Andrei Rublev

One of the best 75 films I’ve ever seen. A small prologue before beginning this personal analysis of this monumental film. I want to tell you about my personal experience. I spent the entire film crying. This is the last time I will be seeing a feature length work by Tarkovsky for the first time. Tarkovsky and Malick are my favorite filmmakers. They may not be the most important figures in cinema, but they are to me. They have guided me through this spiritual and artistic journey that has defined me as a person. And this means that I will no longer be able to feel Tarkovsky’s cinema the way I once did. I will not be able to experience that kind of revelation I felt with every piece he created. But that is beautiful in its own way. Since I began watching his films in 2024, I made a promise to myself to take my time with them, so that when I finally reached the last one, the time gap between the first viewing and the last would be meaningful and carry greater weight. Beginning 2026, in the final days of my fifteenth year, I finally witness the great masterpiece of Andrei Tarkovsky. A film that has just changed the way I see cinema, even when I believed that was no longer possible, or at least not in such a significant way. With nothing more to add, I want to begin my review. The first scene of the film may feel out of context and far removed from everything related to the life of Andrei Rublev. But in reality, it is a fundamental scene for the story. Yefim, a man who flies through the air in a hot air balloon. He represents artistic aspiration and escape, all while an audience watches him. It is important to note that this takes place in an Orthodox church. When he flies, he is able to see the beauty of the world through the eyes of God. All his ambitions are embodied in that instant, and like any instant, it is brief. He falls, the balloon crashes. This can be interpreted as how great artistic visions collide with reality and are extinguished. This scene functions as an overture to this titanic film. It introduces themes such as faith, persecution, ambition, and the struggle between sublime creation and harsh reality. All of this is explored throughout the film’s three hour runtime. Tarkovsky does not construct Andrei Rublev as a traditional hero or as a glorified genius. On the contrary, Rublev is presented as a fragile, silent man filled with doubt. An artist whose faith is not unbreakable, but constantly tested by the brutal world surrounding him. The film is not a conventional biography, but a spiritual portrait. Rublev nearly disappears at times, dissolving into the violence, chaos, and misery of medieval Russia. And that is the key. His greatness does not lie in action, but in inner resistance. Rublev’s faith is not dogmatic or triumphant. It is a wounded faith. He witnesses human cruelty, war, torture, humiliation, and the suffering of the innocent, and he asks himself, like any sensitive soul would, where God is in all of this. There is an immense weight in his silence, especially after the murder he commits to protect a woman. That moment breaks something inside him. His vow of silence is not only a punishment, but a spiritual withdrawal, a rejection of the world and of his own ability to create. However, Tarkovsky presents something deeply human and hopeful. Even when faith seems extinguished, spiritual strength can survive in a latent state. Rublev does not completely stop believing. He simply stops understanding. His path is not one of immediate enlightenment, but of waiting, prolonged suffering, and silence as a form of prayer. And when he finally returns to creation, when he decides to paint again, he does so not from certainty, but from compassion. His faith is no longer naive. It is aware of the horror of the world and still chooses to affirm beauty. That is where his true sanctity resides. Andrei Rublev marks one of the first moments in which Tarkovsky fully begins to master the language that would define him forever. Cinema understood as the sculpting of time. The long takes are not there to impress, but to force us to inhabit the moment. Tarkovsky does not cut because he does not want us to escape. He wants us to feel the weight of time, its slowness, its density, and its spiritual dimension. Each shot becomes a space for contemplation. Time ceases to be narrative and becomes existential. We observe faces for seconds that feel eternal, walks under the rain, motionless horses, fire consuming entire structures. Everything unfolds with an almost documentary naturalism, yet at the same time deeply poetic. Tarkovsky understands that the sacred is not revealed through rapid editing, but through the patience of the gaze. The camera moves like a spiritual presence, never intrusive and never hurried. There is an almost liturgical quality to the way scenes unfold. The spectator is not being entertained. They are being invited to meditate. And within that meditation, something powerful emerges. Cinema ceases to be a window and becomes an inner experience. Tarkovsky teaches us how to look and, by doing so, teaches us how to feel time as something living, heavy, and transcendent. Andrei Rublev converses with two distinct historical moments that are surprisingly connected. On one hand, fifteenth century Russia. A fragmented nation devastated by Tatar invasions and marked by violence, ignorance, and oppression. A world where faith was both refuge and instrument of power, and where sacred art emerged amid collective suffering. Rublev lives in a time where creating beauty is almost impossible, yet absolutely necessary. On the other hand, there is the Soviet Union of the 1960s, the real historical context in which Tarkovsky made the film. A regime that censored, surveilled, and punished any artistic expression that did not align with official ideology. Tarkovsky, like Rublev, was a creator trapped between his spiritual vocation and a reality that sought to suffocate it. Repression, forced silence, and the impossibility of creating freely run throughout the entire work. The similarities are clear. In both contexts, the artist exists in constant tension with power. Creating is a risk. Remaining silent is a form of survival. And even so, the impulse to express the sacred persists. Tarkovsky does not only portray the past. He uses it as a mirror of his present. Andrei Rublev thus becomes a timeless work, where history repeats itself and the conflict between faith, art, and power remains profoundly relevant. I want to close this review with a heartfelt embrace to all those who have helped purify my taste in cinema and opened my eyes. Especially Edgar Cochran, who has inspired me and is my role model when it comes to analyzing and writing reviews. Thank you for everything, brother. And not only to him, but to all the people with whom I have shared words. God bless you all. 100/100