Great Texts Revisited: “Sculpting in Time”

With artificial intelligence now co-writing screenplays and the line between human creativity, cosmetic enhancements, and machine-generated imagery becoming ever more blurry, one might wonder: what remains? Perhaps the wisest course is to turn to the documents of film history—works undeniably created by human hands belonging to those of a metaphysical bent.

In this regard, the legendary Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986) provides a reliable anchor. He was not a commercial filmmaker but an artist who saw cinema as a space for artistic exploration. A filmmaker who not only pursued a distinct vision but also articulated it with clarity. In his seminal work “Sculpting in Time” (1984), Tarkovsky laid out his guiding principle: film as a medium of contemplation, not distraction.

While Hollywood, even then, sought to “grip” audiences through fast cuts, rapid pacing, and commercially safe narratives, Tarkovsky was after something else—something greater. A cinema that does not merely captivate but transforms the viewer—and time, for Tarkovksy, would play a significant role.

Art Versus Commerce

Tarkovsky saw cinema as a medium capable of shaping time—hence the title of his book. He resisted conventional storytelling in favor of poetic perception. Tarkovsky rejected Hollywood's modus operandi, crafting a cinema which was more akin to philosophical inquiry.

Tarkovsky’s Critique of Hollywood

Tarkovsky was openly skeptical of Hollywood’s commodification of cinema. In “Sculpting in Time”, he criticised Western entertainment: “If you try to satisfy the audience by uncritically accepting its taste, it only means you have no respect for it—you simply want to take its money.” His films were not designed to entertain but to lead audiences toward a profound introspection about life, time, and existence.

One of the more ironic twists in cinema history is Hollywood’s adaptation of Solaris (1972) by Steven Soderbergh in 2002. Solaris is a philosophical science fiction film in which a space station orbits the mysterious planet Solaris whose seemingly intelligent ocean brings out its crew’s deepest memories and repressed emotions. The film explores the limits of human perception, questioning what is real and what is illusion. Tarkovsky’s version delved into metaphysical questions of human existence, while Soderbergh’s adaptation was more emotionally and psychologically driven. George Clooney, who played the lead, described the film as “a more intimate, relationship-focused perspective”. The Polish author Stanisław Lem (1921-2006), who published the novel in 1961, rejected both film adaptations.

What fascinated Lem the most—the role of the planet’s ocean as a non-humanoid intelligence—faded into the background, making way for George Clooney's face. While Tarkovsky also did not succeed in satisfying the author, he at least paid more attention to the ocean’s mystery.

Tarkovsky and the Soviet Ideological Landscape

Another compelling aspect of Tarkovsky’s career was his complex relationship with the Soviet Union. Officially, he was a Soviet filmmaker, producing films with state support. Yet thematically, his work often critiqued his benefactors. Stalker (1979), for example, can be interpreted as a meditation on a decaying system, where individuals seek spiritual salvation in an abandoned, dreamlike wasteland.

While Tarkovsky rarely made overt political statements, his humanist and metaphysical themes often clashed with Soviet artistic policies. The tension culminated in his eventual exile, after which he created Nostalghia (1983) and The Sacrifice (1986), which both explore themes of longing, sacrifice, and spiritual searching. Unlike many Soviet dissidents, however, Tarkovsky did not consider himself a political exile; rather, he saw himself as an artist beyond ideological constraints.

A Timeless Vision

Why is Tarkovsky still relevant today? That, of course, is a question every cinephile must answer individually. The experience of watching a Tarkovsky film is an unsettling one, as it upsets our very perception of the world. His work is then a confrontation—with our own dreams, nightmares, and the fundamental questions we ask ourselves about life.

Much of this is explored in “Sculpting in Time”, where Tarkovsky places his vision within a broad artistic context: European painting, literature, and, of course, the cinematic tradition he inherited. It is moving to read how pure and idealistic his artistic pursuit was—how uncompromisingly true: “I believe that no artist, striving to realise his own spiritual idea, has ever begun his work with the conviction that no one would ever engage with it.”

Tarkovsky, who saw himself as an artist working in cinema, held the opinion that: “For the true artist is always in service of immortality: he strives to make this world and the people in it eternal. But if he does not seek absolute truth, if he trades a universal goal for trivialities, he remains nothing more than a fleeting phenomenon.”

What is there to say about Hollywood—or contemporary European cinema—when these are measured against this criterion? Could it be that every year at the Academy Awards, we merely repeat the illusion that it is about “art”?

Statement

While Hollywood continues to produce increasingly formulaic films, it is worth exploring the works of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986) and philosophy of art, as expressed in his book “Sculpting in Time”. Not only does it offer the essential theoretical background for his films, but it also reveals the profound, metaphysical intent with which Tarkovsky approached filmmaking.

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