Moskovskaya elegiya (1987)

Director:

Aleksandr Sokurov

Genre:

Documentary

Plot:

A film in homage to Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. It concentrates on his absence from the Soviet Union and what he left behind...

Cast

Andrei Tarkovsky	...	Himself (archive footage)
Tonino Guerra	...	Himself (archive footage)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Aleksandr Sokurov	...	Narrator (voice)

Also Known As:

The Moscow Elegy

Runtime:

88 min

Country:

Soviet Union

Language:

Russian | Italian

Color:

Black and White | Color

Certification:

Italy:T

Company:

LDFS (Leningrad Documentary Film Studio)

Movie Connections:

Features Offret (1986)

Incredibly disappointing

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

As someone who has enjoyed both some of the films of Tarkovsky, and some of those of Sokurov, I was extremely underwhelmed by this "slice and splice" documentary.

The editing in this documentary is simply appalling. It is as if the makers had simply taped together a number of reels of footage indiscriminately. For example, the footage taken in Moscow Airport comes to a clunking stop, as the filmmaker obviously slung the camera on the ground, and then switched it off. At least twenty minutes of this film of over eighty could have been cut, without harming its artistic integrity.

It also has the ponderous narration that seems to have afflicted many Soviet documentaries. The narrator delivers his lines in a depressed, sluggish monotone, occasionally stopping, so that we can get a good look at Tarkovsky's old rusty washbasin, in poor quality black and white footage, or so that we can see pictures of Tarkovsky gesticulating in front of a wall, or so that we can stare at Tarkovsky's old mass produced Soviet lampshades for ten minutes. Then there's that excellent clip from an old Soviet film about the relative merits of potatoes and turnips, finished off with an agitprop speech about how the Russians suffered and won against the Germans, which the censors obviously forced in.

There is some footage in here of interest (the making of "Nostalghia" etc), but to be honest, you can see the same elsewhere (see next para). For example, Brezhnev's funeral, and the mood surrounding it, is all very interesting, and is probably to be related to Tarkovsky's own demise, but the fact that there is so much of it means that this particular point is driven home with the metaphorical sledgehammer.

For a much better take on much the same subject matter, take a look at "A Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich", which can be found on Artificial Eye's "Tarkovsky Companion" along with this film. (It can be found on IMDb under - '"Cinéma, de notre temps" (1988) {Une journée d'Andrei Arsenevitch}' (IMDB no. tt0259701) - as it was originally part of a French TV series.) More importantly, "A Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich" also contains some of the same footage as "Moscow Elegy", but IN COLOUR, and more importantly, with much better sound quality.