Tarkovsky ... , but I didn't know he was a Christian.
Sorry. Russian Orthodox. Actual orthodox, not your imagined orthodox. And the wrong kind of Christian for your liking.
For that matter, do you even consider the Orthodox churches to be Christian? It can be so difficult for outsiders to keep fundie beliefs straight.
ABE:
When working with foreign films, especially ones more foreign as is the case with Russian film, it can be difficult to tell what is due to the director's unique perspective and what just comes from that national genre.
For example, we had briefly discussed Hermann Hesse's
Das Glasperlenspiel ("The Glass Bead Game", AKA "Magister Ludi"). Hesse's work is generally introspective and
Das Glasperlenspiel was very much that. German literature would tend to dwell on social status keeping up appearances and the dire consequences of losing your status (eg, "
Effi Briest" and "
Der Blaue Engel" with Marlene Dietrich). Then post-war literature and later film would dwell on youth coming of age and feeling no connection with society rejecting their parents' lifestyle (eg, "
A Coffee in Berlin", which is no longer on Netflix USA).
Point is that the genre can dictate a lot. What I've seen of Russian film has tended to be atmospheric and brooding (eg, " ", no longer on Netflix, "
Hard to be a God", though I had read it in the German translation, "Es ist nicht leicht ein Gott zu sein" (I was surprised decades later when I stumbled upon the English translation in a used book store). Even though I still knew the story, the Russian movie was so heavily atmospheric that I simply could not slog through it, kind of like
Solaris must have been for most Americans, only much much worse.
A friend in college started reading Tolstoy and what she really noticed was the banquet scenes in which Tolstoy would get into very intimate detail about the food and how it had been prepared.
So was Tarkovsky's work uniquely his, or was it very Russian? Maybe both.
Edited by dwise1, : ABE