IVAN'S CHILDHOOD FIRST REACTION
yeah this was a great idea, this was exactly the energy i needed rn
im genuinely suprised at how basically no time felt wasted to me, considering how old it is and how slow stalkers felt to me years ago
many of my favorite bits were very tactile depictions of wartime logistics, like getting hot water in two pails with history and pouring them into that metal tub. i believe the audience already thinks they understand war and regardless of how gung ho or anti u are u gotta snap them out of it by aggressively leaving stereotypical war shit behind in ur war depiction as much as possible. obviously true for lots of other stuff but especially for war.
this has gotta be the most basic film-watcher thing to say ever, but the black and white definitely made me feel the textures of everything more. i want to touch all the skin and stone and wood in this movie. david_lynch_favorite_textures.jpg
i knew masha wouldn't get any characterization cause she's a woman in a movie of this time and direction but she got to drink in the beauty of nature and get away from all the scrub ass guys tryna hit and i can feel that
the part with the apples spilling from the truck and the horses running up sent me to heaven and im mad i can't find the screenshot of it online i want
ANDREI RUBLEV FIRST REACTION
found it tricky to follow at points. for starters, its really big and ambitious compared to ivans childhood, maybe too big. i feel like there's a lot of cultural context that would improve this film for me. could be primarily an english subtitles issue cause the ones on there sometimes made me wonder if they were cutting out.
this film has a spiritual relationship with nature that i actually really prefer over ivans childhood, develops how that movie did it, especially considering the subject.
im both stirred by how this film's more willing to engage with the swamps of christian philosophy than all evangelical culture put together, and also kinda tired with thinking about jesus shit altogether, ive had to see too much.
i really admire when directors can keep massive crowd scenes from looking like a mess, let alone get them painterly, and tarkovsky does that so much in this film!!
shoutout to the skomorokh he was really hitting that shit, 10/10 would get my problematic comedy and anti establishment social commentary from him over joe rogan ain't even a contest
im sorry but the part where andrei says goodbye to daniil is really gay. im not the only one seeing this shit right
witches sabbath scene was hard. i should run around naked in the wilderness with my homegirls and a torch one day, seeing both this movie and the vvitch this year is a sign!
i love wide shots of horses and riders along the horizon so much omg
this film's soundtrack clears tf outta ivans childhood's, but it prominently features russian orthodox choir and that's cheating
the shot of andrei alone in the church after all his work for it got burned is a favorite. also he got much hotter when he had blood running down the side of his face, but then again so do most people. kinda hard to fuck that up lol
i was about to say that this film and the previous are both on the same level, really fucking great in mirrored ways, but this ending won me over. this film has higher highs and that was one of them <3
SOLARIS FIRST REACTION
yippie he has color now! opening with similar botanical waves as andrei rubilev but with the new dimension. that blue jacket was really punchy, would it look that punchy with a modern camera?
jesus christ the entire opening sequence on earth felt needlessly slow, and i don't think it's just my fried zoomer attention span. long static exposition dumping, including info we don't need till later. the core isn't even that they need to compromise on info or complexity, it's that id expect tarkovsky to jump at the opportunity to do more visual storytelling. the driving in japan got me like ooh cool then after a while i was like okay we get it. it isn't changing enough and this isn't one of the times soaking it in hits. the long stretches of no soundtrack exacerbated this problem.
the lack of foreplay and climax with regards to blasting off has me curious. seems like such a good opportunity to bring viewer and character together, all the inherent apprehension with the unknown and all the effort beforehand for this moment. is it cause they're so used to rocket flights now? wouldn't solaris still have them feeling that? though such things would only hit if they were built up by a better opening.
fortunately the film gets full tarkovsky magic the second its on the station. thank FUCK that one corridor looks like a beat up bus, tarkovsky gets it there. also love the personality of each crew member room. sci-fi's refreshing after the historical settings, the soviet feel is charming, and the colors are beautiful. id love to see how he'd have colored andrei rublev. the plot gets actually intriguing too, characters talking at eachother is made engaging and dynamic more like most of the last two films. wasn't expecting this many psych horror elements! wonder how much this started or influenced tropes (like staring into the void, for example.)
also one day imma wear hari's retrofuturistic tradwife fit lol
don't ask how this compares to the book or other movie this is my only solaris so far
