Andrej Tarkovskij's preoccupation with time has been widely
discussed by film critics and in his own writings and interviews. His
perception of time was ambiguous. He belittled time as merely a mode
of our material existence, referring to it in his &ellipsis; such a simple, almost primitive idea &ellipsis;
. Time is just a means of communication. We are swaddled in it,
cocooned, and there is nothing to stop us tearing off the wadding of
centuries that envelops us so that all our awareness should be common,
one, simultaneous.
On the other hand, he distinguished cinema
as a unique genre for its ability to portray real time, to repeat it
in different combinations; thus, a viewer may experience directly a
parallel reality of a film, in which actual events are intertwined
with dreams and memories. It was his task to create the time of the
psychological states of his hero which significantly shaped the
aesthetics of the hero's cinematic world. Therefore, he used his
famous long shots and careful editing. This poetic time is
characterized by a fusion of past, present and future so that the
narration ceases to be linear and convolutes, presenting some kind of
puzzle to the viewer. For example, the final scene of
1+1=1
? Among other
interpretations, I suggest one which may shed light on these and some
other enigmatic
moments in Tarkovskij's films; I
believe that Tarkovskij's concept of time resembles that of the French
philosopher Henri Bergson.
In my paper I apply the main principles of Bergsonian philosophy to analyze the following issues:
1. in
2. the pattern of the inconsequence of Tarkovskij's heroes' actions, and discrepancies in his cinematic narration ( Bergsonian notion of human freedom, his denial of the causality of human behavior).
3. the spiritual quest of Tarkovskij's protagonists and the Bergsonian concept of intuition.