Tarkovsky as most materialist and most spiritualist filmmaker
example · film: Tarkovsky ·
retold in 6 talks
Žižek uses Tarkovsky to illustrate the paradox of 20th-century finitude-based spiritualism: precisely because we are stuck in our bodies and environment, this gives existence an unfathomable abyss, the most materialist filmmaker is also the most spiritual.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 6
“who is the most materialist cinema maker… My choice would have been Andrei Tarkovsky… but he is also the most spiritualist”
“when heroes are praying they don't pray looking upwards, they pray by sometimes literally immersing their heads into mud”
“When heroes are praying, they don't pray looking upwards. They pray by sometimes literally immersing their heads into mud, close contact with earth.”16:28 Slavoj Zizek: Kant, Modernity and Anti-Semitism | Video Lecture Series (2/3)pub. 2020-02-02 · 20:50
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
contents · one story, 3 jobsuses
materialized spirituality
×3
purely formal materialism
×2
post-secular theology
×1
Its cast and sources
populated by
Andrei Tarkovsky6Leo Tolstoy2Thomas More1Nora Barnacle1Rider Haggard1René Magritte1Creston Davis1Jean-Michel Besnier1
alongside works
Every retelling 6
Žižek uses Tarkovsky to illustrate the paradox of 20th-century finitude-based spiritualism: precisely because we are stuck in our bodies and environment, this gives existence an unfathomable abyss, the most materialist filmmaker is also the most spiritual., illustrating post-secular theology,finitude and spiritualization,the reversal of materialism and spiritualism
In Tarkovsky's films, heroes praying immerse their heads in mud rather than looking upward, exemplifying a spiritualism that clings obsessively to the density and inertia of matter, which Žižek identifies as the true idealism today (opposed to his formal materialism)., illustrating purely formal materialism,spiritual materialism
16:28 Slavoj Zizek: Kant, Modernity and Anti-Semitism | Video Lecture Series (2/3)pub. 2020-02-02 · 20:50
Tarkovsky, the arch-spiritual director, is obsessed with the inertia and density of matter: his heroes pray by immersing their heads in mud rather than looking upward, illustrating today's idealism, which is the very clinging to dense, earthy matter that Žižek contrasts with formal materialism., illustrating spiritual materialism,formal materialism,materialism vs idealism
Žižek observes that Tarkovsky, perhaps the most spiritualist filmmaker, is also the most materialist: spiritual experiences are depicted through immersion in earth, mud, and water, not ascent to heaven. Used to illustrate the paradox of materialist spirituality., illustrating materialist spirituality,formalism vs. vulgar materialism
The most spiritually immersive scene in Tarkovsky is not a hero looking up to the sky but down at the earth, head in humid water or mud. Žižek uses this to show that today's spiritualists (not materialists) are obsessed with earthly, bodily finitude., illustrating inversion of materialism and idealism,bodily finitude as spiritual domain
Žižek quotes Tarkovsky's aphorism to argue that purely digital/disembodied communication is more spiritually deficient than naked bodily presence, affirming physical contact as the only real medium to the other., illustrating embodiment,sexuality and the pandemic,critique of digital intimacy