WATCH PARTY: Andrei Rublev (1966) dir. Andrei Tarkovsky @ Mary Pretlow Library

We'll be in the large room, Meeting Room 2, to the right of the entrance. Let's have another go at the challenging Tarkovsky, doing the 183 minute Director's Cut (as opposed the original which was 20 minutes longer.)

RUNTIME: 183 minutes

RATING: R

SYNOPSIS (via Criterion): Tracing the life of a renowned icon painter, the second feature by Andrei Tarkovsky vividly conjures the murky world of medieval Russia. This dreamlike and remarkably tactile film follows Andrei Rublev as he passes through a series of poetically linked scenes—snow falls inside an unfinished church, naked pagans stream through a thicket during a torchlit ritual, a boy oversees the clearing away of muddy earth for the forging of a gigantic bell—gradually emerging as a man struggling mightily to preserve his creative and religious integrity. Appearing here in the director’s preferred 183-minute cut as well as the version that was originally suppressed by Soviet authorities, the masterwork Andrei Rublev is one of Tarkovsky’s most revered films, an arresting meditation on art, faith, and endurance.

BLURBS:
"The best arthouse film of all time. [...] We experience life on every scale, from raindrops falling on a river to armies ransacking a town, often within the same, unbroken shot. [...] We don't necessarily know, or need to know, how Andrei Rublev works or what it's telling us, but by the end we're in no doubt it's succeeded." - Steve Rose, The Guardian (UK)

"Perfection lingers in each frame as Tarkovsky crafts one of the finest films ever made, an ecstatic story about art that has little interest in the artist himself, but in the power of art to transcend the age that produces it." - Jamie Russell, BBC.com

"You may dread being ground down by this extraordinary film, but fear not. It will bear you aloft." - Anthony Lane, The New Yorker