Can only white people like this film?

Some guy takes off in a hot air balloon as a bunch of people are coming up to him in boats. Are they after him? He floats for a while, then he floats over some boats (are they the same boats?), and then crashes. End of scene. Does he die? Who is he? Then 3 guys are leaving somewhere; they are painters (you find out later they are also monks). They stop at a stable full of unfunny jesters to escape from a storm. Some guys come and take one of the jesters away and bash his head into a tree. Then they smash his balalaika. Why? Who are they?

Then a church painter asks one of the monks to be his assistant. The monk says only if he comes to the monastery and asks him in front of Andrej Rublev (a famous painter). Why? The church painter sends someone else to the monastery to ask Andrej Rublev to be his assistant instead. Why? This pisses the monk off and he disses everyone in the monastery, then takes off. His dog follows him, so he beats it to death with a stick. Why?

Then a monk and his assistant are wondering in the woods and they come across some old guy who has ants crawling up his legs. He slaps the assistant. Why? Then some people are in the woods and some guys ride up on horses and gouge their eyes out. Who are these people? Then Andrej is very upset and smears something on a wall. It is after the people have had their eyes gouged out, so is it blood? (This is a b & w movie.) It looks chunky on his fingers. Paint? (He is supposed to be painting the wall.) The some woman comes along and touches the stuff on the wall and smells it a few times, then starts crying, then smears it around with her hands. Who is she?

More disjointed, slow-moving, confusing scenes such as these and no character development. I didn't watch the second tape (yes, there's 2 tapes of this stuff). I had to force myself to watch the first tape all the way through. It didn't even have beautiful cinematography. On the box it says dazzling, a masterpiece, beautiful, harrowing, mesmerizing, soaring, majestic, an adventure, hypnotic beauty, a wild epic... What? Sight and Sound calls it "one of the top 15 films of all time" I will never take their advice on anything.