The Issue of Happiness | Andrei Tarkovsky, 1984
Andrei Tarkovsky
Are you happy for having been born?
A. Tarkovsky: Happy is not the right word. This world is not a place where we can be happy. It wasn’t created for man’s happiness, though many believe this is the reason of our existence. I think we are here to fight, so that good and evil can clash within us, and good may prevail, thus enriching us spiritually.It’s difficult to say whether we are happy or not: it doesn’t depend on us… There are times when one regrets being born, but life also gives us surprising things that, alone, are worth living. The issue of happiness doesn’t exist for me: happiness as such doesn’t exist.
Andrei Tarkovsky and his mother Maria Ivanova Vishnyakova, 1935
Have you ever been very happy?
A. Tarkovsky: Only during my childhood, when I lived with my mother in that village
on the river. I remember it as a very happy time.I was still a child; in contact with nature.
We lived in a wood and I was very happy. I have never been as happy again.
Andrei Tarkovsky, A Poet in the Cinema, 1984
Documentary / Director: Donatella Baglivo
