Polish film director Krzysztof Zanussi believes Christianity is the future of human civilization.
“It seems to me that it is the future of humanity, as thanks to Christianity we experience a rise of civilization and culture. Technical and scientific achievements of modern humanity is in many respects a product of Christian civilization,”
he said in his interview with the NG-Religii paper.
According to him, such liberation of a person that is offered in Christianity
“where a person is God’s child, gives courage and many fresh innovations.”
“It gives courage to individual thinking. Thus, I believe that the future is in Christianity,”
Zanussi, who is also member of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said.
He confessed that he is keen on Russian Orthodoxy.
“I am interested in the history of Europe that originated from the Byzantine tradition. It seems to me that the modern world needs Orthodoxy: it is an important addition to worldviews. Western Europe has isolated itself and without this Eastern “lungs” it won’t be able to breathe fully, easily and freely,” the film director is convinced.
According to him, Orthodoxy helps him understand such things in the Gospels
“that are not so forcefully expressed in Catholicism.”
“The basis of holiness, the veneration of saints is much developed in Orthodoxy, both Greek and Russian. We, Catholics, also have a basis in holiness and Christian mysticism in the Western Europe, but in Orthodoxy it is more pronounced. It’s interesting to me,” Zanussi said.
ORTHODOXY ALMOST PERCEIVED
Spokesperson Director of Ancienttruthmedia.com writes:
The Catholic vision (universal and complete) of life demands an all encompassing conviction: We live because God is present! The collective image of this concept is never more alive then when experienced in the sacred space of an Orthodox Church simpply filled with beautiful “art”. Protestants often approach such questions with a grid of distain for tradition and suspicion of the seemingly esoteric nature of ancient Christian expression. They usually miss the great stories told in each church through its magnificent Icons. The heterodox will forever misunderstand Orthodoxy until this view is altered. We who without predudicial judgment attempt to enter hallowed space and ideas must still remember that Icons do present an idealized and graphically stimulating depiction of true stories. They also contain the theological underpinnings of all Christian theology. This imagery is designed to reveal the truth of God. Therefore iconography teaches as a Master trains a student. Icons are said to be “written” rather than painted or drawn … an important distinction. Zunussi’s brief mention in the article above suggests that he has encountered these spiritual realities in Russian Orthodoxy. Of course it may also be discovered among the Greeks, Serbians, Armenians, Ethiopians, Syrians, Egyptians and through numerous other ethnic and racial representations.
An artist filmmaker can sometimes see what eludes the casual observer. The polish Zanussi speaks of the Russian influence and so will I. Even an objective and creative filmmaker can only but capture a sparkling reflection of the spirit of truth. This spirit cannot be owned or contained. At best he, the maker of movies may imagine the inner truth of a story and then attempt to become a truthtelling storyteller. Unfortunately too many movie makers tell untrue stories that enslave the viewer in the falsity of a secularist and atheistic mindset. The fleshy flash of modern artists distorts the truth of beauty and cannot inspire or otherwise add positive benefit to the culture. Their bold attempts to show honesty, to share their conception of truth is arbitrary and capricious at best. The infection of sin drips profusely from the imagination of the unsanctified. There are other films that do the opposite. They educate and inspire even through the sober, sometimes violent imagery of the real world.
Polish director, Krzysztof Zanussi, a Roman Catholic is aware of the great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. IVAN’S CHILDHOOD, Tarkovsky’s 1962 debut feature is an evocative tale of a young boy’s journey through World War Two. Graphic scenes portraying his pain, confusion and fear are positioned against scenes of serene family life. One grieves to save the children from the future horrors of war after viewing this near epic. Even through the pain shown on film, one can see the beauty through and beyond the broken landscape. The George Clooney role in the remake of the Sci-Fi flick, SOLARIS may have added to the popularity of Andrei Tarkovsky in America but the movie fell far short of the genuis of its progenitor, in the original Russian version, and it did poorly at the box office. Even here, when a filmmaker Director is open to “feel and know”, he can only extract shadows of the uncreated light that forms the inner witness of Orthodoxy. Christianity, the heritage of “Mother Russia” has been a force in Russian cultural life for more than 1000 years. Its literary tradition is replete with references for and against the Christianity that permeates and animates its citizens. Poetic writers and filmmakers like Tarkovsky simply ooze with its passion and pathos. The superlative visual masterpiece of the Tarkovsky film portfolio is certainly – ANDREI RUBLEV – The Passion According To Andrei, released in 1966. You must experience this movie from a certain spiritual anticipatory frame of reference to understand it. I recommend that one suspends normal film going judgments and settles into the film. After watching it twice I began to know its truth. It is a story about todays existing world as depicted through the medieval period and the life and social sysytems at the time of the great Russian monk Iconographer lived. A sweeping epic filled with rich images of religion with political overtones of the late Stalinest age filtering through. It was filmes just a couple years after the agonizing confrontation beween Kruschev and Kennedy in 1962 over the Soviet buildup of nuclear weapons into Cuba. The people survived the terrors of the ancient ages and will survive today in the vision of the beautiful. That is the message of Christ to our troubled world.
Christ lives and He breathes through good storytelling. The Russians know this.