Justin Erik Halldór Smith

Sunday Cinema, #2

Andrei Tarkovskii, Andrei Rublev (1969)

How did such a profoundly Christian film --so much more Christian, for that matter, than the smug instructions being handed down simultaneously on US television screens by Billy Graham and other enemies of Soviet godlessness-- get green-lighted by Mosfilm in Khrushchev's USSR?  Watch Andrei Rublev and you'll sense what an irrelevant blip in Russian history godlessness in fact was.



Deeper than this, though, it is not only a Christian film, but an Indo-European film and a pagan film as well: not pagan in any sense that Billy Graham could have understood well enough to oppose, but in a sense that only continues to have any meaning where Christianity remains, as practitioners of Orthodoxy like to describe it, primitive. You will never see animal abuse in a Hollywood production that comes close to what Tarkovskii put the horse through in the scene depicting the Tatar raid of Vladimir (segment #11 on YouTube). You will also never see such an appreciation of the beauty of horses, those Eurasian creatures, as Tarkovskii shows.

Jonathan Hoberman seems to detect the animistic spirit of the film when he cites the horse falling down the stairs as an instance of Tarkovskii's desire to capture the 'undirectable', which I take to be nature itself. Hoberman calls the film a "pre-Soviet theater of cruelty charged with resurgent Slavic mysticism," and stresses the us-them dichotomizing so familiar in the Russian popular imagination. For him the film is "founded on the conflict between austere Christianity and sensual paganism-- whether Slavic or Tatar."  But even Stalin approved the familiar proverb about scratching a Russian and finding a Tatar underneath, and in the scene with the idiot girl running off with her Tatar occupiers Tarkovskii offers a sort of myth of origins for this layered identity.  As for Rublev's encounter with indigenous Slavic pagans in the middle of one of their ritual orgies, he too appears to give in and join them, spending the night with the young witch Marfa.

The final scene (the only one in color) shows, I think, at least two of the layers of spirituality that animate this film (though you must watch it until the end to see this).

Thursday Translation, #1

Mammoth Hunting in the Enlightenment

In the area of this city [Yenisei], and further, descending towards Mangasca, one finds a peculiar species of bones that resemble ivory along the banks of the river, and in the depressions caused by the collapse of the earth. Many of the inhabitants believe that these are the true bones of elephants that the Flood has brought there. Some maintain that these are not bones at all, nor real teeth, but a sort of fossilized horn produced in the earth. Others still supose that under the earth there is a great, monstrous beast that they call 'Mammoth' that can bear neither air, nor light. They say that it has a great horn in front, of which it makes use for pushing the earth in front of it and carving a path, and that the bones of which we have just spoken are nothing other than this horn, which has much in common with the tooth of the elephant that is found in Siberia. Some who are curious about natural philosophy maintain that this Mammoth is the Behemoth mentioned in chapter 40 of [the Book of] Job, and whose description agrees so well with this beast: for its jaws are of a substance that appears externally to be false copper, and as hard as a stone. What is attributed to the Behemoth, that it hides in shadows and in swampy places, could also apply to the regions of Siberia where the bones of the Mammoth are found, which are for the most part groves and bushy areas that meet with swamps, and other similar places. Beyond this, the words of Job, that he taketh it with his eyes etc., agree with the tradition of the Siberians according to which the Mammoths die as soon as they see the light of the sun.  But what would convince me the most would be if these were the bones of a beast that still survives today, which is what many people who are worthy of trust have assured me, who [claim to] have seen horns, jaws, and ribs of this animal on which there was still flesh and blood, adding at the same time that if one wanted to go to the trouble, one could easily put together an entire skeleton.

--Laurent Lange, Annex to Friedrich-Christian Weber, Nouveaux mémoires sur l'état présent de la Grande Russie ou Moscovie (Paris, 1725).

From the Bookshelf, #1: A Charm Against Bears

Bear, apple of the forest, chunky honey-paws!

When you hear me coming, hear the splendid man stepping along,

make fast your claws in your fur, your teeth in your gums

so that they will never touch me, never stir when you are on the move.

My bear, my darling, honey-paws, my beauty,

throw yourself flat on a tussock, on a lovely crag

while the tall evergreens are swaying above, firs being heard above.

Then bear, turn around, honey-paws, turn yourself about,

as does a ruffled grouse on her nest, a wild goose about to brood.

[From the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala (46: 54-65). Tr. Francis Peabody Magoun Jr.]

Tuesday Image, #1

"Porchetta romana cotta a legna," Adina Ruiu (2008)

This is the sign atop some sort of meat-vending mobile in Rome. Look at that juxtaposition of images, and try to imagine the roast pig replaced by a giant stalk of celery. It just wouldn't work. It's not that the scene would be uncompelling, but rather that it simply wouldn't make any sense. Why is this?