for my money, Tarkosvky is the most brilliant visual filmmaker ever. take any 10 minutes of this film, or The Mirror, or Stalker, and it'd rank as one of the best sequences that any other director has ever shot.

Rublev is perhaps the ultimate representation of his "man on a mission, lost in his own environment and time" theme (unless you're counting himself in The Mirror), although for long stretches the very titular character has little to do with unfolding events. he's not even grandly introduced throughout the start of the film, and you wonder a bit which one is Rublev until an hour in.

I normally loathe the suggestion that a film must be experienced twice -- especially one that is 3.5 hours to begin with -- but I'm anxious for a re-watch, with a better context of the events to start. even without that (and context seems the least of Tarkovsky's intentions anyway), there's so many great scenes: the jester, the gouging, Vladimir, the bell casting...just a mesmerizing work of art, one that has a lot to say about the process of its creation.