Summary
An aging poet remembers his life and the events which shaped Russia during it.
The Film
“The Mirror” is one of Tarkovsky’s most difficult films to understand and watch. Known for being a slow paced director who loves to feature long discussions or even monologues in his films he yet manages to outdo himself in “The Mirror” which features all of the same yet adds a narrative and editing concept that further discourages average viewers from accessing it.
“The Mirror” is more than a narrative exploration of semi-auto-biographical material. It is an attempt to recreate the experience of memory. In order to do this Tarkovsky eschews typical linear structure for an editing style that uses sense experiences, emotion, and poetry to link its scenes and thoughts. This makes it difficult at times to tell when certain things are happening but also creates a sort of haze that we end up watching the film through. This haze is not visual but mental. In some ways it is even hard to remember the film and its individual scenes and characters since they flow in and out of the film so effortlessly and continue to do so once the credits have rolled.
It is this quality, however, that gives this film its status amongst the greatest cinematic accomplishments in history. Tarkovsky sets out, not to make a great movie, but to create an experience unlike anything anyone has ever made before. He wants to recreate what you might find if you could crack open the head of man and read his memories. People may debate how well he succeeds but the fact that he attempts such a thing and has created such a moving piece of art is nearly undeniable.
Certain choices add to the confusion of a viewer of “The Mirror” such as having both the main character Aleksei’s mother and Natalya be played by the same woman because when Aleksei remembers his mother it is always “with your [Natalya’s] face.” A choice like that may seem strange but, in a way, Tarkovsky has stumbled into a recreation of the way that our memories can be reliable and unreliable at the same time.
Realizing this, it becomes apparent how singular the point of view of this film actually is. The things we see, discussions we are privy to, and the particularity of certain events are all impressions of a person which are mold-able and shift even as they are firm and able to be recalled.
The mystery of why we remember or latch on to certain memories and not others, or how we can misunderstand something for years, or how a thing can mean one thing in our childhood and another in our adulthood are all themes of this film that emerge as the camera lingers in a decidedly Tarkovskian manner. It isn’t through discussion of these concepts that the film explores these ideas, rather, it is we, the audience, that explore those ideas through the film.
As we do this, we, in effect, simulate what we all do with our own memories, grafting meaning and shaping the events of our lives to fit neatly into a point of view which, while being incredibly important to us, is entirely subjective, changing, and somehow true and fabricated at the same moment.
Seth, one of the other reviewers on this site, sometimes says, “I just wanted to spend a couple hours with these characters,” when referring to a movie he has particularly enjoyed. For this film, I find that it is not the characters I want to spend time with as much as my own thoughts. The number of times I rewound to a previous scene or paused the movie for a few minutes where many. Occasionally, this was because the nonlinear nature of the film lost me but more often than not it was because something in the film prompted a thought way to me which my brain ran down with the gusto of a small child.
This is the experience that I recommend to you. Watch “The Mirror” with an eye to yourself, your mind, your childhood, and your memory. Don’t view it with an attitude of “go on, entertain me.” Watch it to learn and explore yourself and how you and those around you see the world. Marvel at the unique qualities of each individual life of which you are merely one yet lose yourself in the ways that those experiences, thoughts and feelings are common to us all.
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