review for Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky on AllMovie

As the title suggests, this 1988 documentary offers a rare glimpse of the legendary Soviet filmmaker at work. Andrei Tarkovsky made only seven films in his brief, but brilliant, career; Michal Leszczylowski's respectful movie chronicles him at work on his last film, The Sacrifice. Offering insight into Tarkovsky's working methods and transcendental aesthetics, the movie is a compelling account of the difficulties of film production. In the case of an uncompromising and visionary filmmaker like Tarkovsky, the practical problems of filmmaking are only magnified, as cast and crew struggle to realize the ambitious concepts in Tarkovsky's mind. Fittingly, the documentary's showpiece focuses on the filming of The Sacrifice's pièce de résistance, the climactic, six-minute-long shot of a house going up in flames. Botched the first time, the set piece was attempted again just days later, after the producers rebuilt the house that had been burned down following the stubborn Tarkovsky's threat to abandon the film if he couldn't get his shot. Leszczylowski intersperses the footage of Tarkovsky at work with snippets of interviews and excerpts from Tarkovsky's own writings (read by narrator Brian Cox). Although it narrows its focus to only one Tarkovsky movie, Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky nonetheless offers a perceptive study of one of the 20th century's greatest artists.