his work. The dissertation thus ends where it began, asserting that Tarkovsky’s films break down methodologies used to attack them and to praise them; the works defeat even the most carefully considered ideas about them. The Tarkovsky film makes one consider that which is opposed to their deepest 5 sensibility. The faithful person is made to engage their intellect, and the skeptic is made to negotiate miracles in order to experience the inseparability of the mind and the spirit. Approved: _____________________________________________________________ Vladimir L. Marchenkov Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts 6 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank everyone who has helped me bring this work to its current state. My committee has been a huge help, especially my chair and my advisor, Dr. Marchenkov. His attention to my work has not only made this dissertation better, but also helped to make considerable improvements to my writing style in general. I also want to acknowledge my gratitude to my wife. She moved to Athens with me and waited patiently as I completed this work for the past five years. Her encouragement has kept me going in some rather trying times. Finally, I want to thank the artist, Andrei Tarkovsky, for his mysteries and his insight. 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………………………6 Introduction: A Sublime, Purging Trauma ......................................................................... 8 Chapter One: Souls Which Are Pregnant - Poetry, Mimesis and Aesthetic Contexts…...35 Chapter Two: Tarkovsky Contra Modernism……………………………………………60 Chapter Three: Tarkovsky Style Part One - Narrative…………………………………..86 Chapter Four: Tarkovsky Style Part Two - Dreams and Symbols……………………...102 Chapter Five: Tarkovsky Style Part Three - Sound Design…………………………….116 Chapter Six: Art Makes Us Human - Tarkovsky and Bruegel…………………………129 Chapter Seven: How the Personal Reflects the Universal…………….………………..143 Chapter Eight: Stalker and Shakespeare….…………………………………………….163 Chapter Nine: Tarkovsky and Women……………..…………………………………..179 Chapter Ten: Last Works, Unfinished Works and Dialectical Aesthetics………….......195 Conclusion: Belief and Being…………………………………………………………..209 Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 220 8 Introduction: A Sublime, Purging Trauma True art is a unity of content and the means of expressing that content, but these means of expression can easily be understood simplistically, by excising some single facet from the content-laden function of embodiment. Then just one side of an organic unity, one side alone, is taken as something self-sufficient, existing in seclusion from the other facets of embodiment, even though it is really a fiction that has no reality outside the whole, just as paint scraped off a painting or the sounds of an entire symphony played all together are not an aesthetic reality. And if on the basis of this simplistic insensitivity the aesthete attempts to sever the threads or, more accurately, the bloodbearing arteries linking that facet of the work of art under examination to those other facets which the aesthete fails to notice, then he destroys the unity between the content and the means of expression, he annihilates the style of the art object or distorts it, and in distorting or annihilating style, in de-styling that work, he thereby deprives it of genuine artistic content. --Father Pavel Florensky Film and the Other Arts Western thought tends to divide the world into binaries and to suggest two ways of reconciling the two sides: one may choose one side or the other, good or evil; or one may find the middle path between the two choices. The either/or dichotomy insists upon the superiority of one position over another, while the synthesis tactic attempt to find compromise. Both attempt in their separate ways to eliminate contradiction. Andrei Tarkovsky does not wish to eliminate contradiction. His films and his philosophy preserve the contradiction, and they show us that morality, truth and love are possible even as their contradictions are inevitable. His ideas are not without precedent. In the west artistic and philosophical traditions that share this attitude include Byzantine and Russian icon painting; German, Flemish and Netherlandish painting of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, especially the works of Pieter Bruegel; Leonardo da Vinci, the tragedies of William Shakespeare; the philosophical writings of Plato, Viacheslav Ivanov and Pavel Florensky; the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Lev Tolstoy; and the films of 9 Alexander Dovzhenko and Robert Bresson. One of the aims of this dissertation is to demonstrate that these artists and philosophers have something in common besides their influence on the art and thought of Tarkovsky. They offer a world-view contrary to the master narrative through which the western cultural tradition has been understood for so long. The fundamental point of contention between the master narrative and its counter- narrative is found at the border between two different ideas about the function of art. The view that informs most aesthetic thought, and which holds sway virtually unchallenged in film theory and criticism, describes art as the imitation of appearance. On the other side is the belief that art is the means by which humanity discovers its deepest truths. This discourse is concerned

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