The mathematics of faith reduced to an irreducibly complex equation, where
two men become of belief lost in the present tense, yearning for a past once
but never was. Andrei Tarkovsky's melancholia is a spiritual melanoma, yearning
for a Motherland that drove him away, a place of childhood memories that carry
the weight of light and air, like the burden of guilt for loving an abusive
parent...but unable to forgive.
Through a dream vapor darkly walks Andrei, a Russian poet who weaves a
tapestry of elusive symbols, desperately trying to decipher his own subtext.
Andrei's ailing heart beats to its own pentameter, a lonely rhythm without
reason or rhyme. He has traveled to Italy to research a 18th century Russian
composer, a man who gained his creative freedom in exile only to forfeit his
life upon his return to Mother Russia. Here, Andrei meets a mad saint who
sacrificed his family to save the world and discovers the volatile Molotov of
religious conviction. He drifts casually from his dream world into a shared
unreality, confounding identity and purpose, attempting to walk upon water
while carrying the hallowed flame. His reflection preaches atop a stone mount,
cursing the time when mankind went astray and the need to return to simple
values of the past, to return to Eden and replace the forbidden fruit, then
expunges himself in hell fire.
Tarkovsky's lens captures the human animal in the garden of earthly
delights, surrounded by nature. Images of a statuesque Virgin birthing a flock
of birds, discarded wine bottles swallowing drops of water, or a gentle fog
crawling upon the landscape evoke memories of things past, where events needn't
have happened to be true, a state where borders no longer exist with the
convolutions of dreamscape. Water is a prime mover, a fluid thematic element,
from a warm pool polluted by refuse hidden within its murky depths to a torrent
that beats nervously upon the psyches of drowning men. Tarkovsky siphons
Beethoven and Verdi through a nightmare machine, a grinding cacophony, a
syncopation of sin where fallen angels dwell. And like Andrei, welcome the past
imperfect and remain forever trapped by the stone walls of faith.
Final Grade: (A)
