I have in my custody both Maya Turovskaya’s Tarkovsky and Andrei Tarkosky’s Sculpting in Time for many months now. Both books discuss the films of the Russian film-maker. Voluntarily, I have chosen not to read either until I have completed the entire pantheon of Tarkovsky’s filmography. I feel it would betray Tarkovsky’s notion that art, as a personal experience, is non-transferable. We are often left with no choice but to superimpose our personal experience over a passive and inert piece of art work.
When I rent or go see a movie, I never read any critics’ reviews or the plot summary on the back of the dvd box. I chose instead to let the film-maker tell his or her story from the ground up. Certainly there is no risk of tainting a well-crafted film by merely being aware of the storyline; however, the mere act of compacting a 90-120 minute experience into three sentences is an act of selection, brought about by the summary writer who actively choses what s/he deems essential to the plot. Uttered words and mentioned scenes have a way of subconsciously highlighting a moment not intended by the filmmaker, thereby throwing possibly more important subjects and focal points into relief.
Over Christmas, I sent beloved friends and acquaintances various combinations of mixtapes. To the people I love, I included Sufi chants from Cairo, Armenian traditional folk songs, Qaawali singers, pounding club mixes, Niggaz with Attitude, Hayseed Dixie hillbilly bluegrass, Patti Smith, and Tasita D’Amour. I was met with puzzled responses: “How come there are no love songs in there?” They are love songs.
Music expresses what words cannot. In this sense, I believe watching a Tarkovsky film is an act of creation. To enter a film after reading several dozen scholarly articles by film school graduates would be a mistake. One can argue that the viewer ought to be intellectually strong enough to arrive at his or her own conclusions despite pre-exposure to other viewpoints. However, the conception of an art work’s message will be detoured through confirmation with, or refutation of the audible majority. It’s akin to Amazon reviews that spend so much time on the defense in reply to other reviews that it never gets around to the product itself.
In the daily grind, it’s pure complacence to accept the truth and reality imposed by the masses (i.e. “A thousand people can’t be wrong.” “A thousand people love Tom Cruise.” “I must look like Tom Cruise.”). In academia, the masses have been known to mistaken knowledge as a laundry list syllabus of books to read and topics to cover. What was supposed to be a launching pad for creative thinking has become an overachiever’s breeding ground for pumping up one’s GPA average. If you question the material, are you questioning what the material represents or the material itself?
I sometimes even wonder: Is tenure acquired through a review by peers (who have all been exposed to and gone through similar academic processes) epistemologically more sound than the universe known to say, a tribesman? How do we know we are processing an understanding of the big picture when that picture is hanging inside a museum in a Western metropolis with an accompanying caption card written by an art scholar who has been educated by other people in the same field that have all read the same books? Even, the scientific method has a fire escape built-in to deal with the moment the new black is discovered under the microscope. Remember the sole survivor of the extinct aboriginal tribe in Werner Herzog’s “Where the Green Ants Dream?” No one could understand him because those who spoke his dialect had all died off. He spoke, yet everyone called him a mute.
I’m going to guess that he was probably saying “Guns, Germs, and Steel.”
Still, I have faith in a well-prepared lecture. I sometimes question the over-eagerness of students to refute a professor’s presentation before it has fully unfolded. A lecture is akin to a movie for me because the lecturer works on presenting a system of thought, a self-sufficient universe of ideas. If a student’s question was important enough, it can wait until the completion of the lecture. I feel the same way about interrupting a drunken street bum’s rant, a Klansmen’s manifesto, a Republican bill, or the greatest challenge posed to mankind: A Girls Gone Wild DVD.
No one ever stopped Jackson Pollock in the middle of one of his paintings to ask: “Em, what does that drip signify?” Should we have asked Cage what the 30th second of silence meant from the 31st?
Religion has always intrigued me in the same way Tarkovsky’s films do: there’s a series of images, but we are left in our natural state of loneliness to interpret how the picture reveals itself to us in its mysterious ways. The response of every viewer and every listener to a piece of art work- no matter how little exposure each may have had to a Bunuel flick, a liberal arts program, or a Harold Bloom essay- is a divine act of creation. To traverse the distance between the viewer and the point of comprehension may take a lifetime and the help of people far outside our village.
The good lord may have invented the world in seven days but he probably has no idea what the great plan is. Each of us invents what we think it is as we go along.
