Write music not so hard, hardest — to cross out extra notes Andrei Tarkovsky is one of my favorite directors, and Rating and the Violin is his first film, so sooner or later I had to watch it. It was his thesis and he filmed it as a student. Well, frankly, the philosophical motives that were, for example, in "Solaris" or "Stalker" here is not even close to visible. Frankly, Tarkovsky has not yet learned at all, but about everything in order.
Seven-year-old Sasha time for classes, and yard boys, as always, waiting for a little musician with their offensive games. But this time a young worker Sergey stands up for the boy - a new asphalt is laid next to the house.
After that, a friendship was formed between them. Sergey tells him about many things, how he was at the same age in the war, what is better than a cigarette or a cigarette, teaches the life of young Sasha, how to stand up for yourself, what is right, what is not, and Sasha plays the violin for it.
Generally speaking, Tarkovsky must be Tarkovsky at any age, young or old. After all, his first masterpiece “Ivan’s Childhood” he shot after only a year after “Roller and Violin”. But what progress is there? What is interesting is that here and there we are talking about children. But only if in “Ivan’s Childhood” a really strong drama was seen, then in this film only some lyrical and poetic motifs are felt. There is no basis for a really strong drama. A red thread runs through the film some naive motives. And Sasha’s joyful smile at what he saw as an “apple” destroying the house is just confirmation of that.
When viewing, it seems that Tarkovsky did not want to put absolutely no thought into this work. Even in that short film, "The Killers," the bartender's final phrase means a lot. But here the director seems to be so carried away with the creation of such an illusory image of Moscow, which would be more suitable for nastalgic ballads, that simply about some seriousness can not even be considered. Although initially everything seemed to start seriously, there was a social background, albeit banal, which is in every film about teenagers, but it is visible. You could see a really serious image, the opposing side, the image of the hero in the form of Sergei, and the actor playing Sasha at first looked very cool, but closer to the middle everything, just disappeared.
Created, of course, everything is very cool, but the production is very losing according to the script. Maybe because Konchalovsky was the co-author. I don’t know, he also wrote the script for Andrey Rublyov and the film came out great. What happened here is completely unclear. You don’t even see any hidden thought, not even a metaphor, which is inherent in all films of this outstanding director. You can see just a well polished film. The final episode of the film really touched me. He was so naive, but so soulful that I would add a whole point to the film for this airplane. Original