Lots to go thru here - let's get started
My first Russian film for the collection as I recall - and ironically one that wasn't shown in Russia for years for it's depictions of faith and other uncomfortable ideas to authoritarianism
This is the second film by Andrei Tarkovsky - and I know he's going to pop up again so I'll save that for another time
This is quite simply a beautiful film about the life of a famous Russian Icon Painter - to be fair, much of it is episodic and dramatized - (i.e. probably fictional) but it still tells a good story of a man trying to bring beauty to a time and place that was anything but. One of the things I picked up along the way of researching this movie was how it tried to accurately depict life and situations in the 1400's in Russia, and it did occur to me while watching it that living then would have really, really sucked
There's a lot of scenes that could have been talked about, but I think the one that sticks out to me is Andrei recounting his impression and story of the Passion of the Christ - what makes it unique is that as it is acted out, it is done so with Russian Peasants, in the dead of winter, with a Russian looking Jesus. It's those little things that make you rethink sometimes the story you think you've heard a hundred times before
Of course, there's some excellent overhead shots and stuff that no doubt would be done with a drone today - the introduction makes no sense to me, but then again, that's part of the fun :)
now - the downside - lots of good features here on the DVD - Audio commentary (didn't catch if it was the whole movie or just certain scenes but some great in depth technical commentary) - and it's the 205 minute "director's cut"
Having said that - there is a 186 minute cut out there that Tarkovsky said is his true version - I did some compares and aside from a few extra gory scenes that might have been removed - (they killed a horse in this film - but they got it from the slaughter house that day so it was a goner either way) - I don't THINK the missing scenes added anything to the overall story.
So onto my second issue - the DVD is 2.35 to 1 but it's actually framed in a 4:3 window - so that means if you have a 1.85-1 TV you end up with a 2.35-1 letterbox compressed in the 4:3 space.
That brings me to the last part of my title - I decided to sign up for a trial of Filmstruck - let's face it - now that I'm not in the cities anymore, there's a lot I won't be able to easily get besides Netflix - AND...in some of these cases where I"m looking at DVD's from 1999 the streaming quality exceeds the DVD
AND my final point - (not to beat a dead horse - AUGH) - the Filmstruck edition was the 186 minute edition and is SUBSTANTIALLY cleaner than the DVD print - someone got this thing cleaned up for blu-ray quality and that's what Criterion is streaming right now - wasn't even close - the DVD had lots of print scratches and the streaming was almost flawless - SO at some point maybe they'll release it on Blu-Ray - the DVD also had those blocky subtitles that I don't really like looking down for away from the screen
BUT otherwise - a great movie - the 3 hrs seemed like, well, 2 - LOL -
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