Waiting on the Resurrection with Andrei Tarkovsky

Once upon a time, the BBC for eight weeks on a Saturday evening on what was then one of its only two television channels showed all the films of Andrey Tarkovsky in chronological sequence from 'Ivan's Childhood' to 'The Sacrifice'.

At the outset of this season, they showed a documentary on Tarkovsky two scenes of which remain vividly with me.

The first was an interview with the English film director, John Boorman, "Here was a man (Tarkovsky)," said Boorman, 'who believed in God with no apology." It was perfectly apt of Tarkovsky and, inversely, of Boorman, who, whenever he turns directly to the metaphysical slips into embarrassment and loses his usual consummate grip on his unfolding narratives.

The second was a clip from a Polish documentary, made on the set of Tarkovsky's last film, 'The Sacrifice'. The documentary maker is following the director through a wood, interrogating him on his beliefs. In answer to the question as to what his core motivation is, Tarkovsky, replies, "Expectation of the Resurrection" and the obviously thoroughly secular Pole is highly conflicted in his response between his awe for Tarkovsky's genius as a director and his incredulity that such a man could wait upon the imminence of the Resurrection!

I met Tarkovsky once. He had given a talk at St. James' Picadilly in London (that I had helped arrange) on, appropriately, the Apocalypse. At questions afterward, he was asked, "Mr. Tarkovsky it is always raining at critical moments in your films, what does rain symbolize for you?" To which Tarkovsky shot back, zen-like, "No symbolism, just rain" accompanied by his only full smile of the evening (until afterward when he visibly relaxed).

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