A Contrapuntal Reading of the Works of Andrei Tarkovsky

This thesis explores the films of Andrei Tarkovsky through the methodology of both a combined critical reading and creative response. Tarkovsky worked predominantly under the regime of the Brezhnevian Soviet Union and his films act as modes of articulating expression under totalitarianism. Tarkovsky produced five major films in Soviet Russia: Ivan’s Childhood (1962), Andrei Rublev (1966), Solaris (1972), Mirror (1975) and Stalker (1979) and two in European exile: Nostalgia (1983) and The Sacrifice (1986). My research section asserts that Tarkovsky’s films are philosophically complex and weighted with hidden influences and meanings which are worthy of deeper exploration. I posit Edward Said’s contrapuntal reading enables an unveiling of the opaque and obfuscated meanings found within them. Said’s ideas reveal the hauntological influences on Tarkovsky’s work such as the hyper-reality of the Soviet Union and historical filmmakers such as Kenji Mizoguchi and Carl-Theodor Dreyer. The creative piece is called Red Lens and is a literary response to the findings of the research section. The work channels Tarkovskian stylistic cinema in terms of form, narrative, and characterisation and the narrative is devised through a biographical process which dramatises the lives and creativity of Soviet filmmakers such as Tarkovsky. Based on my contrapuntal reading of his oeuvre, the structure of Red Lens is stylistically informed by Tarkovsky, acting mutually with the research section as a further way of exploring and understanding Tarkovsky’s cinema.