Most of Andrei Rublev is filmed in black & white. Only the last scenes are in color. The transition from black and white to color is a marvelous thing to watch. I think I haven't seen another film that uses colors with such a startling effect (another Tarkovsky film is a competitor). The last scenes show the icons painted by Andrei Rublev, and last of all, The Trinity. The colors are so bright that they almost hurt the eyes. It's a stunning scene.
The film traces the story of the 15th century iconographer Andrei Rublev, who, in the film, is engaged for a project by an artist called Theophanus. He is to go to Moscow. He goes there with a younger apprentice, Foma. Along the way, we learn more about Andrei's outlook on art and what kind of man he is (but this is not a biography: this is more a film about ideas). Andrei and a few other men work in a church in Vladimir. Andrei has doubts about the projects. He is to paint pictures that have a certain function. He doesn't want to paint devils with smoke coming out of their ears. Tartars invade Vladimir. The place is in ruins. After saving a girl from being raped by a Tartar and killing a man, Andei takes a vow of silence and gives up painting. Things change, however, when a boy is hired to construct a church bell because he claims that his father told him the secret of the craft before he passed away.
Andrei Rublev is an enigmatic film. It's fairly easy to describe the major themes: the relation between religious art and craftsmanship, is one. The impact historical events (in this case: vulgar power politics and brutality) have on art is another. A third one is how the creation of art in the film is described in both secular, moral and religious terms. It is clear that the film provides images of art as a vocation that is maimed by compromise and political repression but also by moral corruption. But what it means to compromise does not have anything to do with the artist's absolute right to his work of art. Rather, the film revolves around what it means to have a pure or impure relation to art and crafts.
For all this, there is lots and lots I don't know what to think about. Does this film make any claims about the historical events that take place in the film? Is there any statement here about "the essence of Russia"? What, exactly, is it about the successful completion of the church bell building project that moves Andrei ("blind faith"?)?
Andrei Rublev features all of the things we associate with Tarkovsky: long takes, careful composition of frames, and, most of all, nature is evoked not as a background of and for events but rather as something that characters are a part of and interact with. I'm not sure if it goes for all of his film, but in Andrei Rublev, Tarkovsky's cinematographer uses movement of the camera in a very ingenious way (the initial scene with the air balloon, the invasion of the Tartars, some of the scenes within the Vladimir church).
In many ways, this is an unusually structured film. It consists of small vignettes that are not always obviously connected. Andrei himself is absent in many of them. For a great portion of the film, he is silent (because of his vow). Not even once do we see him paint.
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