One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich

Director: Chris Marker
Year Released: 2000
Rating: 3.0

Marker - one of the major film essayists alive - dissects the films of the great director Andrei Tarkovsky (whose last days on Earth - in a hospital battling cancer - were videotaped), discussing the significance of each picture, and highlighting parallels between them. Marker rehashes some of the material from editor Michal Leszczykowski's Directed By Andrei Tarkovsky (notably the staging of the last scene of The Sacrifice) - which is, in itself, a good documentary - but adds enough unique footage to completely distinguish itself from that behind-the-scenes movie. 'Intellectual' films that investigate the meaning of other cinematic works are pretty sparse these days, and Marker is a reliable theorist and critic.