Nikolai Burlyaev:
“If you work in tune with God’s providence, your bell gets cast… and it will ring”

Suzdal. Many of the places where The Bell, the novella in Andrei Rublev, was filmed are hard to reach — some overgrown with grass, others built over. Nikolai Petrovich Burlyaev, People’s Artist of Russia, who played the young bell maker Boriska for Tarkovsky, finds them unerringly.

The actor and director talks about what drew him to the role, about working with Tarkovsky and his relationship with the film crew — and, finally, about how the birth of a bell was portrayed in the film. Nikolai Petrovich told the story behind The Bell during the filming of The Bells of Rus, a series by the Social Investments Agency made with the support of the Presidential Foundation for Cultural Initiatives.

— Why did you need the role of Boriska in particular, rather than Foma, the role Andrei Tarkovsky had in mind for you?

— After Ivan’s Childhood, Andrei forgot about me. I suffered over it. And suddenly I got a call from Mosfilm: “Andrei Arsenievich has written a part for you in the script.” I was literally trembling. I read the script — the part of Foma, Andrei Rublev’s pupil. I see that he’s some kind of shadow trailing after Rublev, with no lines at all — what is there to play? I was despondent… I read on to the end, to The Bell. And I plunged as if into an abyss: I saw myself as Boriska…

— Was it easy to persuade the director to give you the part?

— First there was a screen test for Foma. Gritting my teeth, I played it, but I asked: “Andrei, please, test me for Boriska.” He flatly refused. “No,” he said, “you’re still too young for this role.” I tried every which way; I begged cinematographer Vadim Yusov, and through Savva Yamshchikov, the film’s consultant, I pleaded: “Please, talk to Andrei.” They both talked to him; Tarkovsky turned Yusov down. But Savva was crafty about it. He later told me that he went up to Andrei and said: “Let’s bet a case of champagne that you’ll cast Kolya as Boriska. No one will play it better.” Tarkovsky said: “No, no, no. Kolya’s still too young; he’s already got a big head after Ivan’s Childhood; he’s too young.” They bet a case of champagne, and the bet had to be settled. They did a screen test and… Savva managed to convince Tarkovsky that this was my role.

— How did you manage to convey Boriska’s constant sense of tension, his fear that the bell would not come out?

— First of all, I had worked with Tarkovsky since I was 14 and understood intuitively that he was a genius. And when filming on Andrei Rublev began, I was also playing another role in a different film at the same time. I kept leaving the Andrei Rublev shoot to film on the Black Sea. Here it was Suzdal — mud, cold, coarse homespun shirts — and there it was warm, the sea. And Andrei was very unhappy that I was doing something else on the side. He told his assistant to tell me every morning that Andrei Arsenievich was unhappy with me — that he supposedly wanted to take me off the part. Andrei himself later wrote that he had chosen this method of working with me. I was tense the whole time; I was afraid he would remove me from the role.

— Were you friends with the creative team?

— Above all, let me tell you about Anatoly Solonitsyn. We became friends. At first Smoktunovsky was considered for the role of Rublev, but he was busy; then there was Slava Lyubshin. That didn’t work out either. Suddenly I come to the screen tests and see: someone balding putting on a homespun shirt. I ask: “Who’s that?” They answer: “Anatoly Solonitsyn.” I think: well, it’s pure folly to cast him in this role. He’s all stiff, withdrawn, shy. But it turned out that Anatoly was very close to Andrei in his personality. He was very tense. He was always full of self-doubt, and so was I, and we were drawn to each other. When Anatoly came here to Suzdal, every morning he went to the bookshop, bought Akhmatova, Pasternak and Tsvetaeva and brought it all to the set. He was an amazingly deep person.

— And what was your relationship with Vadim Yusov like?

— He was, you might say, one of the most important people in the crew. When Yusov said “let’s begin”, that’s when everything began. Whoever Yusov worked with — Bondarchuk or Tarkovsky — he always listened to the director. He tried to understand what the director wanted and tried to deliver it. Later, when we worked together, he suddenly began addressing me formally. Yusov kept learning until the end of his life; he would bring along albums on film technology and suggest new solutions. He’d say: let’s go to Nikita Mikhalkov — he’s shooting on such-and-such equipment now, let’s shoot on that. He was cinematographer number one.

— You teach a directing course at VGIK. Are your students in any way different from your generation? If so, how?

— It’s the Andrei Tarkovsky course in auteur directing. This is a new generation raised in a market system. You have to “retune” them and instill in them that cinema is not at all a thirst for success or fame. It is a thorny path, the way of the cross to Golgotha. People ask me: “Why are you doing this, where are you leading them?” I answer that directing is asceticism.

— Do they have a chance to create something in our time, in our conditions, for today’s audience?

— I warn them: getting onto my course is both a blessing for them and something fateful. You may not be allowed to work afterwards. And if you make even one film, that’s already happiness; it may be your last. But the main thing is to make at least one film and “sing your song”, the song of your soul.

Do they have a future? I think they do. My students have arrived at a good time. Although the laws of market cinema, which I do not accept, still apply, there is a chance that we will reorient the state leadership’s attitude to culture and take culture out of the market. And then a young director won’t have to wait for success on the opening weekend.