Editing Andrei Tarkovsky (section)

==Cinematic style==
In a 1962 interview, Tarkovsky argued: "All art, of course, is intellectual, but for me, all the arts, and cinema even more so, must above all be emotional and act upon the heart."{{sfn|Gianvito|2006|p=5}} His films are characterized by [[metaphysics|metaphysical]] themes, extremely [[long take]]s, and images often considered by critics to be of exceptional beauty. Recurring motifs are dreams, memory, childhood, running water accompanied by fire, rain indoors, reflections, levitation, and characters re-appearing in the foreground of long panning movements of the camera. He once said: "Juxtaposing a person with an environment that is boundless, collating him with a countless number of people passing by close to him and far away, relating a person to the whole world, that is the meaning of cinema."

Tarkovsky incorporated levitation scenes into several of his films, most notably ''Solaris''. To him these scenes possess great power and are used for their photogenic value and magical inexplicability.<ref>{{Cite news |last=de Brantes |first=Charles |title=La foi est la seule chose qui puisse sauver l'homme |newspaper=La France Catholique |date=20 June 1986 |url=http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/AT_On.html |access-date=14 January 2008 |language=fr |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080804055107/http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/AT_On.html |archive-date=4 August 2008 |url-status=dead}}</ref> Water, clouds, and reflections were used by him for their surreal beauty and photogenic value, as well as their symbolism, such as waves or the forms of brooks or running water.<ref>{{cite press release |title=English Programme Booklet for ''The Sacrifice'' |publisher=Swedish Film Institute |url=http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/AT_For_Dummies.html |access-date=14 January 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070808041231/http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/AT_For_Dummies.html |archive-date=8 August 2007 |url-status=dead}}</ref> Bells and candles are also frequent symbols. These are symbols of film, sight and sound, and Tarkovsky's film frequently has themes of self-reflection.<ref>{{cite web| url = https://kino.rambler.ru/movies/41971904-aleksandr-sokurov-tarkovskomu-zavidovali-strashno-chto-u-nego-takaya-izvestnost/| title = Александр Сокуров: Тарковскому завидовали страшно, что у него такая известность| date = 2 April 2019 |language=ru}}</ref>

Tarkovsky developed a theory of cinema that he called "sculpting in time". By this he meant that the unique characteristic of cinema as a medium was to take our experience of time and alter it. Unedited movie footage transcribes time in [[Real time (media)|real time]]. By using long takes and few cuts in his films, he aimed to give the viewers a sense of time passing, time lost, and the relationship of one moment in time to another.

Up to, and including, his film ''[[Mirror (1975 film)|Mirror]]'', Tarkovsky focused his cinematic works on exploring this theory. After ''Mirror'', he announced that he would focus his work on exploring the [[Classical unities|dramatic unities]] proposed by [[Aristotle]]: a concentrated action, happening in one place, within the span of a single day.

Several of Tarkovsky's films have color or black-and-white sequences. This first occurs in the otherwise monochrome ''[[Andrei Rublev (film)|Andrei Rublev]]'', which features a color epilogue of [[Andrei Rublev|Rublev's]] authentic religious icon paintings. All of his films afterwards contain monochrome, and in ''[[Stalker (1979 film)|Stalker's]]'' case [[Photographic print toning|sepia]] sequences, while otherwise being in color. In 1966, in an interview conducted shortly after finishing ''Andrei Rublev'', Tarkovsky dismissed color film as a "commercial gimmick" and cast doubt on the idea that contemporary films meaningfully use color. He claimed that in everyday life one does not consciously notice colors most of the time, and that color should therefore be used in film mainly to emphasize certain moments, but not all the time, as this distracts the viewer. To him, films in color were like moving paintings or photographs, which are too beautiful to be a realistic depiction of life.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Chugunova |first=Maria |title=On Cinema – Interview with Tarkovsky |journal=To the Screen |date=December 1966 |url=http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/On_Color.html |access-date=14 January 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090527083703/http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/On_Color.html |archive-date=27 May 2009 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

Director [[Ingmar Bergman]] commented on Tarkovsky:<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://nostalghia.com/ |title=An Andrei Tarkovsky Information Site |last=Bielawski |first=Trond Trondsen and Jan |website=nostalghia.com |access-date=11 March 2018}}</ref>
{{Blockquote
|text=''My discovery of Tarkovsky's first film was like a miracle. Suddenly, I found myself standing at the door of a room the keys of which had until then, never been given to me. It was a room I had always wanted to enter and where he was moving freely and fully at ease. I felt encountered and stimulated: someone was expressing what I had always wanted to say without knowing how. Tarkovsky is for me the greatest, the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream.''}}

Contrarily, however, Bergman conceded the truth in the claim made by a critic who wrote that "with ''[[Autumn Sonata]]'' Bergman does Bergman", adding: "Tarkovsky began to make Tarkovsky films, and that [[Federico Fellini|Fellini]] began to make Fellini films [...] [[Luis Buñuel|Buñuel]] nearly always made Buñuel films." This [[pastiche]] of one's own work has been derogatorily termed as "self-karaoke".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.openculture.com/2013/10/ingmar-bergman-evaluates-his-fellow-filmmakers.html|title=Ingmar Bergman Evaluates His Fellow Filmmakers -- The "Affected" Godard, "Infantile" Hitchcock & Sublime Tarkovsky &#124; Open Culture}}</ref>

===Vadim Yusov===
Tarkovsky worked in close collaboration with cinematographer [[Vadim Yusov]] from 1958 to 1972, and much of the visual style of Tarkovsky's films can be attributed to this collaboration.<ref>{{cite web| url = http://www.museumstuff.com/learn/topics/List_of_noted_film_director_and_cinematographer_collaborations::sub::Andrei_Tarkovsky_Vadim_Yusov| title = List of Noted Film Director And Cinematographer Collaborations: Andrei Tarkovsky Vadim Yusov |publisher=Museum of Learning}}</ref> Tarkovsky would spend two days preparing for Yusov to film a single long take, and due to the preparation, usually only a single take was needed.<ref name=Tarkovsky79>The films of Andrei Tarkovsky: a visual fugue By Vida T. Johnson, Graham Petrie, p. 79.</ref>

===Sven Nykvist===
In his last film, ''[[The Sacrifice (1986 film)|The Sacrifice]]'', Tarkovsky worked with cinematographer [[Sven Nykvist]], who had worked on many films with director [[Ingmar Bergman]]. (Nykvist was not alone: several people involved in the production had previously collaborated with Bergman, notably lead actor [[Erland Josephson]], who had also acted for Tarkovsky in ''[[Nostalghia]]''.) Nykvist complained that Tarkovsky would frequently look through the camera and even direct actors through it, but ultimately stated that choosing to work with Tarkovsky was one of the best choices he had ever made.<ref name=Tarkovsky79/>