Andrei and Marina Tarkovsky were born into a family of litterateurs – the well-known poet and translator Arseny Tarkovsky and scarcely known writer Maria Vishniakova. Tarkovsky Sr. left the family when his son and daughter were three and one, respectively. However, the children always felt spiritual kinship with their father. Tarkovsky Sr. recites his poems in his son’s film Zerkalo (The Mirror).
At the moment, the philologist and writer Marina Tarkovska is taking care of the oeuvre of Arseny and Andrei; she has published several books of memoirs about her outstanding relatives.
The film director’s elder son, Arseny, is a doctor and pays little attention to his father’s oeuvre, whereas the younger one, Andrei, heads the Andrei Tarkovsky International Institute. A meeting with Marina and her husband, Alexandr Gordon (film director and script writer) took place in the Master Class Culture and Education Center in Kyiv, reports pravda.com.ua. The elderly couple eagerly replied to the questions from the audience and was not afraid to recall the intimate and often unpleasant details from the life of their family.
THE ORIGINS OF THE TARKOVSKY FAMILY
“Our family is closely connected with Ukraine. The Tarkovskys came from Poland, from the city of Lublin,” Marina Tarkovska said. “In times of Peter I they found themselves in Volhynia and from there gradually moved in the direction of Zhytomyr gubernia. Zhytomyr has preserved the Tarkovskys’ archives, which documents all the troubles they experienced as they tried, for 50 long years, to obtain the status of Russian nobility. The Tarkovskys owned land near Ovruch and the Prypiat River but no serfs.
“Later the Tarkovsky family found itself in Yelysavethrad (now Kirovohrad), a city called ‘little Paris’ by Dostoevsky’s brother. This is the place of birth of the Ukrainian National Theater. The Tobilevych brothers were relatives to our father. And our grandfather had very warm, nearly amorous relationships with Maria Zankovetska.
“There is a legend that the Tarkovskys have Dagestani roots, but it was merely father’s game, a sort of mystification. Once, father went with other Soviet writers to Dagestan and when his name was announced, a gray-haired old man, a respectful old and wise of the community, came out of the crowd and said, ‘You are our prince.’ He wanted to kiss father’s hand, but since it was some 1937 or 1938, father felt uncomfortable and said that he never owned the prince’s title.”
ON RELATIONSHIPS WITH BROTHER AND FATHER
“The film Mirror takes a special place in Tarkovsky’s oeuvre. It is autobiographical. He tells how he expiates his guilt before his relatives, because he had left his first wife and child and later felt guilty before them, as well as before our parents. The film was called ‘Mirror,’ because Andrei understood that he had followed in the footsteps of our father who had also divorced our mother.
“I, too, feel immensely guilty before Andrei. I am very high-principled and do not forgive certain things. Andrei left his family and his little son, Arseny. I suffered badly at the time, as the boy was like a son to me. I could not forgive this for a long time, and when Andrei urged me to come to his place and see his new-born child and this wife of his… Now, with time, I see that settling scores in this way was extremely foolish of me and quite unnecessary.
“Once our father said, ‘Andrei can have as many wives as he likes, but there is only one brother that you have.’ Those words made me view this situation in a more sober way. After father’s death I started taking care of his oeuvre. And then, delving deeply into his oeuvre, I understood that he was an outstanding poet. The literary critic Dmitry Likhachev said that there are bright poets who come in a flash and go out like a firework, but Tarkovsky will remain for many years ahead.”
TARKOVSKY AND HIS ARTISTIC GROUP
“Shooting his first great film Ivan’s Childhood, Tarkovsky depended on the cameraman Vadim Yusov. Andrei understood that in order to find a language to speak with Yusov he had to shower him with business proposals. Yusov came up with his own decisions for films, but the ideas came from Tarkovsky.
“A very complicated situation emerged while he was shooting Stalker. Tarkovsky and his cameraman Georgii Rerberg were still working on Mirror, and that work was very well-coordinated. You must know that there were essentially two Stalkers – all the location footage from near Tallinn was wasted because of expired film. The Mosfilm Studio thought that that’s the way ‘it had to be,’ and nobody took responsibility for this.
“The relationships between Rerberg and Tarkovsky were very strained at the time. When it came to light that the film was spoiled, Rerberg left and Andrei had a heart attack, because the cause of several years of his life was lost. He had used up all the money. The Goskino mid-level management met Tarkovsky halfway and offered him to make a sort of two-series film with a promise to allot money for the second part. The film was shot by the wonderful cameraman Alexandr Kniazhynsky.
“Later Tarkovsky took over the camera: he built mise en scene, showed the change of light to the cameraman, and defined how the actor should move in the scene. When everything was clearly defined, with no improvisation, he gave the camera back to the cameraman, and the latter saw what he had to do. This is the way he worked while shooting both Nostalgia and The Sacrifice. So the cameraman Sven Newquist at first got offended, but later understood the director’s position.
“Andrei had his own demands to actors. For him, an actor was a personality to express the director’s ideas embodied in the script. Therefore, the actor was left only with fulfilling director’s orders so that he could delve into the world Tarkovsky needed. This was not easy. You must remember the part of the wandering minstrel-cum-clown played by Rolan Bykov in the film Andrei Rublev. Andrei was irritated by his actor’s energy, as Bykov kept suggesting something all the time.
“Anatolii Solonitsyn who performed Rublev’s part was an ideal actor for Tarkovsky. By the way, he was very much fond of Mykola Hrinko and regarded him as an extremely kind, sensitive person and a wonderful actor. He reminded Tarkovsky of his father. In the film Ivan’s Childhood Hrinko played the part of Colonel Griaznov who treats the boy in a fatherly way.”
TARKOVSKY AND HIS COLLEAGUES
“Andrei had a very high opinion of Mikhail Romm as his teacher and a man of great civil courage, honesty, and adherence to own principles. However, they did not stay close friends after Tarkovsky graduated from the VGIK.
“Among the world directors I can name those who were interesting to his generation: Robert Bresson, Akira Kurosawa, and Michelangelo Antonioni. There were few film directors he liked, because he was among those ‘few.’ For example, the shooting of The Sacrifice took place on Gotland Island, near Ingmar Bergman’s house. His friend Erland Josephson, who played a part in Tarkovsky’s film, asked Bergman to invite Tarkovsky to his place. The former refused to do so as he could not imagine them both sitting on a sofa. By the way, when Stockholm screened the film on the shooting of Bergman’s film Fanny and Alexander, Tarkovsky came to the hall. The celebrated Scandinavian turned around and left, because he did not want to get acquainted with Andrei whom he regarded as a brilliant and yet puzzling director.”
