I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I liked this short film because of the reason that from the middle till the end, it is absolute perfection. The story is about a kid who is a music student and who befriends a Man who rides a Roller. The part worth concentrating is the developing of friendship between the two. PROS:The kid looked apt in his part. The way that he starts to take interest in the work of the man and which led to the development of their friendship is good. The story also ends properly. The introduction of some characters in the starting was also good. They helped in moving forward the film and made the base for the character of the kid.MESSAGE: "Friendship is a beautiful aspect of life."VERDICT: "A recommended watch."

this isn't his best one, but it's also his first. and since most of his tend to be around 160 minutes...you have to understand that within the 45 minutes of this thesis film project, there is a lot content. those images of a "brand new" building represent a building that was never realized: it was the image of Stalin's design to replace Christ the Savior of Russia (Church) with a Palace of Soviets. and don't worry, the Church was still destroyed. this movie is latent with such imagery...it is the bourgeois vs. the worker and the worker is glorified (images of the the destruction are magnificent, out of this world, and everyone stands around to see this holy act). it's interesting, because Tarkovsky is definitely a religious man; but in this movie, he seems to be saying that god is in the worker/work. this movie is also interesting to look at in comparison with his other pieces...instead of long shots to associate memory (and its imagination), Tarkovsky uses fragmented images and shots to show the immediate (as well as a more abstract memory- that of war, and still imagination)...and it still evokes the same feeling from the viewer: tension. he's really good at that.

I am not a Tarkovsky fan and I feel rather proud that I've not spent the boring hours needed to take in his whole oeuvre. But I like this little film for itself, without reference to his later works. To me, it is full of the sounds, sights, terrors and illuminations of the days of childhood. While on some political level, the little violinist's situation may be a metaphor for the artist in Soviet society who is both persecuted and envied, to me it simply expresses the reality of childhood bullying. The child's encounters with his violin teacher, with a little girl, with a roadway worker and with his mother are all realistic and plausible. I love the realism of the situation of a fatherless child striving for male bonding and constrained by the feminine and orderly influences in his life to renounce it. And I can also see the extremely well-crafted photography, lighting and composition, the interplay of rain and sunlight and the almost ethereal primary colours of the film as the basic components of a lonely seven-year-old's day as transcended by imagination and poetry. Anyone who has spent his childhood in a moderately ancient and relatively unpolluted urban landscape, who has been singled out from his peers because of a special talent or status and who has on occasion taken refuge in daydreams can identify with this film.

STEAMROLLER AND VIOLIN represents the conclusion of my long search to see every one of Andrei Tarkovsky's accessible films of his sparse catalogue. Does the movie hold up to all the other films that Tarkovsky has done? Well, not quite. Nevertheless, the film does highlight the use of several techniques typical of Russian film: split screens, montage, and experimentation of sound. It's also a foretaste of things to come, highlighting Tarkovsky's unique style starting with his first, full-length movie, IVAN'S CHILDHOOD. Overall, an interesting achievement.