Why I Love Movies, My Rating System, and Review of Andrei Rublev (1966)

March 4, 2023

Welcome back to the fifth blog. Today’s blog is about why I love film, my movie rating system, and a short review of Andrei Rublev (1966).

Film is the best form of art because it combines elements of picture, writing, and sound into one coherent medium. In part, I love movies for a similar reason I love stand up comedy; both are uniquely American forms of art. I fell in love with movies when I was in eighth grade. I went to an all boys boarding school for two years, eighth and ninth grade, ages 13, 14, and 15. It was an Episcopalian college-preparatory school called Christ School. It was located in the mountains near Asheville, North Carolina, a beautiful area worth visiting. These were difficult ages for me, for a variety of reasons, but in retrospect I can honestly say I loved my time there.

At the time, I thought I was the only person in the world who struggled to make friends. I’ve since realized that many (perhaps most) people struggle to make meaningful relationships. I craved deep connection, but found difficulty finding it. As a result, I spent a lot of time alone. I could have tried to be more outgoing, but I simply didn’t know how to do it. Often, I ended up taking the easier option, instead spending a lot of time alone in my dorm room. I remember thinking about my time at school like a prison sentence. I felt I was biding my time, just counting down the days until the next home-leave or long break from school. Time felt much slower back then. I would go to morning classes, have lunch, afternoon classes, sports practice, and then study hall at night. In our school, all the boys were required to sign up and attend a sports practice from 4-5:30 pm every weekday. Study hall was a time where we opened our dorm room doors and had quiet study time from 8-9:30pm each weekday. Lights out in the freshmen dorm was 10:30pm. The few blocks of free time during the day were my golden hours. As I write this, I can distinctly recall the feeling of joy I felt when I would walk back to my room, put my books and backpack down, and relax at my desk or in my bed. It was a few months into my first year away from home that I discovered movies.

I had so much to do in my free time. It was exciting to leave home at 13 and be on my own. I felt free from my parents and constraints at home. I was surrounded by boys my age. During this time I was subjected to all kinds of art and media that wasn’t allowed back at home. Friends and roommates I had over the years showed me different types of music, books, shows, anime, etc. One of the older guys had a collection of hundreds of dvds and he would let anyone borrow up to two at a time, as long as you brought it back within a day or two of borrowing them. To this day, I don’t know why he was so nice to us underclassmen, but it was from him that I watched hundreds of rated R movies I would have never been able to see back at home.

I loved all parts of the borrowing experience. I loved looking through stacks of dvds, flipping through binders of discs. I liked looking at the cover art. It was fun picking which movies to watch versus which ones to save for another time. We’d discuss which ones were good or bad, which ones had the most gore or best sex scenes. Underneath all this was some level of homesickness combined with hating being that age. It put me in a headspace where I would stay inside, keep to myself, and watch stuff as the hours went by. I felt like I had to do something to stave off the boredom until my next home-leave (of course about 3 days of being home made me miss being back at school, but you don’t think about that when you’re a teenager). For some reason, I watched Sin City like 30 times when I was in eighth grade. I loved how stylistic and different the film was. I loved the violence and badass lines from larger than life characters. I didn’t have enough money to buy the graphic novels until years later, but eventually I did and fell in love with graphic novels.

Here is a brief explanation of how I rate movies. I use an X out of 5 scale for my movie ratings, along with a broad “Yes, I liked it” or “No, I did not like it”. I can give good films a high score but say I personally did not like the movie (e.g. Get Out (2017) is a 4/5 film, but I did not like it). I don’t like using an x/10 scale because it seems like too wide of a margin to rate a film. I like having to simplify my own internal answer to x/5 broad categories. I never give x.5 out of 5, as my goal is to justify a clear feeling between each number on the x/5 scale. 1s and 2s are just awful or bad films, but occasionally I enjoy a 2/5 movie, recognizing it’s a bad film while being able to enjoy it for what it is. 3s are “just average” films that you typically watch once and find somewhat interesting. Even though most movies I watch land in this average category, I like that it’s closer to a perfect 5/5 than a 0/5 because I often remind myself I’m just glad to be simply watching a film at all because I love the art form. If I’m watching a movie, it likely means I'm at home or out with loved ones, etc. If I'm watching a movie, it means the world is alright. I’m not at work or in a hospital bed. There’s not a war going on near me. I can probably have popcorn or a drink, and I ought to consider myself lucky for these few moments in the dark to escape from the world for a while. Most good movies on my list are 4s, and then 5/5 is for those amazing films that I could watch over and over. I don’t have 0s on the list, but there have been movies where I shut off in the first 20 minutes because I have no interest. I do, however, like breaking my own rules for the exceptional “greatest films of all time” by assigning them a 6 out of 5 rating. I do this to exaggerate because I want to express how I love them so much (examples off the top of my head would include: Pulp Fiction, Sin City, Fight Club, Mad Max: Fury Road).

Fast forwarding to the present day, I recently watched the second film directed by Tarchovsky, a movie called Andrei Rublev. The film is separated into parts, six periods of time in the life of a 15th century painter with a prologue and epilogue. There are themes of Orthodox Christianity, art, and war, all in the context of medieval Russia. Apparently Rublev is a famous Icon painter within the Orthodox Christian tradition. Being a caucasian American from non-Greek/Russian descent (though this may be incorrect as I recently learned the namesake of my ancestors who first came to America emigrated from Russia, though I believe we are of Jewish German descent), I know very little about this sect of Christianity. There was a scene where a group of people are running through the woods without clothes on “practicing witchcraft” and they find and torture Rublev. Like the previous Tarchovsky film, Ivan’s Childhood, this one was also a lengthy and slow black and white film. It was another great opportunity for me to put my phone in another room, sit on my couch, and get lost in the slowness of this film. Overall, I didn’t particularly enjoy the film, but it was fascinating because I know almost nothing about this part of the world at that period of time. Andrei Rublev helped me understand the distinction between Eastern and Western Europe. Russia seems philosophically oriented towards Western style of thinking, but only somewhat so. Their culture is not as influenced by Europe as I initially believed.

I felt the film was disjointed. The plot did not make sense to me. It felt like things were happening, but it was difficult for me to piece together the larger narrative. The setting was interesting, but the overall plot was not. I’d give it a 2 out of 5, and I did not like the film. Regardless, I look forward to the next Tarkovsky film: Solaris (1972).

-M