Andrei Rublev (1966) - The Holy Incel
Вставка
- Опубліковано 31 сер 2023
- They hated Jane because she spoke the truth.
Written, edited, and narrated by Jane Brown
Adapted from a conversation with your cult boyfriend
Subscribe for more!
❤️ Patreon: / styleissubstance
🧡 Twitter: / substanceis
💛 Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/Jay96/
💚 E-mail: styleissubstance1@gmail.com
💙 Partner's UA-cam: @Elaine_Fuentes
💜 Partner's Twitter: / mondaylover24 - Фільми й анімація
This video misrepresents Tarkovsky's intentions. The thesis of the film is not "art flourishes under oppressive conditions" but rather "God's beauty and love shines through all". We find this beauty in the bell making scene, which is Tarkovsky's answer to the cynicism of Theopanes, the persecutions by the Tartars, and the sinful hedonism of the pagans. Honoring God through art isn't about pride or being a martyr, rather it is for the common good of all so we can know His love. As Tarkovsky says "There are no signed icons".
And comparing Jesus and Joan of Arc to the 9/11 terrorists is in very poor taste. This video seems to be more concerned with attacking Christianity rather than truly engaging with art.
To quote Tarkovsky, "If you look for a meaning, you'll miss everything that happens. Thinking during a film interferes with your experience of it. Take a watch into pieces, it doesn't work. Similarly with a work of art, there's no way it can be analyzed without destroying it." By his logic, any interpretation of meaning is one imposed on the text and analysis is deconstructive. Just like my analysis, to assert the film is about God's beauty within everything, would be by Tarkovsky's logic just as much a reductive imposition of meaning as my proposed thesis. I think his logic is silly of course. The mentality of martyrdom ironically can lead to a form of pride indeed. I didn't "compare" Jesus to terrorists. I just articulated the range of martyr figures. Tarkovsky wants us to bring our own experiences to the films he makes and I'm doing just that. People are just conservative about preserving the man's legacy.
At the beginning of the film, Kirill is jealous of the fact that Andrei is a more skilled painter than he is and ends up leaving the Monastery in spite. However, during his confession near the end he urges Andrei to paint again and expresses regret at his previous actions.
You are free to bring your own experiences to art but I don't really see how the film can be criticized for having a prideful disposition when the most prideful character repents at the end. Tarkovsky may have rejected all interpretations of his work but he certainly didn't want the audience to contradict the ideas present in his cinema.
Francis Dec isn't my real name at all, but I call myself that after a Long Island lawyer, who was in principle character assassinated in the 1950s for speaking the truth about corruption in Nassau County. He went insane for the rest of his life after that. A brave man falling victim to evil cowards.
So true my nigga
Another movie that also talked about similar themes but a bit more "modest" was the 1969 Georgian film "Pirosmani" , also about a painter, also experimenting with colours, it used to be on Mubi
The peasant women depicted in the movie here are not witches and are not sexually liberated. They are celebrating a religious festival Kupalnocka that invokes sexual rights one night of the year as part of the religious ceremony. They are just regular peasant women as the fleeing woman fleeing for her life in the next scene depicts.
Andrei starts the scene stating that this is the witche's Sabbat. He returns to the group later mentioning nothing of sin or of Satanism. He instead talks about the hard life and toil of the people basically I think explaining this is their way of blowing off steam.
Intentionally he tried to prevent his group from notifying the authorities. However, the old babushka already had notified them. Perhaps she is the incel figure you are referring to?
Andrei is clearly saddened by the situation and I suspect felt shame from not helping the fleeing woman later which is perhaps in part why he later takes action protecting the other woman from the assault from the Tartar.
I think this scene is meant to in part explain the artist's inspiration regarding how their iconography took a livelier tone from the Greek iconography. The ceremony has some obvious similarities to Christian practices. The burnt offering striking the monk's boat seems like a symbolic death of paganism in Russia.
The righteous persecution of the pagans is a parallel to the righteous persecution of Christianity in Soviet times. I think this is a parallel point that Tarkovsky was making.
The director gives us a view into Andrei's humanity. It's the psychology of a voyeur, an artist observing nature to put down on the canvas.
I agree that the holy incel label fits if we isolate that particular setting or epoch. I would add, however, that there is always a way to explain why something that someone else believes to be their free choice is actually socially imposed on them, and it's often based on our labels that they experience their choice as free. For example, if someone is declared as an incel, they might perceive society as expecting people to be sexual, and therefore, experience abstinence as the freeest act.
Just because someone is an orthodox monk that is practicing chastity, doesn't make him an incel. Like a women tried having sex with andrei against his will in the movie.
A will imposed on him indeed.
@@styleissubstance Andrei Rublev chose to follow God's will, it was not imposed upon him. The movie is about him living God's will in a world full of people that don't. It's a timeless parable.
@@Indigenous_Rambo I was saying the pagan woman was imposing her will on him. But yes, Christianity is also imposed on the people. Sometimes even our choices in life are coerced.
Athos moment
I think that problem of this review is that you think that Tarkovski was propagating something, while he really wasn't. The same as there were no incels in Soviet Union in 1966. It's quite comfortable position, reviewing movie made 60 years ago, using the contemporary context. But it's not very wise. :)
Don't sell Tarkovsky as a boring guy, please
I wouldn't do that, he doesn't need selling. :)
@@kostajovanovic3711
Conjecture, your honor.
@dimosism all media is propaganda in some way, deal with it
@@styleissubstance I agree with you. There is nothing wrong (in fact it is long established academic practice) with using an interpretive framework in literary (in this case film) criticism. It is how we continue to find contemporary relevance of works. Otherwise we simply become antiquarians.
Do you really believe that Tarkovsky would agree with the idea of God hating man? I know he was a fan of The Idiot which definitely espouses the opposite. I liked the video.
I don't think so but I also don't care lol.
@@styleissubstance That is a fair point.
It would have been MUCH more interesting had you described how your move away from this film (and Tarkovsky in general) is informed by/representative of/inspired by your own personal journey and development. There is a good piece of literary criticism to be made here regarding the sexual politics of Tarkovsky producing film under a totalitarian regime (i.e. Communism) and vestigial historical repression (i.e. Orthodox Christianity) seen through the lens of a modern American. Do a sequel!!
I think the issue is that reading Tarkovsky through the lens of contemporary leftist discussion will not yield very interesting results because Tarkovsky is not concerned with critique and he doesn't offer very interesting insights into many of these topics. You will always end up with him being essentially a relatively normal right-wing conservative and that's true but not very interesting. I think much of contemporary political discussion hinges on some kind of primitive dialectics mostly concerned with the process of negation but I think to get something out of Tarkovsky you need to abandon Hegel and Marx and instead entertain Heidegger and Derrida so to speak, that is engage in fundamental onthology instead of dialectics and ask not where am I in the world but instead the more fundamental question what is being. And then you could still embed it critically in a dialectical framework.
Also with regards to Tarkovsky's concept of faith one could question wheter it isn't in spirit closer to Kierkegaard than to orthodox hierarchical praxis.
Also I think the problem with applying sexual politics to Tarkovsky is that he operates in a system where that barely exists and the very idea of incel culture for instance is itself a product of sexual politics, namely the rejection of it. It's a bit like applying socialist or fascist thought to absolutist France, you're two steps too far already. Liberalism doesn't even exist yet, so how should a critique of it exist or provide a very insightful reading? Similarly how do you read anti-feminism into a society (largely) without feminism? The only thing that this will produce is that Tarkovsky perpetuates the patriarchal system he lives in and doesn't question the status quo.
Also I think it's more accurate to say that Tarkovsky worked under authoritarian state socialism. His first works were notably produced under the Khrushchev Thaw when repression on art was significantly eased. The Brezhnev era with Andropov as head of the KGB has more overt totalitarian characteristics but I suppose it's debatable how you would call it.
Your videos are always great and I’m always excited to watch new releases!
I dont always agree with your takes, but at least they are always well thought out and articulated
Keep up the good work :)
this dude's eyes are freaky
Every so often I forget just how turned around some Christian theologies can get, and then I end up faced with something like this where I don't even know where to start in terms of unravelling its issues. The whole idea that we should live in cowardly fear of God, rather than fearing our own capacity for evil and seeking out God's help to confront it, the idea that God gives us arbitrary suffering, rather than lessons, and the deep-seated rejection of the moral intuitions God gives us to guide us towards a happier, healthier, more just existence... it's just baffling to me. This is the kind of story I would tell to underscore how piety can become pride, how self-sacrifice is an act of wrath against others, and how blind obedience is a form of moral and intellectual sloth. It's funny how these kinds of harmful perspectives often produce works that loudly demonstrate the incorrectness of the perspectives that create them. Thank you for revealing the beauty of God in the screwed up attitudes of this film.
Religiosity is a part of human nature. Some are more inclined towards religiosity than others. By birth alone, as a human being, in your earliest stages of development, you are completely dependent on your mother. Your mother becomes a "God" to you deciding over your life and death, the one protecting, punishing, the one you run to for help. At these stages the mother is seen as and becomes an "ideal" to strive for. Reverence is the feeling which is being developed here from the moment of your birth. Reverence a crucial term in and for religion. Through growing up the realisation arises, that the "ideal" seen before is not an actual ideal. For a human being this is the start to look for one, the start of Christian Religion. The feeling of reverence, given by birth takes it ultimate shape in religion. Not all human beings are capable of experiencing it. Some feel it more, some less, others not at all. There is nothing wrong with it. To think "blind obedience and intellectual sloth" comes from Christian Religion, that it supposedly "teaches" or originates from it, is delusion formed from not understanding as well as lack of thought. Dante, Petrarch, Michelangelo, Rafael and so many other masters who created and gave us so many marvellous works, just show your delusion. Through suffering you learn. Suffering teaches. I won't touch on the other things written in the text I am replying to, there is no need for it. The lack of knowledge as well as understanding considering Christian Religion is evident. Try to deeply think through and answer the question what "God" really is. In this way you will actually come as close as possible to "God", probably without even realising it yourself. A human being, wearing a cross, saying I'm religious, while being a scoundrel is far from being religious nor is that human an example that can be used to show the problem of Christian Religion.
@@arsenyshm3085I think you've misunderstood me. You seem to think that I am dismissive of religion and that I have not spent time considering what God is. My comment was written from a position of generally respecting Christianity and religion more generally, and of having to be reminded that sometimes those things that I respect can get twisted around into their complete opposites. For example, we often see Christian teachings about the duty of the wealthy to eliminate poverty getting twisted around into an obsession with amassing wealth and a disdain for the poor. Or we will see Jesus' teachings, which so often clearly invite deeper critical thinking and consideration through parables and symbols, reduced down to literalism or blind dogmatism.
I don't necessarily agree with you that religion is the search for a lost idealised mother figure. I think it's reductive, and that religion/God can be so much more. In fact, I'd argue that overcoming the child mentality that someone else is responsible for us and accepting that we are independent agents capable of our own achievements is an important stage in our personal (and potentially also religious) development. I also don't think religion is innate- religion is one way of understanding the vastness of human experience, and there are completely valid nonreligious frameworks that achieve the same thing.
Thank you for the reply. I apologise if I misunderstood what you were trying to brings across, the chances are high since I am really stupid but to me it did seem like you were naming certain negative aspects, which are suppose to be things Christian Religion is trying to teach. I am guessing you were naming these negatives as wrong interpretations of what is written in the teachings to highlight a problem. Like I said, if that is the case, my apologies. Now you did misunderstand me for sure when I was talking about "the mother". I only used this as an example in order to try and make the reader understand where the feeling of reverence is coming from, which is, like previously said, crucial for the ability to even absorb religious teachings. I said that to show where a human being is confronted with the realisation of there being something "bigger or greater" than him, for the first time. Through growing up a child comes to the understanding that this "ideal" was in fact not even close to an ideal. Then religion comes into play but the foundation to absorb these kind of teachings is layed during this period of a life. I never said that "religion is the search for a lost idealised mother figure", that is maybe your misunderstanding of what I wrote or your misinterpretation because of my bad english level. Child mentality should of course be overcome, I do not think there is any religion propagating child mentality. Christian religion is not teaching non-responsibility for your actions nor does it teach not having a choice. It does not teach you that we are not independent agents capable of our own achievements, otherwise actual self mastery, trying to reach a certain desirable stage would not be possible which is exactly one of the main things Christian religion and others teach. I did not say religion is innate. Like you said, there are other ways of understanding the vastness of your experience. I think when these different ways are all conjoined a better condition is created for understanding a "truth". There are no completely valid nonreligious frameworks which lead to a better or closer understanding of "the truth" because it incorporates the answering of questions only religion can give or try giving an answer to. As an example the question "what happens after death?". The moment you try answering it in a scientific way this science becomes a religion itself. The problem is not religion but wrong interpretations, understandings as well as other "negative" things which are part of human nature. There are lots of people who say they are christians who believe in God without having read the bible even once. The act of understanding or interpretating it in any way is not even possible in this case. You can tell these people what you want and make them believe something is written somewhere which tells them to do this and that without it being the case. Religion is trying to be a guidance but no religion or religious teaching forces you to follow or live in accordance to it. The vast majority of human beings could not care less about religious questions as long as they can blindly satisfy their own needs and pleasures. This is probably a bigger problem. If I came off as being harsh in my first message, I apologise for it as well.
@@arsenyshm3085 Thank you for clarifying. You say that you are stupid, but I don't think that's true. Communicating clearly on the internet is difficult. It also sounds like English isn't your first language, which can only make it harder.
It seems like we actually agree for the most part. I'm glad that we could reach a mutual understanding. I appreciate you taking the time to explain how I misunderstood you.
I do still think there are legitimate nonreligious frameworks for understanding the human experience and what I personally see as "God". I personally think it's a lot of work for no benefit to try to maintain a framework like that, and that nonreligious people would have an easier time thinking about certain things if they adopted religious language, but just because it's inefficient that doesn't mean it doesn't work.
Your counterexample of "what happens after death" isn't really convincing to me. Dealing with death is definitely part of the human experience, and I think we tend to see God (or at least what I call "God") more clearly when we are made to confront death, but death itself is beyond our human experience. I don't really think the answer to "what happens after we die" matters. I think questions like "how do we face our own mortality" and "how do we handle loss and grief" are the ones that really matter. Saying that we reincarnate, go to heaven, or simply cease existing altogether is just a way of handling those bigger questions. Nonreligious people can handle questions of mortality and grief in different ways.
@@Salsmachev That is true english is not my first language but it's nice that you can understand me. Having a conversation online is indeed not easy plus it often transitions into verbal arguments which lead to nothing. We are both trying to get closer to a "truth" and that can only be done by leaving "the seven deadly sins" aside. I did not ask before what non-religious framework or works you are referring to. I thought by that you mean science or scientific arguments, theories, but maybe that's not actually what you are referring to. It seems that in the first messages we had our focus on the question of moral behaviour or leading your life in a certain way based on Christian religion. I do not think sience provides any moral guidance nor is it the thing that morality originated from. If you think it does, I would gladly listen to you explaining it to me. Then the focus shifted towards trying to "explain the vast human experience" or something similar to that, which seems like another topic in comparison to our original messages. I tried explaining my view on it and I will try now. Thing is that explaining "the vast human experience" can not be done with just science. Science is part of life I am not arguing about that and things like "2+2" accompany humans daily. But what I was trying to say is that only when you try to conjoin "science" and "non-science" you might get a chance to come just a bit closer to any kind of understanding of your "vast human experience" simply put "the truth". What people seem to forget is that there is one part of "science" which is "2+2" but another part of "science" which is just bunch of theory. It is called the "theory of evolution" and not "fact of evolution" but so many people just see it as a fact. It seems like they just want to filter out this point. Now this theory is trying to explain "the vastness of human experience", even the origin of it, just like so many other scientific theories but they are just theories and nothing more. It becomes like a "religion" itself, which people just don't understand. 99 percent of people have ansolutely no understanding of theoretical physics, quantum physics which try to explain the "vastness of our world and experience" so all they do is listen and believe. It becomes their "religion". It provides absolutely no guidance it doesn't make them understand anything. Try explaining to a person who lost someone to look at it in a scientific way. The person is just dead and on the next day starts rotting away and that's it. This would be a scientific way of doing it. The whole question of "what happens after death" I just used as a really simple basic example to show that there are so many important questions only religion can try and give an answer to and what generally tries doing the same thing, becomes "religion". Of course this question that I used as an example does not matter to a dead person but it does matter to them prior to it happening just like it maybe matters to their loved ones. Those type of questions are simple question the vast majority of human beings would like an answer to. How a particle moves and makes up "their vast human experience" is probably something really interesting to them but that's about it and when they get confronted with the other types, they forget the particle really quickly. Human interaction is the thing almost every single human is confronted with daily and what matters here are things like morality which for example is exactly what Christian religion teaches or other religions, it guides, it gives and creates certain norms. Something a "particle" and what tries explaining "the vast human experience" based on that just absolutely does not do and can't. The interaction between human beings is what truly is "the vast human experience". The interaction without which there would be nothing we have. The thing with a religious text is that it in a way adapts to the reader, to the questions one is seeking. "What happens after death" is just the simplest example. If one is really looking for it they can get an answer to it by a religious text but in reality a religious text is so much more. It adapts to the "level of understanding" of the reader. A holy monk is reading a religious text not with the goal to understand a simple question like that which a regular person might want an answer to. The goal of the holy monk goes beyond that, he/she passed this stage of their personal mental development he/she is studying it seeking a completely different answer going beyond the things concerning "regular person" reading a religious text on a friday night. To them it's not about "heaven", "hell" and so on but the other things, a religious text is truly about.
to reduce a film made in the 1960s to a 2020s era meme buzzword like incel really defeats the the aim of giving a genuine analysis to this film and ends up being no different than every culturally neoliberal analysis on par with a hbomberguy video where it's this mix of smug bourgeoisie liberal morality mixed with half baked marxist jargon
I'm cute tho
@@styleissubstance and your analysis of older film outside of internet/social media is really fraught and smug and relies on some "ummm actually folx, this has my politics because i'm doing marxist(tm) 'media consumption' unlike those facking CHUDS", something that a channel awesome reviewer by way of the most bourgeoisie aspects of breadtube would do
I like your take on it. Highly personal and subjective.
I never heard of this movie. Thank you for reviewing this movie, if you hadn't, I'd probably never of known about this movies.
I love the video you need 1 million subscribers
A great video
Incel is bad gyatt Sigma Skibidi on God from Ohio, no rizz, no cap, with fanum tax, did you pray today?
i was a convert to eastern orthodoxy for about 3 years in late high school/college and i remember everyone at my church gushing about this film. i watched it and was pretty shocked that people seemed to think it was like a straightforwardly pro-orthodox, anti-communist film. you are absolutely right in pointing out that rublev's moral anguish doesn't give the simplistic answers the 'orthobros' want. this comment section confirms that those dudes have no media literacy, they can only classify art as 'good' or 'bad' based on whether it portrays god / the orthodox church in a 'positive' or 'negative' light. i left orthodoxy bc that kind of simplistic thinking got culty, the martyr complex got self-destructive, and the authoritarian nature replicated normal hierarchies and resulted in constant racism, sexism, and homophobia. now i've been out of high-control religions for about 3 years, i've come out as lesbian, and i can watch a video essay about andrei rublev without triggering a religious trauma flashback!
have you seen the brideshead revisited miniseries from the 80s? i feel like your 'holy incel' framework could be interesting applied to it as well!
Liked for the title alone. Great work.
Great Video. Is it an INCEL movie, or a movie about an INCEL? Or ... maybe ... a movie about an INCEL world? I would have gone with the pagans immediately ... zero hesitation.
Thank you for highlighting this persepective. As a teenage I was obsessed by Tarkovsky stunned by his excentirc ways, long takes, mystic tone etc. In my later years I come to view him with greater distance, reading the collection of intreviews he made and his own writing, his obsession with men as burden artists and women as muses or simplel caretaker of these tormentet men - he's without doubt very much of a boring convservative when it comes to faith and gender.
He has his ideological limitations but credit where credit is due, he is a master at the craft. I just don't buy into the idea that his films are void of propagating messages.
This is why Tarkovsky is overrated
What film do you like?