Figures of Iurodstvo in Tarkovsky’s The Passion According to Andrei

Variations on the holy fool recur throughout the films of Andrei Tarkovsky but the figure of the iurodivyi is perhaps never more pervasive or critical to the task at hand than in his second feature-length film, The Passion According to Andrei . This article examines holy foolishness as an essential aspect of the artistic personality in Tarkovsky’s depiction of Andrei Rublev, Boriska, and Theophanes the Greek. In addition, Tarkovsky’s idiosyncratic narrative style, with its close similarities to Deleuze’s description of the time-image, exhibits similarly oppositional and provocative patterns. As this examination finds, the holy fool may also function as a figure for the overarching narrative as it strives, through various means, to push the viewer from complacent modes of thought and stimulate a more direct, less spatialized perception of time or duration

Art · Art history · Depiction · Literature · Narrative · Passion · Style (visual arts) · Balkans: History, Politics, Society · Byzantine Studies and History · Psychology · Visual Culture and Art Theory