Watched the video of the great great Tarkovsky film, Andrei Rublev, the story of an icon painter. Good follow-up to Byzantium show at the Met. Tarkovsky is a cross between Brecht & an Orthodox monk. The film is so Russian, so stringent, such a hymn to the salt of the earth, spiritual asceticism & faith, earthly suffering & fatalistic gloom, Dostoyevskian passionate sobornost (fellowship). You are not in Hollywood in this film, you are in 15th-century Rus.