Tarkovsky

I visited Broadway Cinema twice this weekend to see restorations of The Sacrifice and Nostalghia, two films by my favourite director, Andrei Tarkovsky. Somehow, despite going to art school, sitting through plenty of film discussion, having an indie cinema on my doorstep, and reading big newspapers, nobody ever told me about Andrei Tarkovsky. And this is a director whose Andrei Rublev (1966) was voted best arthouse film of all time. Thankfully, lots of good things seem to be finding their way to me at this point in my life—things that connect, inform and influence what I’m making. Still, I’m wary of recommending Tarkovsky’s films, because they’re probably the most challenging films I’ve seen outside an art gallery. They’re often extremely slow, with long takes that keep going well past the point where you crave a cut. There is narrative, but it’s usually half-hidden, layered, ambiguous, or only starts to make sense after repeated viewings. Solaris (1972) is the one people are most…