ARVO PÄRT: AND THEN CAME THE MORNING AND THE EVENING
dir. Dorian Supin, 1990
61 mins, Estonia, Finland
In German, Russian and Estonian with English subtitles.

In this curious portrait of the famed Estonian composer, documentarian Dorian Supin spins Arvo Pärt’s melancholy musings into a treatise bearing transcendental weight that shares more in common with the films of Andrei Tarkovsky than your average music documentary. As Pärt waxes poetic on everything from churches to peeling potatoes, intercut scenes of nature reveal the sublime power of his art: one that seduces the listener toward divine trance.

Shot during the turbulent Estonian Revolution, Supin also uses his documentary as a way for Pärt to impart his humanist philosophy before the camera. He does so begrudgingly, as though defeated. And when he can’t find the words to comment on the ills of the world, as well as his own sense of political ineffectuality, he lays his head on his piano and plays. From here spring the film’s most touching moments, with his compositions performing as both a palliative from politics and evidence to the conditions that inspire it.