It might help new viewers to understand that Tarkovsky viewed film as art, not entertainment. As such, he purposely avoided strong narratives or plots, instead focusing on poetry, mood, and time.
From the book "Sculpting in Time" by Tarkovsky himself: "I find poetic links, the logic of poetry in cinema, extraordinarily pleasing. They seem to me perfectly appropriate to the potential of cinema as the most truthful and poetic
of art forms. Certainly I am more at home with them than with traditional theatrical writing which links images through the linear, rigidly logical development of the plot. That sort of fussily correct way of linking events usually involves arbitrarily forcing them into sequence in obedience to some abstract notion of order. And even when this is not so, even when the plot is governed by the characters, one finds that the links which hold it together rest on a facile interpretation of life's complexities."
I think we have to agree to disagree; I found The Tree of Life (the only Malick movie I've managed to finish) to be a boring, incomprehensible mess of a movie, while Solaris and Stalker have been, in my opinion, somewhat interesting things.
The Thin Red Line is one of my top films, and I walked out of The Tree of Life. Only afterwards did I realize they were directed by the same guy. And then this spring I saw A Hidden Life. I thought it was absolutely fantastic. I plan to rewatch The Tree of Life to see if I like it better than first time. Perhaps I was not in the mood for that type of movie that particular evening.
Totally in agreement. The Thin Red Line is possibly my favorite film of all time, while I hated The Tree of Life; except for that awesome creation segment. And I also loved A Hidden Life.
You know, I might have had a similar reaction to Tree of life. But I thought the extended versions of The New World and Days of Heaven shared the same relationship between aesthetic and mood vs. narrative that I see in Stalker. You do not, however, get any Tarkovskysque monologues on metaphysics from Richard Gere or Colin Ferrell.
From the book "Sculpting in Time" by Tarkovsky himself: "I find poetic links, the logic of poetry in cinema, extraordinarily pleasing. They seem to me perfectly appropriate to the potential of cinema as the most truthful and poetic of art forms. Certainly I am more at home with them than with traditional theatrical writing which links images through the linear, rigidly logical development of the plot. That sort of fussily correct way of linking events usually involves arbitrarily forcing them into sequence in obedience to some abstract notion of order. And even when this is not so, even when the plot is governed by the characters, one finds that the links which hold it together rest on a facile interpretation of life's complexities."