Mirror. (PG.)
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. 1975
Starring Margarita Terekhova, Ignat Daniltsev, Larisa Tarkovskya. Partly black and white. In Russian with subtitles. Out on Blu-ray and DVD from The Criterion Collection on 26th July. 107 mins.
A cinematic poet isn't really something to be. The movies disdain poetry – it's one of the things I love about them. The humble page may choose to indulge their poncey ponderings but the cinema is ruthless with them and will expose any chancer with highfaluting notions of the lyrical or poetic, no matter how small the budget. Many have tried, almost all have failed: a cinematic poet isn't really something to be because whatever you try, the films of Andrey Tarkovsky are going to dwarf you, and none of them will dwarf your efforts quite as much as Mirror (or sometimes The Mirror), a plotless, loosely autobiographical, free-flowing book of memories and dreams. It's a tiny epic, trying to encapsulate not just a person's whole life but also that of Russia itself in the middle part of the Twentieth century
If it has a plot it is that of a man looking back over his life. There's his mother sitting on the fence outside the farm. Here's her panicking at her printing press job that she might have made a spelling error. It is the closest the cinema has got to an equivalent of streamofconscious prose. The jumps in time, from colour to black and white, from realism to dream, filmed to newsreel are smooth and each scene seems to have some unconscious link to what preceded.
The accepted interpretation of Mirror is that it is the dying reminisce of a poet. Woody Allen had a comedy routine back in the 60s about being lynched by the Klu Klux Klan and just before being hung, another person's life flashes before his eyes. Watching Mirror is something like that. The life that is flashing before you is completely different from your own experience, but your connection with it is so intense, so emotional, you don't just see these memories, you feel them as if they were your own.
It is dreamlike in the way that it is completely unrealistic, yet utterly real. The key is in the colours that are naturalistic but like nothing you've seen before. Many directors can give you beautiful images. They'll sit around all day and wait for Magic Hour, just before sunset and shoot something that is undeniably beautiful but removed from existence – adverts for their own beauty. The images in a Tarkovsky film are equally pristine, yet also grubby and lived in. The red of his burning fire is so elemental, so distinct, so vivid, so just exactly like you remember it that, when the time comes, you may find it included in the showreel of your best bits flashing before your eyes. If you were to nitpick you could argue that some of the black and white dream imagery is a bit too Joy Division album cover.
Tarkovsky is never simple. Mirror is the most extreme of his films but possibly the easiest to embrace. In the films where he attempts a narrative, you are always trying to grasp exactly what is going on, what is deliberately ambiguous, and what you haven't understood. (The ones with stories also tend to be much longer.) Mirror is just pure emotion and free of the burden of comprehension you can open yourself up to experiencing it.
Extras.
There's no disgrace in admitting that Mirror is a film that you could use a little help with and the Criterion supplements really come through for you.
The Dream in the Mirror is a new 53 minutes documentary by Louise Milne and Sean Martin that features interviews with collaborators and academics and steers a useful balance between outlining the production of the film and explaining the autobiographical references. Personally, I was particularly grateful for the background of the newsreel footage that appears in the film.
A new interview with composer Eduard Artemyer explaining how on this and Solaris and Stalker, Tarkovsky basically had him originate the position of sound designer.
Islands: Georgy Rerberg is a 2007 documentary about the cinematographer who was a legend in the Soviet film industry both for his remarkable images and for being an unreliable pisshead. The section on Stalker, which he started filming but left after disputes with the director and after the initial footage came back from the lab out of focus, is particularly interesting and poignant.
There are also archival interviews with screenwriter Alexander Misharin and some brief interviews with the director at the time of its European release for French TV.
New English subtitles
An Essay by critic Carmen Gray.
Blu-ray only: a 1968 film proposal and script by Tarkovsky and Misharin that would become the basis for Mirror
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. 1975
Starring Margarita Terekhova, Ignat Daniltsev, Larisa Tarkovskya. Partly black and white. In Russian with subtitles. Out on Blu-ray and DVD from The Criterion Collection on 26th July. 107 mins.
A cinematic poet isn't really something to be. The movies disdain poetry – it's one of the things I love about them. The humble page may choose to indulge their poncey ponderings but the cinema is ruthless with them and will expose any chancer with highfaluting notions of the lyrical or poetic, no matter how small the budget. Many have tried, almost all have failed: a cinematic poet isn't really something to be because whatever you try, the films of Andrey Tarkovsky are going to dwarf you, and none of them will dwarf your efforts quite as much as Mirror (or sometimes The Mirror), a plotless, loosely autobiographical, free-flowing book of memories and dreams. It's a tiny epic, trying to encapsulate not just a person's whole life but also that of Russia itself in the middle part of the Twentieth century
If it has a plot it is that of a man looking back over his life. There's his mother sitting on the fence outside the farm. Here's her panicking at her printing press job that she might have made a spelling error. It is the closest the cinema has got to an equivalent of streamofconscious prose. The jumps in time, from colour to black and white, from realism to dream, filmed to newsreel are smooth and each scene seems to have some unconscious link to what preceded.
The accepted interpretation of Mirror is that it is the dying reminisce of a poet. Woody Allen had a comedy routine back in the 60s about being lynched by the Klu Klux Klan and just before being hung, another person's life flashes before his eyes. Watching Mirror is something like that. The life that is flashing before you is completely different from your own experience, but your connection with it is so intense, so emotional, you don't just see these memories, you feel them as if they were your own.
It is dreamlike in the way that it is completely unrealistic, yet utterly real. The key is in the colours that are naturalistic but like nothing you've seen before. Many directors can give you beautiful images. They'll sit around all day and wait for Magic Hour, just before sunset and shoot something that is undeniably beautiful but removed from existence – adverts for their own beauty. The images in a Tarkovsky film are equally pristine, yet also grubby and lived in. The red of his burning fire is so elemental, so distinct, so vivid, so just exactly like you remember it that, when the time comes, you may find it included in the showreel of your best bits flashing before your eyes. If you were to nitpick you could argue that some of the black and white dream imagery is a bit too Joy Division album cover.
Tarkovsky is never simple. Mirror is the most extreme of his films but possibly the easiest to embrace. In the films where he attempts a narrative, you are always trying to grasp exactly what is going on, what is deliberately ambiguous, and what you haven't understood. (The ones with stories also tend to be much longer.) Mirror is just pure emotion and free of the burden of comprehension you can open yourself up to experiencing it.
Extras.
There's no disgrace in admitting that Mirror is a film that you could use a little help with and the Criterion supplements really come through for you.
The Dream in the Mirror is a new 53 minutes documentary by Louise Milne and Sean Martin that features interviews with collaborators and academics and steers a useful balance between outlining the production of the film and explaining the autobiographical references. Personally, I was particularly grateful for the background of the newsreel footage that appears in the film.
A new interview with composer Eduard Artemyer explaining how on this and Solaris and Stalker, Tarkovsky basically had him originate the position of sound designer.
Islands: Georgy Rerberg is a 2007 documentary about the cinematographer who was a legend in the Soviet film industry both for his remarkable images and for being an unreliable pisshead. The section on Stalker, which he started filming but left after disputes with the director and after the initial footage came back from the lab out of focus, is particularly interesting and poignant.
There are also archival interviews with screenwriter Alexander Misharin and some brief interviews with the director at the time of its European release for French TV.
New English subtitles
An Essay by critic Carmen Gray.
Blu-ray only: a 1968 film proposal and script by Tarkovsky and Misharin that would become the basis for Mirror
