Anatoly Solonitsyn

Today is the 24th anniversary of the death of Anatoly Solonitsyn, Tarkovsky's favourite actor. He played the lead in Andrei Rublev, Dr Sartorius in Solaris, the country doctor in Mirror, and, perhaps best of all, the Writer in Stalker. Stalker has some bearing on what we're doing in Folie, in that it's one of the great films of the human face. For minutes on end, the camera simply watches the three actors be, rather than do. The ride into the Zone on the trolley car is perhaps the most celebrated example, where, for over three minutes of screen time, nothing happens, but at the same time, everything happens. A more extreme example is when the men reach the Room, and, after a lengthy squabble in the dirt - which sums up the plot of the whole film, come to think of it - they sit down in a puddle for well over four minutes, and the camera slowly pulls back to reveal that they're sitting on the threshold of the Room, which they are afraid to enter. It's one of the greatest things I've ever seen. So simple, but absolutely stunning to watch. And the last time we see Writer - and in fact the last time we see Anatoly Solonitsyn in a Tarkovsky film (he was too ill to play in Nostalgia) - he's having a contemplative smoke in the bar at the end of the film. Again, so much is conveyed by the simplest of means.

Another reason to cite Stalker is that I've been thinking for months about the look of Folie. I'd originally toyed with the idea of setting the film in increasingly bleak locations (like the world outside the Zone), but on a recent trip to the bank (appeasing the National Socialists) I walked through Weston's Grove Park. It was a warm, but overcast day, and the park seemed incredibly verdant: the grass was long, the trees heavy in leaf, and I thought of the verdant, intense quality of the Zone. It somehow felt right for the film. As we're now shooting in September - that's another story/post - we should still be OK when it comes to foliage. I had the feeling, walking through the park, that I was in the middle of mystery. It was all about me, in the rustle of the leaves, in the swaying of the grass in the wind.

On the subject of anniversaries, yesterday was the 24th anniversary of Fassbinder's death. June 1982 was evidently not a good month for films...