One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich

Chris Marker's short documentary about the Russian film maker Andrei Tarkovsky, One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich consists of three elements -- there are many shots and sequences from Tarkovsky films used to illustrate Marker's observations about the director; these are intercut with images of Tarkovsky directing the famous final sequence in The Sacrifice where the protagonist Erland Josephson burns his house and runs mad across a half-flooded meadow on the edge of the cold North Sea. The third element of the film shows Tarkovsky on his death bed, editing The Sacrifice with the assistance of Sven Nyquist and embracing his son, who Marker tells us, has been held hostage by the Soviet regime. The movie is mostly about Tarkovsky's films and we don't really get much sense of the man -- he seems to be a wiry little fellow with sharp features. He looks like a laboring man, a small Slavic stevedore but, of course, he is the son of a famous Soviet poet and one of the greatest of all film makers. Lying in bed, greeting his son, Tarkovsky seems remarkably merry and upbeat. Tarkovsky was apparently a deeply religious man, Russian Orthodox to the core and, perhaps, death didn't frighten him. (The film is very different from Wim Wenders' documentary about the last days of Nicholas Ray, Lighting on Water, in which the old man rages histrionically about his death -- Ray was a difficult fellow throughout his life; Tarkovsky seems very well-adjusted, happy, and, even, optimistic.) Marker's film isn't particularly profound, but he provides some useful commentary on Tarkovsky's films, particularly in the context of the Soviet gulag and he has some great anecdotes. At a seance, Boris Pasternak appeared to Tarkovsky when he was a student and told him he would make seven films. "Only seven," Tarkovsky asked. "But they will be good ones," Boris said. (Of course, Tarkovsky died after editing into final form his seventh film). Marker has a great anecdote about a command performance of a Mozart piano concerto for Stalin. Stalin paid the performer, a female piano player, for the performance -- the woman told Stalin to his face that she was donating all the fee to the Orthodox Church so that the priests could pray that God forgive Stalin for him crimes against the Russian people. To everyone's amazement, Stalin didn't have the woman killed -- perhaps, he admired her courage or thought that she was some kind of Holy Fool. (The credits on the film have the remarkable notation, listing the performance by the female pianist on the soundtrack and noting that the recording comes from "the private collectiono f Josef Stalin." Ultimately, Marker's film is about courage in the face of death and about freedom -- Marker's narrator ends the film by saying that great films "leave you with ideas. But the greatest films, leave you with your freedom."