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Architectural Settings in the Films of

Andrei Tarkovsky

Svetla Popova Art 362 Seminar

Landscape and The Sublime Brian Lukacher

December 17, 2003 [final paper final draft]

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AD…I always thought it important – to the extent human spirit is indestructible – to show matter, which is subject to decay,

destruction – as opposed to spirit which is indestructible.

- Andrey Tarkovsky

Andrei Tarkovsky’s disinterest in time as a determining factor of human lifei stems

from the belief that the essence of existence is contained in the timeless, almost archetypal, concepts of

faith, home, nature, roots, the physical and spiritual journey through the world in search of one’s

identity, the strive for spiritual integrity or the dissolution of it, among others. A part of its power the

Tarkovsky image owes to its ability to encompass those concepts in their mere visual real-life

manifestations, directly affecting the senses. “Thought is brief, whereas the image is absolute,” writes

the director in his artistic testament Sculpting In Time (Tarkovsky, 41) and even in the most nonspecific

of his ideas there exists the resonance of his denunciation of the relevance of chronological unfolding

of time. In his own writings, the director restates multiple times his reliance on the directness of impact

which visual information exerts on the beholder, epitomized by the still image, the viewing perspective

remaining either static or, at the most, changing via barely noticeable shifts over long periods of time.

More than anything, Tarkovsky’s visual images are contemplative in the nature of response they induce

in the viewer, and their quality lies in their lack of clearly defined edges of meaning, which demands to

be experienced perceptually, almost primitively, as a sensory device. Images articulate that which words

fail to, due to the inherent quality of the visual to act on the realm of the subconscious, whereas

language and thoughts are necessarily assimilated through a conscious process of translation,

considered by the director as inevitably detrimental to the intensity of the image’s impact with

emotions.

As one of the few auteur* figures in Russian cinema (if not the only one), throughout his

professional career Tarkovsky manages to develop a unique stylistic vocabulary (not surprisingly

considering himself an artist before all) through visual methods that are not defined by

cinematographic typology. The Tarkovsky image is a distinct symbiosis between ultimate authenticity

(the so-called real quality of everyday life) of the visual compositional elements, and complex sublayers i Tarkovsky, Andrei. Sculpting In Time, 2000. pp. 41 * auteur – a film director whose personal influence and artistic control over his or her films are so great that he or she may be regarded as their author, and whose films may be regarded collectively as a body of work sharing common themes or techniques and expressing individual style or vision.

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ADof inarticulate philosophical meanings, cultural references and narrative clues, all of which congregate

in the totality of the film image. “No one component of a film can have any meaning in isolation: it is

the film that is the work of art” (Sculpting, 114), not its composite art forms as generally regarded.

Studying the use of architectural settings in isolation in Stalker, Mirror, Nostalghia and The Sacrifice thus

proves a challenge verging on inadequacy, unless one recognizes it as is an integral element of both the

compositional and the semiotic parts of the structure. It is viable to claim that architecture exists not as

an impersonal subcategory of those, but as a cinematographic entity independent in its own right, yet

one whose only validation for existence is its interrelation with both form and content.

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In Stalker the interior of the protagonist’s home is essentially a vast empty space where

the walls are crude, as if unfinished, and the furniture is brought to a minimum of most needed

objects, arranged with no specific significance of aesthetic care or use-efficiency. The scenes further

on, when narrative takes place in the Zone itself, reflect the same eerie atmosphere as in the opening

scenes. Every surface, regardless of whether it is interior, exterior (the distinction often cannot even be

pinpointed due to the close-up framing of shots) is permeated by subdued cold sepia-blue colors and a

feel of moisture, typical of deserted locations where human existence has fled from its artifacts. As a

formal gesture, one of the most prominent features of Tarkovsky’s use of architectural setting is to

conjure up an atmosphere of a surreal level of existence - a stylistic mark not only suitable for the

script of Stalker but also pertinent to all four films. Everything bears the merciless signature of time,

but peculiarly enough the power of time is not conventionally implied as the cause for natural

destruction, but as indicative of deterioration that is happening simultaneously with life. Thus the unreal

atmosphere not only serves as a visual-compositional factor - it signifies the first recurrent major

semiotic motif in Tarkovsky’s movies - that of spirituality as the core of existence and the lack of it in

the physical dimension of the world. The lack of natural signs of life in the surrounding architecture is

present even in the inhabitable space of the Stalker’s home, vocalizing an ambiguous prison-like quality

of functioning man-made structures and disconnection of man from his surroundings (“I am

imprisoned everywhere,” Stalker, Stalker).

The confinement of the human by the physicality of the real world manifested as a

sickly existence that is embodied in the decrepitude of human artifacts is a concept which exceeds the

specifics the particular script demands. It is rather a recurrent philosophical aspect in Tarkovsky’s

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ADartistic motivation, as well as central for his personal philosophyii. The idea was initially formulated by

Henri Bergson, an early 20th century French philosopher, who was one of the most influential figures

in the development of Russian existentialist philosophy - and one of Tarkovsky’s intellectual

cornerstones, as mentioned in Sculpting in Time. Bergson formulated an entirely new theory about the

spiritual life of the human being, the premise of which was to overcome the gap between spirit and

matter, between the physical confinements of the human and the timeless infinity of the surrounding

world.iii

This said, the complex nature of architecture in Tarkovsky’s movies is more clearly

understood as a compositional device that also takes on an important narrative function. At the

transitional point in Stalker when the characters enter from the ‘real’ world into the Zone, Tarkovsky

does not hesitate to ascribe to architectural settings the untraditional role of an active narrative element

with an inherent power to amend the conditions of narrative logic. In the warehouse scene there is the

radical rupture of familiar natural spatial and temporal relations of events. Fast transition from open

into enclosed spaces, among deserted (almost unreal) industrial structures perplexes the sensual

orientation of the viewer until finally open space disintegrates into fragments and shrinks into narrow

and hostile-looking interiors – a metaphoric entrance into the Zone. Similarly, in The Sacrifice,

apocalyptical events (inflicted on the world by humans) are represented by ominous views of

architectural debris and various shattered artifacts among which frantically running human figures are

shown.

Architecture in Tarkovsky however, reveals rather than conceals. Upon entering the

Zone, the physical possesses the same unaesthetic formal characteristics of realistic authenticity as it

does in reality (meticulously rendered surface textures, sharpness of focus that almost reaches a painful

clarity, all building up a paradoxical feeling of grotesque beauty of the Tarkovsky movie). The

transitional point into the Zone consists not in the change of visual or tactile quality through

traditional cinematographic “gimmick” (Sculpting, 133) techniques to indicate a break with the real, but

in the minimalization of expressive means. The unusual and the mystical are signified by the radical

rupture of natural spatial and temporal connectivity of the physical world. Fewer and more austere-

looking architectural elements are present, mostly remnants of cultures and ages; the presence of the

human beings is the only force that holds the decrepit place together. Most shots, furthermore, consist

of close-ups (revealing portions of walls as background) thus eliminating any point of reference – one

ii Tarkovsky, Andrei. Sculpting In Time, 2000. pp. 36-56 iii Evlampiev, Igor. Khudozhestvennaya Filosofiya Andreya Tarkovskogo, 2001. pp. 120-122

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ADhas no spatial clues about the hierarchy or dimensions of spaces. The lack of a consistent point of view

is strengthened by these glimpses of identifiable structures and surfaces, so that the viewer is engaged

into the narrative by trying to spatially orient themselves. This amplifies the ‘labyrinth’ feeling of

sensory disorientation and uncertainty, and with it the tension of despair and senselessness – until the

spatial chaos and illogicality reaches its culmination in the Room itself. Considering the Zone as an

allegory of the world of eternity where humans have come to find their spiritual selves, and referring to

Bergson’s theory, the disintegration of matter and logic of the physical world only intensifies the futile

nature of the quest to find one’s identity. The spirit in modern man has thus atrophied into

pragmatism and arrogant atheism.

The idea carries over in the use of architecture in Nostalghia, where the relationship

between man and his material surroundings, is presented as entirely mechanicaliv, devoid of the most

remote sense of interaction between the protagonist and the immediate material dimension of

existence surrounding him. A significant portion of the narrative takes place in a hotel room in Italy,

offering every commodity for existence to a modern man. Yet the viewer cannot escape the

burdensome feeling of lethargy, the lack of creative energy for life – rather the energy of the

cinematographic images invested into evocating the degrading quality of physical edifices and

paraphernalia that were meant to serve man.

Western film critics have often labeled Tarkovsky’s use of materials as impoverished

and lacking in stylev; however, the director’s choice is more of an intentional stylistic gesture which, in

all four films, is central to conveying his underlying motif of a modern society bound to self

destruction. The same visual elements of Stalker are used in Nostalghia to represent modern conditions

of existence - blank walls, a limited grey chromatic zone, especially the lack of perspective through the

window openings – faced by a solid stone wall, a gesture which intensifies the claustrophobic feeling of

imprisonment caused by separation from one’s cultural roots. Similarly, in Mirror, interiors are hollow

and sterile, especially in the printing press scene where the emotional response evoked by the

dehumanized hallways and artificial lighting is takes uneasiness to its extreme – a predatory sense of

terror. Tarkovsky manages to capture with acute exactitude the psychological effects which structures

are capable of exerting upon the individual, undeniably based on his own experience of the aesthetic

brutalities of socialist realism.

iv Evlampiev, Igor. pp. 271 v Johnson, Vida. The Films Of Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual Fugue, 1994. pp. 143

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ADIt is as if these sterile impersonal interiors have gained the power to suffocate the spirit

and reflect the tormented psychological condition of the protagonists by virtue of their detachment

from anything remotely aesthetical and spiritual. Even the grandeur of classical architecture is

bestowed a discomforting quality of solitude, they somehow lack the richness of culture and spirituality

acquired with ages, as is the stereotype in films and literature. The solitary feeling embodied in those

structures (essentially cathedrals and other religious architecture) is created by recurrent shots of long

monotonous surfaces (massive stone walls with no indications of beginning, end or dimensions), as if

humans have left the structures they have once raised to extol their devotion to the Christian God and

have thus abandoned Him and their own spirituality altogether, as shown in the last scene of the

deserted Italian cathedral.

Architectural surrounding in Nostalghia is given yet another dimension through the

discrepancy in scale between the grandiose dimensions of classicism and the complete detachment of

the minute human figures, almost victimizing the individual, who appears fragile and lost amongst

massive columns, and vast stone structures which reverberate with emptiness. Tarkovsky maneuvers

with the technique of open, broad viewing perspective just as convincingly as he does with close-up

shots of architectural detail, depending on the specific semiotic needs of individual scenes. The

desolate atmosphere is further accentuated by the length of individual shots, as Tarkovsky relies on

stretching of the perception of time to emphasize every object, even the most minute, as meaningful;

every gesture is blown up in scale because of the static quality of the settings and of camera motion.

Upon further observation, the nervous and uneasy atmosphere of Tarkovsky’s interiors

and exteriors appears to be projected onto the surroundings by the unhealthy psychological state of the

characters itself, just as much as surroundings induce oppressive feelings. Architecture has absorbed

the degree of the emotional intensity being experienced by the image of the tormented protagonist.

The question of where the source of the suffocating feeling of despair in Tarkovsky’s films lies -

whether the settings force it or the characters project it on their surroundings – remains stubbornly

unclear. It is especially so, when one considers the degree of detachment of humans, their unconscious

refusal to ‘conquer’ or ‘utilize’ the physical for their own convenience in a deterministic quest for the

healing effects of spirituality. According to Tarkovsky’s own artistic statements on the relationship

between character and setting, meaning is carried equally between the two and born out of the very act

of interaction between the two, of the unique specificity of different situations presented, where all

elements are equally important for expressing ideas. This epitomizes the general belief of the director

that “the cinema image is observation of life’s facts within time, organized according to the pattern of

life itself” (Sculpting 68), an approach which accounts for the simple yet heavy with meaning images. He

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ADattempts to find universal meaning in every-day detail, claiming that “Imagination is less rich than life.”

(Sculpting 127) The effect is obvious in the fact that Tarkovsky’s films address a variety of audience

circles and age groups (as seen in various critical accounts on his career and in his own interviewsvi),

most likely by virtue of the fact that his works take on the individual significance of conditions of

human existence as opposed to grand historical themes as was the common practice of propagandistic

and heroic thematic of Soviet Union cinema.

A necessary philosophical detour - Bergson’s theory laid the foundations for Tarkovsky

to identify memories as the spiritual core of man’s identity*, a theory which justifies his preoccupation

with the timeless conflict between spirituality and materiality, of man’s spiritual journey through the

physical obstacles of the surrounding world and the search for identity in memories. The only

architectural images that bear relatively wholesome connotations are the ones representing home,

specifically the home of childhood. The dream or recollection moments which represent the

characters’ home are the few instances when architectural entities in Tarkovsky’s work are depicted as

intact, not falling apart, even welcoming. In this respect architectural setting could also serve as a

synecdoche in Tarkovsky’s wide range of imagery use. In the sphere of the narratives, home represents

the concepts of security, motherhood, childhood, family, also Russia as the lost motherland. In the

sphere of Russian cultural connotations, which comprise the semiotic totality uniting Tarkovsky’s

work, it also stands for the nurturing forces of the earth and nature from which the human race has

irreversibly alienated itself. Considering Russia’s strong traditional values and cultural ideas shared and

passed from generation to generation, the images of home and landscape bear a metaphoric weight

which is hardly recognized by the Western world viewer – they are both general in their recognizability

as well as retaining individual references to particular ideas of the films.

Thus, as one of the icons of memory, the childhood home is a semiotic element of dual

nature. Its importance lies in the therapeutic power to heal the ruptures of identity during the process

of remembering. This process is an unconscious summoning of memories of the lost home to which

the protagonist has no way of returning. The motif of returning to the long lost home does not mean

their quest is not necessarily deemed futile because the journey through the soul is its own and only

ramification - what matters is the journey not the final destination (“The path is infinite. And the

journey has no end” Tarkovsky, Interview, 1985). However, the nature of memories is not

optimistically entitled with a magical power to remedy the fragmentation or loss of identity. As any of vi Tarkovsky, Andrei. Interview: “The Problem of Inner Freedom.” Stockholm, 1985. * For Bergson the human consciousness was identical with his spirit and they were an unchanging system of relationships encompassing and being encompassed by the world, as the common layer the ‘world’ and the ‘human’ shared was personal memory.

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ADTarkovsky’s concepts, it is ambiguous: “as a moral being, man is endowed with memory which sows in

him a sense of dissatisfaction, it makes him vulnerable, subject to pain.” (Sculpting 59) As much as they

heal, memories also bring down the spirit, by placing the individual in a state of destined impotence

upon realization that the ideals of an organic bond between man and his world are forever lost.

The heightened awareness of aural and visual detail in Tarkovsky's dream

representations of home testifies to this complex emotional imperative, especially powerful in Mirror.

Probably the most exact description of the effect of Tarkovsky’s most ‘difficult’ film would be Vida

Johnson’s observation that the film logic is entirely governed by emotional, not rational, plausibility.vii

To a significant extent architecture becomes an extension of the psychological predisposition of the

protagonist. The familiar qualities of empty interiors are present in the apartment scenes, where no

particular signs of aesthetic taste (decoration) or time-signifiers are exist. A significant number of the

apartment scenes are permeated by a feeling of emptiness where the narrative is the only indicator of

human existence, and he is present not visually but only in the form of an anonymous voice. A ghastly

and undefined feeling of void thus builds up; even when human figures (the mother and son) appear,

the sense of claustrophobia is still present, accentuated by the repetitiveness and “dreariness of [the

spouses’] arguments” (Johnson, 127). The cinematographic technique is repeated later in The Sacrifice,

where the desaturated color effects, the metallic colors of the interiors, create a coldness that “echoes

the characters’ empty relationships with each other, matching the deliberate formality of their

movements, gestures and poses.” (Johnson, 180).

Architecture in Mirror functions as a mere pictorial device which aims to express

transcendent ideas of cultural heritage and the narrator’s search for his identity through means of

association. He tries to place himself within the timeless concepts of past, nation and history more so

than attempting to reach reconciliation within the specific places and people in which have a personal

meaning to his present life. It also functions as a device which helps tie the scattered time-frames

together, by presenting recognizable elements which indicate whether the particular event takes

pertains to the past or present. In the scenes of childhood, the dacha (traditional rural Russian home) is

essential to the narrative logic, since it represents the place where he found and then irreversibly lost

his connection to the nurturing (for the spirit) values of mother and family. The moment when the

barn burns down bears strong connotations of a breaking point in the life of the protagonist. It

represents an event which defies common logic – fire in the rain – and is indicative of the personal

catastrophe of the family being shattered by the loss of the father. The fire scene is closely followed by

vii Johnson, Vida. pp.124

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ADa childhood dream scene in which his home is represented as literally falling apart into fragments – a

visual account of a disrupted childhood. After that point, the home is not an intact entity anymore and

translates into the present in feelings of failed responsibility and guiltviii.

Architecture has also a peculiar relationship with time in the films. Since the present in

all four movies only signifies, through its corrupted materiality, a spiritual degradation and frustration,

the structures of the present accordingly retain no emotional attachment for the characters. Andrei, in

Nostalghia, treats the classical and modern beauty of Italy with an almost misanthropic denunciation,

and documentation on the production process points that Tarkovsky was aiming precisely at that

effect: upon examining possible locations for shooting, rejected most of them as “too Beautiful”

(Johnson 157). On the other hand a dream image of the past reveals Andrei’s home in the motherland,

which is the same recurrent visual motif as in Mirror – unpretentious, yet welcoming and homey house

amidst nature – a rarely peaceful image. It is clearly loaded with intense emotional and cultural

positivity by virtue of the fact that in Andrei’s dreams it epitomizes not a hostile modernity but the

past where the roots of his spirituality lie.

Architecture, therefore, is a physical manifestation of Tarkovsky’s understanding of the

subjective category of time – as he considers time as a congregation of fragmented ‘states’ which

comprise individual lives. These states, unchanging entities of memory, are usually separated by the

emotional content the individual invests in them - and so are all places, artifacts and people pertaining

to these highly personalized states. This results in the montage technique which the director uses

Nostalghia and Mirror, allowing for time fragments to govern the narrative by being chronologically

unrelated, scattered and sometimes even superimposed on each other in order to convey the

fragmentation of human life, as in the last scene of Nostalghia. The scene is indicative of Tarkovsky’s

method of utilizing stillness to create a sense of disparityix.

The element of fire has a strong connection with architectural setting in the movies,

The burning of the home is a motif which occurs in The Sacrifice as well and bears even more important

meaning to the idea of the film than it does in Mirror. Tarkovsky’s last film opens the narrative with a

monologue given by the protagonist to his young son, in which the home is initially presented as a

cherished memory, equated to a period of happiness and optimism in the life of Alexander. As the

narrative progresses however, the home turns into an imprisoning physical constrained in which

psychological torment and unstable relationships flourish. Until finally the home becomes the object of

Alexander’s sacrifice – not in the name of salvation of humanity from a nuclear disaster, but a way of viii Johnson, Vida. pp. 122 ix Lamster, Mark, ed. Architecture and Film, 2000. pp. 115

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ADtemporary relief of the tormented spirit. By burning the home which ones was the valued core of

family happiness, Alexander attempts to eradicate, to the extent allowed by the constraints of his

personal world, the corrupted in human nature which he sees represented in the house, the cause of his

personal misfortune.

The image of the home in The Sacrifice is repeated in the model made by the child, as a

possible sign of appropriation, through recreation, of the world by a human being at the very

beginning of the process of maturing. The shift in perspective from large to small and vice versa, also

possibly indicated the realization of the feeble nature of the human spirit. Tarkovsky seems play with

the concept in a contradictory manner, by implying that the spirit of man contains the power of

creation (the child) and destruction (the father) at their own whim, ascribing to man the power of a

divine creator. At the very end of the film, though the real home is destroyed, the copy remains in the

world (even only as a part of the realizations of the boy about the place he occupies in the surrounding

world), as a metaphor of the seed of spiritual harmony which would be nurtured by the child just like

the dead Japanese tree.

Natural elements work in close interaction with architecture to achieve certain

cinematographic effects. Fire is the most expressive one, presenting the destructive potential of

humanity over its own artifacts. Water, however, is another one which traditionally embodies the

power of nature over man-made structures. Tarkovsky’s use of water is another recurrent motif, which,

for one, serves a technical function – when combined with solid structures it adds significantly to the

audio texture of the films. Conceptually, it takes the readability of imagery further, most often seen in

flooded interiors of abandoned (often religious) buildings, which the characters physically walk

through. The relationship could be read in Jungian terms, for whom bodies of water represent the

subconscious level of man’s identity, the contents of which they are unaware of, regardless of how

hard they try to investigate it or what is evident on the surface . The moment of Stalker where water is

a central element is evoked, as the characters slowly reaching realizations about their inner selves.

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Even though architectural settings at first sight might appear lifeless structures due to

the an-aesthetic quality they have in Tarkovsky’s movies, they are incredibly complex entities of visual

and conceptual significance, much in the spirit of the director’s claim that “the artistic image cannot be

one-sided: in order justly to be called truthful, it has to unite within itself dialectically contradictory

phenomena.” (Sculpting 54) Indeed, before all, the director uses it as yet another set element of the

compositions of film frames. Regardless of their nature (be it architecture, landscape, natural elements,

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ADcharacters, relationships), all cinematographic means are united by the fact that to recreate lifex is film’s

purpose and its only possible execution which renders it successful. Dissecting Stalker, Mirror,

Nostalghia and The Sacrifice into independent elements of composition, cinematographic technique, and

narrative logic would thus be tantamount to a rather one-sided attempt to comprehend the difficulty of

his movies. Architecture’s function occupies a state in between being a formal, and detached from

narrative and psychological dynamics, compositional element and an active element with its own

power to affect the narrative and psychological dynamics. It possesses both of these qualities, but

extends the first one immensely and does not impose on the second. Occupying this peculiar state,

architectural setting is one of the aspects of Tarkovsky’s movies which renders central the ability to

recognize the higher level of dialogue. Tarkovsky’s work falls into the category of intellectual cinema

recognized by Eisenstein several decades earlierxi in which the content as expressed by image-sensual

structures, not narrative, is the essential quality of the film.

x Tarkovsky, Andrei. Sculpting In Time, 2000. pp. 65 xi Eisenstein, Sergei. Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, 1949. pp. 128-132

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ADBibliography of Works Consulted

Primary:

• Tarkovsky, Andrei. Sculpting In Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000

• Tarkovsky, Andrei. Symbols vs. Metaphor. Interviews.

http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/Symbols.html Retrieved 12/14/03

• Tarkovsky, Andrei. Interview: “The Problem of Inner Freedom.” Illig, Jerzy and Neuger, Leonard.

Stockholm, 1985. http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/interview.html

Retrieved 12/14/03

Secondary:

• Johnson, Vida. The Films Of Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual Fugue. Bloomington: Indiana University

Press, 1994

• Klimoff, E., Zorkaya, N, ed. Mir I Filmy Andreia Tarkovskogo. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1991

• Turovskaya, M, ed. 7 ½ Ili Filmy Andreia Tarkovskogo. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1991

• Evlampiev, Igor. Khudozhestvennaya Filosofiya Andreya Tarkovskogo. St. Petersburg: Aleteya, 2001

• Gillespie, David. Soviet Cinema. Essex: Pearson Education Press, 2003

Tertiary:

• Eisenstein, Sergei. Film Form: Essays in Film Theory. New York: Harvest/HBJ, 1949

• Sitney Adams, ed. The Avant-Garde Film. New York: New York University Press, 1987

• Lamster, Mark, ed. Architecture and Film. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000

• Brougher, Kerry. Art and Film Since 1945, Hall Of Mirrors. Los Angeles: The Museum of

Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Monacelli Press, 1992

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