A bright, bright day
7 June 2010
My cinematic epiphany arrived during a Moviedrome screening on the BBC some time in the late-80s.
I’d stay up into the wee hours to watch anything and everything, usually introduced by the strangely enigmatic film director Alex Cox, and one night they showed Solaris by Andrei Tarkovsky. The film has since been remade in Hollywood starring George Clooney, of course, but back then I knew nothing at all about the film, the novel by Stanislaw Lem upon which it was based, or the Cannes plaudits that had been heaped upon it on release in 1972.
My interest was sparked by its comparison as a "Soviet" 2001: A Space Odyssey — a lazy tag that certainly didn’t do this metaphysical masterpiece any justice. I think Tarkovsky made better films than Solaris, and Mirror probably tops my own personal chart, but it certainly introduced me to one of the world’s finest filmmakers.
There have been occasional books released since his untimely death from cancer in 1986 (usually script compilations, and great analytical tomes probing his filmography), but in 2006 an Italian publication called Instant Light compiled a series of Polaroid images taken by Tarkovsky. Now a Russian photo blog has scanned and released more of these gorgeous photographs, and will once again spark my infatuation with the man.
