Does Tarkovsky Have a Film Theory?

This chapter attempts to answer the question whether Tarkovsky’s insights in cinema, documented in interviews and in Sculpting in Time (1986), could amount to a coherent film theory. Although many scholars observe that one should abandon analytical reasoning while comprehending his films, they nevertheless follow a certain logic that seems to align with many of Henry Bergson’s philosophical arguments. The same could be said about Tarkovsky’s theoretical propositions: namely, his preference for intuition over intellectual cognition, psychological duration over chronological time, the past over the present as well as his foregrounding the dual nature of the film image in which subjective consciousness (spirit) and objective reality (matter) are coalesced into a single unit. Viewing Tarkovsky as being subconsciously Bergsonian, the author argues, could help us salvage his theoretical musings from being dismissed as unembarrassedly Romantic or outdated.