Cinematic Canvas: Visually Stunning Films

Andrei Rublev by Andrei Tarkovsky

Tarkovsky’s second feature film, Andrei Rublev is one of the films that nearly made me experience Stendhal syndrome. It is a strikingly poetic and beautiful film that is based on the life of the 15th century Russian painter, Andrei Rublev. The film is not just a biographical narrative but a profound commentary on art, spirituality, and human suffering, set against the backdrop of a medieval Russia marked by political turmoil and religious conflict. The cinematography, handled by Vadim Yusov, is consisted of one of the film's most defining and breath-taking features, with long, contemplative takes and a haunting use of light and shadow. The film is visually rich, with scenes often framed in ways that evoke both the monumental and the intimate, capturing the deep psychological and philosophical tensions of its characters. The absence of a conventional plot structure and its emphasis on visual storytelling make Andrei Rublev not just a biopic but an experience that invites to contemplate the nature of artistic creation.

Barry Lyndon by Stanley Kubrick

Barry Lyndon, directed by Stanley Kubrick, is widely regarded as one of the most visually stunning films ever made. Its cinematography, crafted by John Alcott, evokes the look and texture of the 18th century paintings, with each frame composed like oil canvas. After the 1971 film A Clockwork Orange, director worked on the biopic of Napoleon and read numerous biographies. But the project ultimately collapsed before production began. The critical and commercial failure of Waterloo and a large‑scale Napoleonic epic scared financiers like MGM and United Artists. Rather than walking away from his years of research, Kubrick repurposed much of it in Barry Lyndon. The film was shot using specially modified Zeiss lenses with an extremely fast aperture, originally developed for NASA, allowing the crew to film interior scenes lit solely by candles. The deliberate use of zooms, slow pacing, and symmetrical compositions further enhance its formal elegance and cold detachment, making Barry Lyndon a landmark in visual storytelling.

Mirror by Andrei Tarkovsky

Poetry as cinema. Another masterpiece by Andrei Tarkovsky, Mirror is the director’s fourth feature film and often regarded as one of his most personal and intimate works. The film is a fragmented exploration of memory and time, together with the life of a man and his reflections on the past, his family, and the political turmoil of 20th-century Russia. Tarkovsky, together with cinematographer Georgy Rerberg, uses a combination of long, meditative takes, intricate tracking shots, and natural light to create an atmosphere of transcendence and introspection. Mirror is, in essence, an essay on the nature of memory through poetry.