Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema

Product Information

Again we are reminded of the dictum that our life here on earth was made for happiness, and that nothing else is more important for man. And though this could only be true if one were to alter the meaning of the word happiness—which is impossible—neither in the West nor the East (I am not referring to the Far East) will a dissenting voice be taken seriously by the materialistic majority. No human invention has rendered this paradox more pliant than the cinema. That’s what the great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (April 4, 1932–December 29, 1986) examined in the last year of his life as he considered the raw material of his art in Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema ( public library). At the time I was simply a sunburnt young boy, entirely unknown, son of the distinguished poet Arseniy Tarkovsky: a nobody, merely a son. It was the first and last time I saw Landau, a single, chance meeting; hence such candour on the part of the Soviet Nobel Prize winner.

Slovak experimental guitarist / composer David Kollar emerges as one of the most intriguing figures on the European Avant-Garde / Jazz scene in the last decade. His utterly unique approach both to the guitar as an instrument and the contemporary improvising / compositional idioms are fascinating and completely innovative. The overall effect of these events was to be not only a parable about sacrifice, but also the story of how one individual is saved. And what I hope is that Alexander—like the hero of the film finally made in Sweden in 1985—is healed in a more significant sense; it is not only a question of being cured of a physical (and, moreover, fatal) disease; it is also a spiritual regeneration expressed in the image of a woman. Kollar treats his music with a deep degree of seriousness and personal involvement, as if each and every one of his projects was not only his proverbial brain child but as if it was his actual offspring. He treats his instrument as a gateway between his complex ideas and their audible representation, the same way a sculptor treats the chisel or a painter the brush." Little by little that awareness led me to carry out my wish to make a feature film about a man whose dependence upon others brings him to independence, and for whom love is at once ultimate thrall and ultimate freedom. And the more clearly I discerned the stamp of materialism on the face of our planet (irrespective of whether I was observing the West or the East), the more I came up against unhappy people, saw the victims of psychoses symptomatic of an inability or unwillingness to see why life had lost all delight and all value, why it had become oppressive, the more committed I felt to this film as the most important thing in my life. It seems to me that the individual stands today at a crossroads, faced with the choice of whether to pursue the existence of a blind consumer, subject to the implacable march of new technology and the endless multiplication of material goods, or whether to seek out a way that will lead to spiritual responsibility, which ultimately might mean not only his personal salvation but also the saving of society at large: in other words, to turn to God. He has to solve this dilemma for himself, for only he can discover his own sane spiritual life. Solving it may take him closer to the state in which he can be responsible for society. That is the step which becomes a sacrifice, in the Christian sense of self-sacrifice. The success of a film is not to be measured by sales as it depends on how it individually received with the dispositions of each viewer, some which will appreciate it completely and others who will find it alien.

Popular quotes

I will expound developments I made while reading the great Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky’s poetic accounts, and they will collectively be an indirect review in the process... Above all, I feel that the sounds of this world are so beautiful in themselves that if only we could learn to listen to them properly, cinema would have no need of music at all.

Musicians and sound artists have since devised countless artistic techniques whose goal is to sensitize listeners to their own auditory perception. ​52​ They have long moved their audiences out of the concert-hall setting that Cage’s famous silent piece 4’33” (1952) still relied on. Starting in the 1960s, artists began to lead their audiences on soundwalks in which participants often deliberately refrain from talking, with the goal of getting them to “ LISTEN“, as the single-word score read that Max Neuhaus rubber-stamped on his audience’s hands at the beginning of such encounters. ​53​ Popularized by artists such as Hildegard Westerkamp in the 1970s and 1980s, soundwalking has since yielded an impressive range of artistic forms and techniques ​54​ – from solo walks mediated by textual or graphical scores (sometimes handed out separately, sometimes located in situ) to group experiences – and has also been proposed as a method for urban sound design. ​55​ He is against montage theory and believes that to be true to the essence of cinema is to leave everything formally within the frame and attempt to capture time in the film image the way that it exists in real life, thus making "rhythm" and not editing the main formative element of cinema.

FOLLOW

We could define it as sculpting in time. Just as a sculptor takes a lump of marble, and, inwardly conscious of the features of his finished piece, removes everything that is not part of it—so the film-maker, from a ‘lump of time’ made up of an enormous, solid cluster of living facts, cuts off and discards whatever he does not need, leaving only what is to be an element of the finished film, what will prove to be integral to the cinematic image. Once seen and recorded, time could now be preserved in metal boxes over a long period (theoretically for ever).” (Photo: Pexels) Sculpting in Time is a beautiful, diverse and contemplative work of aural art. It serves as a remembrance of and reflection on one of Kollar’s closest friends who passed away before his time. The recording also includes material inspired by and derived from the spiritual and metaphysical work of famed Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. It features performances by Erik Truffaz, Christian Fennesz, Arve Henriksen and Pat Mastelotto, all of whom contribute their unique voices supportive of the meditative context. A wonderful recording designed to temporarily pause the swirl and din of modern life’s demands." Tarkovsky for me is the greatest (director), the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream,” said the acclaimed Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) of the legendary Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky. Born in 1932 in the village of Zavrazhye in western Russia to poet Arseny Tarkovsky and his wife Maria, Andrei Tarkovsky attended the State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. He made a total of seven feature films: Ivan’s Childhood (1962), Andrei Rublev (1966), Solaris (1972), The Mirror (1975), Stalker (1979), Nostalghia(1983) and The Sacrifice (1986) – the last two being produced in Italy and Sweden, respectively. Tarkovsky died in Paris in December 1986 at the age of 54. Tarkovsky a través de sus obras, nos hace entender que está al tanto de la intangibilidad del ser humano, el potencial que tiene para experiencias emocionales profundas que no se puede comprender a través de la lógica o la razón, pero que se puede sentir íntimamente.

Tarkovsky argues that such an image is captured only when the director abandons all attempts at objectivity, building instead from his own personal storehouse of memory and experience. The Mirror is the most obvious example of this principle put to practice — it is a film filled with images from Tarkovsky’s own childhood. His approach to the film image (in a nutshell) is that an image based on Truth (even a completely subjective truth) will resonate much more strongly with an audience than will a cliched image that comes pre-loaded with supposedly objective symbolism. Works for me. I can barely make it through The Mirror without crying. Time, Rhythm and EditingMusic used correctly goes beyond intensifying the image by paralleling it with the same idea -- done correctly it transfigures the image into something different in kind. Properly used, music has the ability to change the whole emotional tone of a filmed sequence. Un libro tan íntimo y tan abierto...¿cómo un hombre pudo alcanzar tal madurez, tal ingenio y tanta sensibilidad? Creo que no tiene que ser leído necesariamente por aficionados, estudiosos del cine, sino creo es un libro que alcanza a todo al que se lo permita, como lo fue tan necesario para mi en estos tiempos. God hears Alexander’s prayer, and the consequences are at once terrible and joyful. On the one hand, the practical result is that Alexander breaks irrevocably with the world and with its laws, which until now he has taken to be his own. In doing so, he not only loses his family, but also—and for those around him this is the most frightening thing of all—he puts himself outside all accepted norms. And yet, that is precisely why I see Alexander as a man chosen by God. He can sense the danger, the destructive force driving the machinery of modern society as it heads towards the abyss. And the mask must be snatched away if humanity is to be saved. As we shot that scene for the second time, we were filled with apprehension until both cameras had been turned off—one by the assistant camera-man, the other by the intensely anxious Sven Nykvist, that brilliant master of light. Then we all let go: we were nearly all weeping like children, and as we fell into each other’s arms I realised how close and indissoluble was the bond that united our team. We combine, we construct… we do not hear around us the countless sounds of nature, we do not sufficiently appreciate this immensely varied music which nature offers us in such abundance… And there, according to me, is the new way forward. But… I have scarcely glimpsed it, since what remains to be done is immense!

In Sculpting in Time, Tarkovsky sets down his thoughts and his memories, revealing for the first time the original inspirations for his extraordinary films—Ivan's Childhood, Andrey Rublyov, Solaris, The Mirror, Stalker, Nostalgia, and The Sacrifice. He discusses their history and his methods of work, he explores the many problems of visual creativity, and he sets forth the deeply autobiographical content of part of his oeuvre—most fascinatingly in The Mirror and Nostalgia. The closing chapter on The Sacrifice, dictated in the last weeks of Tarkovsky's life, makes the book essential reading for those who already know or who are just discovering his magnificent work. All we composers really have to work with is time and sound – and sometimes I’m not even sure about sound. Ese apego a reproducir la realidad pero a través de la poética de la imagen que también rechaza la pirotecnia, el artificio, el símbolo y la interpretación unívoca propuesta por el director, busca un impresionismo cinematográfico en el que incluso el color resulta un problema, ya que para la época, el trabajo con el color en el cine aún no llegaba a un nivel técnico óptimo y seguía resaltando como una estética incontrolable por encima del fondo y la profundidad del sentido de la imagen. Por ello Tarkovski proponía el uso de colores apagados y neutros, e incluso, asegura que el blanco y negro es la representación de la realidad más fiel, pues anula la necesidad del escoger un color por encima de otro y de darle un sentido a la gama de colores que en la vida real no existe porque es fortuita. The greatest director and very bad methodologist. He is the only one, there is no one like him and every one who tried to follow his method suffered different kinds of failure. I personally acquainted with people whose whole life collapsed under Tarkovsky's colossus. The scale of his talent and its main feature: ability to erect his own personal life experiences to the scale of something universal, attracts a lot of young filmmakers and they all end up destroying their own talent, just because of that - it is impossible to repeat what Tarkovsky did on screen. To make an impossible thing a life goal... just very unproductive, but he speaks so conclusively and lofty in this book, it even leaves you with feeling, that if you want to be a good director you just don't have another way then follow his method...Time, printed in its factual forms and manifestations: such is the supreme idea of cinema as an art, leading us to think about the wealth of untapped resources in film, about its colossal future. a piece of magical sound metamorphosis in which the single “clink” of two whisky glasses [borrowed from Jonty Harrison’s piece et ainsi suite…] gradually metamorphoses into a multitude of other sounds, eventually alluding to the sounds of birdsong, a junkyard gamelan, the ocean and the human voice, but never entirely abandoning its links to this minimal source. If this word “music” is sacred and reserved for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century instruments, we can substitute a more meaningful term: organization of sound.