Re-visiting Tarkovsky

I am re-visiting Tarkovsky after many years and I am reminded of the reasons I appreciated him as much as I did. He is not just an  artist, or just a cinematographer, or just a poet, or just a theologian. He is someone who is very concerned with the "big" questions regarding the human predicament and uses film to articulate his philosophical and spiritual musings. I am moved by his tender look at the human condition in all its expressions, and his attention to the quest for meaning, beauty, integrity, wholesomeness. 

To that effect, he challenges orthodox cinema by introducing his own rhythmic, poetic sculpting of time (against the logic of linear unfolding) which, he thinks, does greater justice to the complexity of conscious life and,by the same token, engages his audiences in a more constructive and involved way, so much so that they are " on a par with the artist in their perception of the film".