Andrey Tarkovsky, the brilliant Russian filmmaker, kept a diary: Time Within Time: The Diaries, 1970-1986. It is filled with ideas, random thoughts, complaints about the Soviet film industry and his health, future film plans, descriptions of his family, reviews of books he’s read, and the regular inability to get the support he needed to make and distribute his films. He also talks about his process as a filmmaker and traces his spiritual journey to God.
Recently, I’ve been rereading his diaries and a passage jumped out at me.
Lord! I feel You drawing near. I can feel Your hand upon the back of my head. Because I want to see Your world as You made it, and Your people as You would have them be. I love You, Lord, and want nothing else from You. I accept all that is Yours, and only the weight of my malice and my sins, the darkness of my base soul, prevent me from being Your worthy slave, O Lord!
Help me, Lord, and forgive me! (February 10, 1979)
Wow.
This was written about three months before his film STALKER was released in May of 1979. The film had already had a famously tumultuous production and now Tarkovsky was facing issues with the authorities about the film’s final edit and whether it would actually ever see the light of day.
Fortunately, the film was released and the world was given one of cinema’s greatest artworks.
“Because I want to see Your world as You made it.” When Jesus took Peter, James, and John up the mountain and was transfigured before them, they saw something of that world. “His face shone like the sun, and his garments became white as light.” (Matthew 17:2) What an experience that must have been. Art, at its best, gives us hints at the transcendent, calling us to something greater within us, to what we were created to be.
Tarkovsky’s films have never ceased to impact me. Each viewing offers new depths of meaning. Each film is utterly unique. His best films are like no other films. STALKER is one of my favorite films and at times it feels like a religious icon offering a kind of window into another realm, a higher realm of spirituality and beauty while simultaneously harrowing my soul and preparing it for death. This is, to me, the essence of a truly “faith based” film.
[Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord]
pilgrimakimbo 