MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Tarkovsky’: Unhappily, Only a Film for Fans

Andrei Tarkovsky once said that each man contains a universe within himself, and no director illuminated that universe with more imagination or rigor. Tarkovsky, who died of cancer at 54 in Paris on the last day of 1986, made only seven features in his 24-year career, but each of them is astonishing in the often surreal power of their vision.

Tarkovsky had an abiding preoccupation with the memory as the the great shaping force of the individual psyche. He also said that the purpose of our lives was to develop ourselves spiritually, and he believed that the function of art was to serve that purpose.

Consequently, much could rightly be expected of a documentary called “Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky” (at the Nuart today and Tuesday only), but that title is misleading. It is simply a record of Tarkovsky shooting his last film, “The Sacrifice,” made by his editor, Michael Leszczylowski. It is overlaid by quotations from “Sculpting in Time,” Tarkovsky’s book on his theories of film, and interspersed with scenes from “The Sacrifice” and interviews with Tarkovsky culled from earlier documentaries. As a memento of a great film maker cut down in his prime, the film is deeply affecting; for anyone who loved and admired Tarkovsky’s work it is thrilling simply to see him at work, collaborating with two of Ingmar Bergman’s most esteemed colleagues, actor Erland Josephson and cinematographer Sven Nykvist.

Leszczylowski assumes that we have a great deal of familiarity with Tarkovsky and his films. There’s not a word on the director’s life and career, his tremendous difficulties in working in his native Soviet Union and his eventual, deeply painful emigration to the West. No one on the set of “The Sacrifice,” which takes place in Swedish Gotland around a large house by the sea, is identified, and the only person Leszczylowski interviews for his film is Tarkovsky’s elegant, gracious widow Larissa, who insists proudly that her husband was the only Soviet director who always got exactly what he wanted (but does not say at what high cost, even of the banning of his work).

It essential to have seen “The Sacrifice,” a profound meditation on the imperiled future of humanity, for there’s nary a clue as to what it’s about or what’s going on. (It screens Wednesday and Thursday at the New Beverly Cinema, along with “L’Argent,” by director Robert Bresson, the man at the top of Tarkovsky’s list of film makers.) Instead of the quotes from “Sculpting in Time,” which sound self-evident and platitudinous when heard on a sound track, Leszczylowski might better have had his narrator, the well-spoken Brian Cox, tell us something about “The Sacrifice” and its maker.

Leszczylowski unintentionally reminds us that a motion picture set is a great leveler: If you didn’t already know, you would never guess that this particular cast and crew, as professional and conscientious as countless others, is in fact working at the highest level of artistic aspiration. Tarkovsky once said that directors could be divided into those who imitated the world around them and those that created their own. There’s no question as to which category Tarkovsky belonged, but Leszczylowski hasn’t really taken us into the world of the man he called Maestro.