The director’s task is to recreate life, its movement, its contradictions, its dynamic and conflicts. It is his duty to reveal every iota of the truth he has seen, even if not everyone finds that truth acceptable. Of course an artist can lose his way, but even his mistakes are interesting provided they are sincere. For they represent the reality of his inner life, of the peregrinations and struggle into which the external world has thrown him.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the director's role in authentically portraying life's complexities and truths through art.
Andrei Tarkovsky highlights the responsibility of a director not just to depict life in its various forms, movements, and conflicts, but also to express his own perception of truth, regardless of its acceptability to others. He acknowledges that the journey of an artist is fraught with challenges, and even errors can be meaningful as they reflect the artist's genuine experiences and struggles in relation to the world around them.
In practice
A filmmaker might use this quote in a lecture about authentic storytelling in cinema.
AN ARTISTIC DISCOVERY OCCURS EACH TIME AS A NEW AND UNIQUE IMAGE OF THE WORLD, A HIEROGLYPHIC OF ABSOLUTE TRUTH. IT APPEARS AS A REVELATION, AS A MOMENTARY, PASSIONATE WISH TO GRASP INTUITIVELY AND AT A STROKE ALL THE LAWS OF THIS WORLD-ITS BEAUTY AND UGLINESS, ITS COMPASSION AND CRUELTY, ITS INFINITY AND ITS LIMITATIONS.
When I speak of poetry I am not thinking of it as a genre. Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality. So poetry becomes a philosophy to guide a man throughout his life.
Art would be useless if the world were perfect.
Perhaps the meaning of all human activity lies in the 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?
Above all, I feel that the sounds of this world are so beautiful in themselves that if only we could listen to them properly, cinema would have no need for music at all.
THE ARTISTIC IMAGE IS ALWAYS A METONYM, WHERE ONE THING IS SUBSTITUTED FOR ANOTHER, THE SMALLER FOR THE GREATER. TO TELL OF WHAT IS LIVING, THE ARTIST USES SOMETHING DEAD; TO SPEAK OF THE INFINITE, HE SHOWS THE FINITE.
It's wonderful to play a villain who gets a laugh or to stop a comedy dead in its tracks with a touching moment. It's kind of like a symphony that has very different movements.
Favorite poems are like favorite children. We definitely have them but we never tell as the others would have their feelings hurt.
Forgetfulness heals everything and song is the most beautiful manner of forgetting, for in song man feels only what he loves.
I love singing. I love it, and it doesn't feel like a chore. It's an expression.
The newspaper is, in fact, very bad for one's prose style. That's why I gravitated towards feature stories where you get a little more leeway in the writing style.
But most commonly, it's one poem that I work on with a lot of intensity.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.