This chapter focuses on the traumatic events in the director’s childhood that continued to haunt him throughout his life. Tarkovsky scholars often point out the autobiographical nature of his cinema and, more specifically, how the divorce of his parents influenced his cinematic representation of marital relationships. According to Helena Goscilo, for example, Tarkovsky’s personal trauma of paternal abandonment provides a clue to the narrative structure of his films. For Tsymbal, however, it is the director’s strained relationship with his mother, viewed in the context of André Green’s theory of the dead mother complex, that defines much of his artistic impulse. This chapter also discusses what hardships Tarkovsky experienced during the wartime and how his father’s influence inadvertently helped him choose his future profession.
MOURNING IN THE DEAD MOTHER COMPLEX