This is a photo essay composed of twenty-six still shots from the film Andrei Rublev (1966). Though a great film with many interesting details, one scene appeals to me as the heart of the movie and, indeed, the heart of all life. Andrei approaches his spiritual elder brother Danila, both of them monastic ikon painters, after a quarrel they had between them over Andrei’s acceptance of an offer to leave the monastery and write ikons for a cathedral in Moscow. Andrei assumed Danila would come with, as they always did everything together. Danila was put off by not having been consulted, and stubbornly refused to go, and treated Andrei with pretended, but cruel, indifference. Why do I think this scene is the heart of the film and, yes, of all life? Because the bad work of a moment was reversed by the good grace of this moment. When we come together in self-defenseless repentance, abandoning all blame and fault finding in the other, that state of our soul, that repentance, is not just before our fellow man, but the state of our soul before God. No matter what we believe or don’t believe about the existence, goodness and love of God, about the redemption of the Christ, about life and death, judgment, and heaven or hell, when by grace we are so humbled before a brother, we are approaching God Himself with our hearts in our hands, the only way we can approach Him at all.
And He receives us, and everything we have ever lost through sin is restored. In that fellowship alone ‘we live, and move, and have our being.’ Yes, and that is the heart of all life.
2 comments:
An amazingly beautiful photo essay. Thank you for letting us see the world through your eyes. A true Lenten message, delivered through images like powerful personal icons portraying Christ-centered love, forgiveness, and affirmation.
Borrowing and slightly editing my own comment left on the previous post, I have a few favorite scenes in this film, but I'm now decided—This is my favorite, the scene where Andrei goes to confess and to be reconciled with his elder, Danila. My heart is especially torn as I see and hear him pleading, 'but I see with your eyes, hear with your ears, with your heart.' I know what kind of relationship that is. It is a supernatural bond of love and mutual fellowship that is very rare in this life. And when it must be interrupted, or broken, for any reason, it is the worst kind of sorrow. My heart follows their every move: sometimes I am Andrei, sometimes Danila. But this scene, and especially the interruption by Kirill, who comes to the door and looks into the room, has me transfixed.
Why? Are we ever to be ashamed for feeling such love for another? Yet at times, for someone to walk in on us in such a moment puts us on the defensive, and we ask ourselves, 'Which is real? What the world offers us, or this?
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