This may be the longest movie I've seen since I started this blog. Running nearly 3.5 hours with no overture or intermission, it feels like it could easily have been edited down to less than half as much. Even for a Russian classic, that's a lot.
It had also been one of the British Film Institute's favorite films that I hadn't seen yet, at #27 on their list of 50 greatest. But that did nothing to get me psyched for it. I have to say, the BFI's taste doesn't appeal to me nearly as much as the AFI's. Perhaps I'm something of an ugly American after all.
AR does have a partial excuse for its runtime: It takes place over many years, each announced by silent-style intertitles. The events therein may or may not be accurate to the real life of Andrei, whose last name is also spelled "Rublyov." It's quite episodic, and some of the segments have almost nothing to do with Andrei.
Who was he, you ask? An artistic monk from the 14th and 15th centuries, here shown starting from rather late in his career. He mostly paints murals of a religious nature (hence 20 years of communists suppressing the film), but he goes through a crisis of faith, possibly in connection with his envy of contemporary Theophanes. Oddly enough, we don't get to see any of his works until the last seven minutes, when the B&W story suddenly goes into a technicolor montage set to dramatic choral music.
Things get interesting in parts. I hadn't predicted Andrei stumbling upon a big pagan orgy and nearly getting killed for it. Then there's the sanguinary Tatar invasion, whose scenes, alas, are not entirely devoid of animal cruelty. If it makes you feel better, the flaming cow was actually protected, and the genuinely killed horse had been slated for the slaughterhouse anyway. (Without such assurance, I'd have called it more objectionable than the elephant shooting in King Solomon's Mines.)
AR is thoughtful and emotional enough to give me a fair idea of why many viewers swear by its greatness. I'm not the least bit surprised that Richard Linklater, director of Boyhood, adores it.
But I'm no bigger a fan of Russian cinema now than I was before. Really, the only example I recall liking is Good Bye, Lenin!, which came out in 2003. The earlier ones tend toward brooding, moping, and requiring patience.
It'll be a while, if ever, before I give director Andrei Tarkovsky a third chance. At least AR isn't another Stalker, though.
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