Reviews for Films of Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual Fugue

The average rating for Films of Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual Fugue based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-01-16 00:00:00 James Garrett bit dry but mostly interesting.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-01-31 00:00:00 Don Kusterbeck This is a dense work that covers not only Tarkovsky's films themselves, but also the circumstances of their creation within and outside the soviet union, the contribution of his coworkers and family as well as the reception of the films in different countries. First if all I regret to say that the layout of the book is (like so many non-fiction works) a true pain. The pages are crammed with lines of writing that have little gaps between them, making the informative and already dense text tiring to the eye and even more difficult to comprehend. Content wise, the book covers many topics and goes in quite great detail into every film. The factual information is very well researched, oftentimes comparing several sources and evaluating their usefulness to get an idea of how things were. It will definitely prove to be an invaluable source for anyone studying his work. Unfortunately, many of the points made in the book (especially about themes, narrative and symbolism within the films) were stated again and again, making an actual read from beginning to end incredibly tedious. There is also a lot of flat description of what happens in specific scenes (especially for mirror) but while I appreciate the notion that many other sources refer wrongly to scenes in ways im which they did not happen, the retelling of the scenes only rarely served to support a valid point, but oftentimes seemed to be there for the sake of itself. For referencing and research on specific elements this book is incredibly useful, but as a read for someone interested in Tarkovsky and his work it is a rather tedious experience.