History Creator / AndreiTarkovsky

* ''Film/IvansChildhood'' (1962) or ''My Name Is Ivan'' was Tarkovsky's first feature film. Like ''Cranes Are Flying'' or ''The Ballad of a Soldier'', this film explores [[WarIsHell the suffering and human cost of war]] as seen by Ivan, a 12-year-old boy in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII occupied Russia. It was a commercial and critical success, and gained Tarkovsky his first real fame as a director.

* ''Ivan's Childhood'' (1962) or ''My Name Is Ivan'' was Tarkovsky's first feature film. Like ''Cranes Are Flying'' or ''The Ballad of a Soldier'', this film explores [[WarIsHell the suffering and human cost of war]] as seen by Ivan, a 12-year-old boy in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII occupied Russia. It was a commercial and critical success, and gained Tarkovsky his first real fame as a director.

* ''AndreiRublev'' (1966) is Tarkovsky's longest film, at 205 minutes, and is a {{Biopic}} of medieval Russian icon painter Andrei Rublev, focusing on his role in creating the Russian Christian identity. Its depictions of ancient religion and ambiguity about politics got this film censored for years. However, it was his first widely awarded film.

* FollowTheLeader: The critical reception of ''[[ASpaceOdyssey 2001: A Space Odyssey]]'' may have factored into the creation of ''Solaris'' and ''Stalker'', similar meditative sci-fi films. Tarkovsky made very clear that he wasn't a fan of Kubrick's film, however.
* GainaxEnding: Some of his movies seem to end in this way, like for example ''TheMirror'' and ''Nostalghia''. See also MindScrew.

* LeFilmArtistique

* DownerEnding: ''Ivan's Childhood'', ''The Sacrifice'', and, in a more meta sense, Tarkovsky's own life, as he died from cancer just before his works gained a real worldwide audience.

->''"Perhaps the meaning of all human activity lies in artistic consciousness, in the pointless and selfless creative act? Perhaps our capacity to create is evidence that we ourselves were created in the image and likeness of God?"''
-->'''Andrei Tarkovsky''', the final lines of his book ''Sculpting in Time''

Tarkosvky is one of the best-known Russian/Soviet directors, along with SergeiBondarchuk, Creator/SergeiEisenstein, Creator/AndreiKonchalovsky, and Creator/NikitaMikhalkov, and his films have gained many awards.

* ''Film/{{Solaris|1972}}'' (1972) was based on the book by Creator/StanislawLem about scientists on a mysterious planet who see images of people they remember from their lives on Earth. It was in wide release for many years, remains a seminal film in Soviet science fiction, and was famous enough in the West to be remade by StevenSoderbergh.

* DespairEventHorizon: [[spoiler: Alexander in ''The Sacrifice'']].

* TheOner: a regular feature of his films are very long one camera shots. His last film, The Sacrifice, has only 115 shots making up its 149 minutes, and its opening, the longest shot to be found in Tarkovsky's filmography, runs for 9:26. To put things in perspective, the famous long take at the beginning of Touch of Evil is about a third as long.
* UnkemptBeauty: Alexei's mother and Stalker's wife, both based to varying degrees on Tarkovsky's mother. And Stalker himself may count as a male version.

* ActingForTwo: Margarita Terekhova in ''The Mirror''. See {{Doppelganger}} below for why.

* TheCakeIsALie: Does the Room grant you your deepest desire? Only Porcupine would know, but even though he became rich, he killed himself because he sent his brother to his death. Nobody else is known to have gone into the Room and had their wishes granted.
* CivilWar: The Spanish Civil War appears in stock footage in ''The Mirror'' and two characters there fled from Spain to the USSR then.

* CursedWithAwesome: Monkey is a cripple, but may have psychic powers.
* DeliberatelyMonochrome: Even after Tarkovsky made the switch to primarily shooting in color after Andrei Rublev, monochrome sequences, as well as sepia, appear in "Solaris", "The Mirror" and "Stalker". The town scenes in ''Stalker'' contrast with the colorful Zone.

* {{Doppelganger}}: Margarita Terekhova plays both Alexei's mother and Alexei's wife Natalia in ''The Mirror'', as well as a random ginger-haired girl, to illustrate that Alexei's lack of a father figure and subsequent reliance on his mother causes him to compare all the women he knows to his mother.

* GeniusLoci: Solaris (a planet or rather planetary intelligence) and the Zone (a strange, secluded wilderness). "The Zone wants to be respected. Otherwise it will punish."

* LeaveTheCameraRunning: Tarkovsky loves holding a shot, sometimes for several minutes. In ''Stalker'', he leaves the camera on to capture a rainstorm forming, pouring rain, and then dissipating.

* [[HollywoodHomely Mosfilm Homely]]: [[invoked]] Maria/Natalia in ''The Mirror''.
* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: One of the rooms in the Zone is called the "meat mincer."
* NegativeSpaceWedgie: The Zone has mysterious properties, including the ability to kill people and wreck technology. The most dramatic example is when the trio enter the Zone and see the wreckage of dozens of army tanks.

* RealIsBrown: Used as a metaphor in ''Stalker'', where the scenes outside the Zone are not only brown, but washed out.
* RuleOfSymbolism: Stalker runs on religious imagery.

* StockFootage: ''The Mirror'' has lots of stock footage, including scenes of:
** Soviet balloons.
** The Spanish Civil War.
** The Great Patriotic War.
** The Sino-Soviet Border War.

* GoMadFromTheRevelation: Burton after his flight over the Ocean, at least according to the heads of Solaristics.

* [[HollywoodHomely Mosfilm Homely]]: Stalker and his wife in ''Stalker'', Maria/Natalia in ''The Mirror''.

and the Zone, shown to be partially intelligent.

* AppliedPhlebotinum: , in ''Solaris'', and the disruption of reality in the Zone in ''Stalker''.

* AppliedPhlebotinum: The Ocean's biomagnetic current and neutrino-based projections, and the technology associated with the station, in ''Solaris'', and the disruption of reality in the Zone in ''Stalker''.

* BodyHorror: The injuries Hari suffers in ''Solaris''.

* CasualInterstellarTravel: The spaceship from Earth to Solaris is so fast Kris Kelvin takes very little with him for the trip

* HealingFactor: The projection of Hari can heal deep cuts from trying to break down a metal door and, after drinking liquid oxygen, painfully resurrects on the floor of the Solaris Station.
* HerrDoktor: Doctor Snaut in ''Solaris''.

* ObstructiveBureaucrat: The heads of the Solaris Project reject Burton's testimony because they refuse to concede that Solaris is that intelligent, and pull him off the Station.
* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: ''Stalker'' has Stalker, Stalker's wife, Monkey, Writer, and Professor.

* SpaceClothes: Kris Kelvin wears a black leather jacket, green mesh top, tight grey pants, black boots, and a white jumpsuit.
* SpaceStation: The station orbiting Solaris was built to house dozens of scientists, but the staff has been whittled down to only three.
* StateSec: The stormtroopers assigned to patrol the Zone in ''Stalker''.

* TakeThat: Older Burton's film of his interrogation as a younger man in ''Solaris'' is a attack on GosKino. Burton is clearly a Tarokvsky self-insert and the interrogators are metaphors of the Soviet film censorship committee. Burton tries to convince his questioners of the validity of all these wonderful things that he has seen on Solaris but the interrogators reject his claims. When they are shown a film of the events, they see nothing extraordinary. Tarkovsky is saying that the film censors are stupid philistines and try to censor his works only because they do not understand art.

* ThrownOutTheAirlock: Kris Kelvin tries to kill one of the projections of Hari by stuffing her into a rocket and firing it into space. It does him no good.
* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: Kris Kelvin's estate looks like a typical Russian dacha and the cars are late 1960s/early 1970s, but there are also viewscreens, fast spaceships, and the station orbiting Solaris. A monologue says that investigation of Solaris had been going on for decades.

* UnknownPhenomenon: Solaris and the Zone, shown to be partially intelligent.
* UsedFuture: The space station in ''Solaris'' is falling to pieces and covered in trash due to the scientists going mad and dying or leaving. One of the few times viewers can see litter on a space station.

* YouAllMeetInAnInn: The Stalker, Writer, and Professor.

* ''Ivan's Childhood'' (1962) or ''My Name Is Ivan'' was Tarkovsky's first feature film. Like ''Cranes Are Flying'' or ''The Ballad of a Soldier'', this film explores [[WarIsHell the suffering and human cost of war]] as seen by Ivan, a 12-year-old boy in WorldWarII occupied Russia. It was a commercial and critical success, and gained Tarkovsky his first real fame as a director.

Andrei Arsenevich Tarkovsky (1932–1986) was a Soviet film director, writer, and theorist. His family had a literary background, and he studied art, music and language at school. But during the GreatPatrioticWar, his father was drafted and Andrei, his mother, and his sisters had to evacuate. He caught tuberculosis and recovered in a hospital. He dropped out of university and decided to become a prospector. He was sent to Siberia and, in the wilderness there, discovered film.

* BaldOfAwesome: Stalker has a convict's buzz cut.

* DrivesLikeCrazy: Stalker cannot drive in a straight line, even on railroad tracks.
* DungeonMastersGirlfriend: Stalker's wife.
* DysfunctionJunction: ''Stalker'' is this. Stalker has just returned from prison, presumably having been sent there for illegally going into the Zone. His daughter, Monkey, is crippled. Writer has come to the Zone because he no longer feels inspired in his writings. Professor wants to get a Nobel Prize and be respected by other academicians. Stalker's wife, despite arguing with Stalker, is the closest in the film to a happy person because she is the only person whose wishes have been granted.
* FailedASpotCheck: One of the soldiers trying to prevent people from approaching the Zone sees Stalker's car, but does not think that Stalker is hiding under the car.

* ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy: The soldiers patrolling the Zone cannot hit Stalker's slow-moving Land Rover, but they do manage to wreck their own electrical equipment.

* IronicNickname: The "dry tunnel" in ''Stalker'' has a large waterfall and is flooded.

* LegacyCharacter: Stalker. All Stalkers lead people into the Zone, and when one leaves the job, their apprentice becomes Stalker.

* MacGuffin: The Professor's backpack in ''Stalker''. At first his attachment to it makes him look like a cosseted old man, but in fact he needs it because it contains the bomb he stole from the other scientists.

* MysteriousWaif: Stalker's daughter Monkey, apparently able to move glasses by force of will as an effect of the Zone.

* TrueArtIsAngsty
* TrueArtIsIncomprehensible

* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic: ''AndreiRublev'' was originally titled ''The Passion According to Andrei'', and just as a central component of Literature/TheBible is Jesus suffering and dying for our sins, so too does Andrei Rublev suffer and redeem medieval Russia, enlightening it with his icons.

* DeliberatelyMonochrome: The town scenes in ''Stalker'', contrasting them with the colorful Zone.

* FanService: Alexei's mother in ''The Mirror'' takes a shower in full view of the camera, and in ''Solaris'' Hari's nipples poke through her shirt when she resurrects after taking the liquid oxygen.
* FollowTheLeader: The critical reception of ''[[ASpaceOdyssey 2001: A Space Odyssey]]'' may have factored into the creation of ''Solaris'' and ''Stalker'', similar meditative sci-fi films.

* TheOner: a regular feature of his films are very long one camera shots.

* ''The Sacrifice'' (1986) or ''Offret'' was Tarkovsky's final film, made in Sweden. As the world dies in a nuclear holocaust, the writer Alexander promises to God he will sacrifice everything he loves if only God will save the world. It was Tarkovsky's homage to his peer and idol Creator/IngmarBergman. Shortly after finishing this film, Tarkovsky died.

* LeaveTheCameraRunning: Tarkovsky loves holding a shot, sometimes for several minutes, to ensure maximum boredom. In ''Stalker'', he leaves the camera on to capture a rainstorm forming, pouring rain, and then dissipating.

** Not that his "interesting" parts are much more exciting

* AuthorAvatar: Andrei Rublev in ''Andrei Rublev'', Burton in ''Solaris'', Alexei in ''The Mirror'', the Writer in ''Stalker'', and Alexander in ''The Sacrifice''.

* DeadLittleBrother: Indirectly. Porcupine hanged himself out of guilt for having sent his brother to die in the Zone so he could become rich. Porcupine was the Stalker, and his death promoted the current Stalker to the position.
* [[DeadLittleSister Dead Wife and Dead Scientist]]: Kris Kelvin's wife Hari poisoned herself ten years ago, and the scientist Gibaryan died just before Kelvin's arrival to Solaris.

* TallDarkAndBishoujo: Hari.

Tarkosvky is one of the best-known Russian/Soviet directors, along with SergeiBondarchuk, Creator/SergeiEisenstein, Creator/AndreiKonchalovsky, and NikitaMikhalkov, and his films have gained many awards.

----

-->'''IngmarBergman'''

Tarkovsky entered the State Institute of Cinematography after finishing his expedition in Siberia. By this time, Stalin had died and Khrushchev was opening up the Soviet Union, so Tarkovsky was able to see and study the films of such greats as IngmarBergman and Creator/AkiraKurosawa, influencing him to become an auteur. This openness also led him to explore many themes in his films, such as man's role in the world, dreams vs. reality, the nature of religion, morality and freedom of choice.

* ''The Sacrifice'' (1986) or ''Offret'' was Tarkovsky's final film, made in Sweden. As the world dies in a nuclear holocaust, the writer Alexander promises to God he will sacrifice everything he loves if only God will save the world. It was Tarkovsky's homage to his peer and idol IngmarBergman. Shortly after finishing this film, Tarkovsky died.

* ''TheMirror'' (1975) or ''Mirror'' was a loosely autobiographical film that Tarkovsky had been working on since 1964. It is told out of order, and is a chronicle of the life and meditations of Alexei. This film did not have an official premiere, but has since become better known and welcomed into the Tarkovsky oeuvre.

Tarkosvky is one of the best-known Russian/Soviet directors, along with SergeiBondarchuk, Creator/SergeiEisenstein, AndreiKonchalovsky, and NikitaMikhalkov, and his films have gained many awards.