504. Andrei Rublyov/Andrei Rublev (1969)

Running Time: 205 minutes
Directed By: Andrei Tarkovsky
Written By: Andrei Konchalovsky, Andrei Tarkovsky
Main Cast: Anatoly Solonitsyn, Nikolai Grinko, Nikolai Sergeyev, Nikolai Burlyayev, Ivan Lapikov

NOTE: The title will say TARKOVSKY WEEK, but be warned that it's going to last a lot longer than a week. I'm getting five movies from Netflix now, but only two BOOK movies and with Netflix saying the post office is slowing up on the delivery of movies in 2015, it's now taking two days for me to get envelopes from them, so it's going to last a while. Be prepared for maybe one Tarkovsky film per week, for the next four weeks, with things spliced in, in between. I noticed that there were four of the BOOK movies airing on TCM in the next week, so I've set up my DVR to catch those ones. Also, my current plans have me knocking out anything that's over three hours soon, so as not to be left with it at the end. By my count, there's still seven films clocking in at 180 minutes plus, so expect those soon. Now then...

TARKOVSKY WEEK: CHAPTER ONE

Well, my wife's jury duty thing ended up lasting all day, so I managed to get this one knocked out yesterday, all in one sitting. Let me tell you it was no easy feat tackling all 205 minutes of this in one sit down, but I managed.

To be honest, I don't even feel like plodding through a plot synopsis for this one, mainly because it's a 205 minute movie, so detailing the plot would take a while, but also because I just don't want to. If you go to Wikipedia and search the film, there's actually a really well written, super detailed plot synopsis on there, so I'd recommend going that route if you must know every in and out of this movie before watching it, but assuming you've seen the film already or else you wouldn't be reading this, let's just jump right into my thoughts, shall we?

My first impressions are that Tarkovsky is going to be a challenge for me. He's someone I want to like (at least one - come on, just one!) but actually don't think I will, no matter how hard I try. For the record, I tried REALLY hard with Andrei Rublev, but ultimately, I just couldn't settle in. I take that back, I was fine up until the "The Raid" chapter and that's where the film lost me, I think. Sure, not a lot was happening, but I was with it and it was mildly interesting. Andrei's a famous painter....Kirill is a whiny, envious brat....Danil is a little envious too, but more saintly than Kirill. But then the character's of the prince, the prince's brother, Boriska and Durochka are introduced and it all got too muddled for me. So I'm one of these guys who likes, at least a little bit, of entertainment with his films (so sue me) and this one really is 0% about entertaining and more about Tarkovsky just being a poet, a deep thinker and a tortured soul. The whole thing is apparently one big "fuck you" to the Soviet government, which sort of puts it into the category of political statement, rather than making a movie for the sake of the plot. I won't go so far as to say I hated it, but I didn't like it, that's for sure. I won't even go so far as to say the 205 minutes dragged by (it had nothing on Satantango, which took me a week to watch and was a real clock stopper!), the minutes rolled on just fine and when I'd think I should be at a certain point, I'd check the timer and I was usually pretty close, so it had that going for it. For those of you who just can't get enough Andrei Rublev, I'll leave you to it. As Woody Allen once said, this film is like doing homework (he didn't say that about Andrei Rublev in particular, but said it about certain films in general). Here's hoping Stalker (which from the stills I've seen, looks great) or Solyaris (I'm intrigued) blow this out of the water and blow me away, but I won't hold my breath.

RATING: 4/10  That's about as good as she gets and damn it people, I tried, I really did. Speaking of Woody Allen, I'm tinkering with the idea of putting up another random Woody Allen review sooner, rather than later...stay tuned.

MOVIES WATCHED: 911
MOVIES LEFT TO WATCH: 90

February 19, 2015  6:52pm