Andrei Rublev

I haven’t written an essay in a few months so fuck you I’m gonna write seriously for a little while about my favorite movie, if only to justify that fact to myself. You can read it if you’re into that sort of thing. Spoilers and pretentious rambling ahead. Last time I watched this movie, I made a note of three points which seemed of particular significance to me at the time: 1. If there is truth, we cannot know it 2. If there is any light at all, it is within us 3. Goodness is an action Obviously now the first two points seem super vague and barely worth elaborating on, and the third is worded in such a way that the sentiment I was trying to convey was completely buried by my lazy attempt to confine it to four words. But here’s what I think I meant: My use of the word “goodness” stands in no relation to the qualities of kindness and moral virtue that would obviously be associated with it by someone with a firmer grasp on the English language. This mistranslation is a result of someone who doesn’t believe in a higher power, over the course of several years, trying to make sense of his own attraction towards religious art. Rather, I mean to convey a sense of spiritual or metaphysical existence within a physical framework. God, to someone whose frame of reference is confined mostly to the mortal realm, is that which is good, and may be recognized, to a certain extent, as light in darkness. “Goodness”, therefore, is to acknowledge the light within oneself (maybe I was onto something with that second point). By that definition, goodness does not exist unless the individual acts upon it, and the sense hopelessness that overwhelms much of Andrei Rublev is primarily a result of its characters’ failure to do so. In the case of Andrei himself, to act upon the goodness within him is to paint religious icons. By the end of the movie, this is an act which almost seems to be in direct defiance of a world which he can’t even begin to make sense of, or find truth in. This brings up the question of where art stands in relation to that light and darkness. It appears to me that Andrei’s paintings, to him, occupy that space between the world around him and the truth and light which, although one cannot know them, must be reached towards if there is to be any hope at all. Once again, however, the art itself isn’t necessarily as important to this movie as the act of creating it. These ideas become clearer towards the end, when we meet Boriska, the orphaned son of a renowned bell-maker. By virtue of his irrational recklessness, Boriska reminds me of Michelangelo’s David (to compare him to that specific sculpture rather than the biblical character more broadly is important to me for reasons I can’t elaborate on). To volunteer himself for the project he did is completely stupid, but he had to do it even if it would most likely end up in his beheading — because to live is to act. He undertook an impossible task in pursuit a truth greater than himself, just as Andrei must paint icons in a world to concerned with its own destruction to even consider the existence of hope in beauty, and just as a certain filmmaker must make movies that, through censorship, could only damage his career. Ok I’ll go back to making jokes now.