Language, Communication and Connection Through Film

I picked up a book called "Sculpting In Time" by the incredible Russian filmmaker Andrey Tarkovsky at the SLC library the other day. I highly recommend his films, any of them, even though I've only seen a few of them now. The book is really incredible so far and I wanted to share a passage from the introduction of the book on this blog. Through part of the introduction to the book, Tarkovsky shares some letters that he received in the mail during a time that he was feeling very misunderstood and rejected by his audience. This is one of the letters that let him know that he was succeeding as a filmmaker and it also gave him encouragement to keep making films. I wanted to share one of the letters that he shares with us in his book here because it says some very interesting things about language in general and language, communication and connection through film...

“One woman sent me on a letter written to her by her daughter, and the young girl’s words are, I think a remarkable statement about artistic creation as an infinitely versatile and subtle form of communication:

‘...How many words does a person know?' she asks her mother rhetorically. 'How many does he use in his everyday vocabulary? One hundred, two, three? We wrap our feelings up in words, try to express in words sorrow and joy and any sort of emotion, the very things that can’t in fact be expressed. Romeo uttered beautiful words to Juliet, vivid, expressive words, but they surely didn’t say even half of what made his hear feel as if it was ready to jump out of his chest, and stopped him breathing, and made Juliet forget everything except her love?

‘There’s another kind of language, another form of communication: by means of feeling, and images. That is the contact that stops people being separated from each other, that brings down barriers. Will, feeling, emotion--these remove obstacles from between people who otherwise stand on opposite sides of a mirror, on opposite sides of a door...The frames of the screen move out, and the world which used to be partitioned off comes into us, becomes something real...And this doesn’t happen through little Andrey (Andrey, the main character in Tarkovsky's film "Mirror"), it’s Tarkovsky himself addressing the audience directly, as they sit on the other side of the screen. There’s no death, there is immortality. Time is one and undivided, as it says in one of the poems (...one of the poems in the film, I’m assuming the film is “Mirror”). “At the table are great-grandfathers and grandchildren...” Actually Mum, I’ve taken the film entirely from an emotional angle, but I’m sure there could be a different way of looking at it. What about you? Do write and tell me please...’

This book was taking shape all through the period when my professional activities were suspended, an interlude which I have now forcibly brought to an end by changing my life; it is intended neither to teach people nor to impose my point of view on them. Its main purpose is to help me to find my way through the maze of possibilities in this young and beautiful art form--still, in essence, so little explored--in order to be able to find myself, fully and independently, within it.

Artistic creation, after all, is not subject to absolute laws, valid from age to age; since it is related to the more general aim of mastery of the world, it has an infinite number of facets, the vincula that connect man with his vital activity; and even if the path towards knowledge is unending, no step that takes man nearer to a full understanding of the meaning of his existence can be too small to count.

The corpus of theory relating to cinema is still slight; the clarification of even minor points can help to throw light on its basic laws. This is what has prompted me to put forward a few of my own ideas.”