You could try the Tarkovsky companion dvd, apparently it has some good background information on his films.
Out of curiosity, what other films were you allowed to choose from?
Zerkalo / Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, Russia, 1974)
Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, USA, 1977)
A ma soeur! / Fat Girl (Catherine Breillat, France, 2001)
Gegen die Wand / Head On (Fatih Akin, Germany/Turkey, 2005)
Om Shanti Om (Farah Khan, India, 2007)
4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile / 4 months, 3 weeks plus 2 days (Christian Mungiu, Romania, 2007)
There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA, 2007)
XXY (Lucia Puenzo, Argentina/France/Spain, 2007)
Let the Right One In / Låt den rätte komma in (Tomas Alfredson, Sweden, 2008)
I asked for Zerkalo to be put on the course, and they actually listened to me :-)
Is the Tarkovsky companion DVD avalible in region 2, or is it just USA product?
“Andrei Tarkovsky – Elements Of Cinema” by Robert Bird is a relatively new book on Tarkovsky. I read it last year. While there is no chapter dedicated to sound, the importance of sound to Tarkovsky’s idea of cinema as art is definitely addressed throughout the book.
thanks Harry I will have a search for that.
Read some Robert Bird on Tarkovsky.
As well as reading up on Tarkovsky (whether Le Fanu, Tarkovsky himself, the large book “Tarkovsky” ed Nathan Dunne…) this is a great opportunity to develop sensitivity to sounds when watching films. I’m tempted to do this exercise myself.
The beginning of Zerkalo is linked to the idea of the artist finding his voice out of uncertainty i think, and also Faith, like the sound of the bell (thanks to the Faith of the young bell-maker) in Andrei Rublev which causes the artist in that film to resume speech after a long silence.
And in Tarkovsky the natural elements (water, wind, fire…) are crucial- they are given an almost mystical reverence, the mundane made miraculous, so look for heightened sounds and any external sounds that don’t seem directly linked to what is being shown. And i presume music counts, and don’t forget silence
Show how you’ve really tuned in yourself, that will impress as much as citing critics. That is after all what Tarkovsky’s cinema is about, encouraging us to tune in/be morre sensitive and receptive to what we take for granted (and through that get a stronger spiritual sense)- this might also be linked to the Iranian film The Colour of Paradise, with the blind boy listening to the sounds of nature
Oh and sound to express the strangeness of life- "life as a refelection, life as a dream (as Bergman called it, praising Tarkovsky); memories, dreams, reveries etc. A scene in the printing works corridor comes to mind. Mirror is a cubist film, difficult to disentangle to any clear sense of what is the present reality compared with the past, and whose reality it all is.
thank you very much Kenji, I’ve taken note of alot of these thoughts.
I watched stalker last night for a second time, another film with this perfect use of sound.
yes, who could forget the rhythmic sound with the 3 adventurers on the railtrack?
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Jamie Mattick
I have to write an essay for university and create my thesis. We got a selection of about 15 films to write any question about, and as I love Zerkalo I thought I would have a look at this film for my essay.
I am very much in the preliminary phases of planning, I haven’t read any theory on Tarkovsky at all but I feel alot of his major themes in Zerkalo stand out for the viewer to see.
My question to others here is there any academic essays/books you could recommend which deal with Tarkovsky’s use of sound? I was particuarly interested when watching it through again this morning in afternoon in whether there was a link between the extremity of the sound implemented and the clear spiritulism found in the film. As both the spiritualism and the sound design seem to be profoundly important in this film.
So any suggestions?
Or maybe your own insight both would be majorly apreciated.
cheers