The Mirror
by Andrei Tarkovsky
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Alla Demidova, Anatoli Solonitsyn, Ignat Daniltsev, Larisa Tarkovskaya, Margarita TerekhovaDirector: Andrei Tarkovsky
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: Russian (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: Academy Ratio, 1.33:1
Running Time: 106 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2000-04-10
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Kino Video
Movie Reviews of The Mirror
Movie Review: The Force of Memory
Summary: 4 Stars
'The Mirror' is Tarkovsky's autobiographical masterpiece about which there is both little and a lot to say. As all his work, seeing this movie is something one must experience as it is such a different kind of cinema as that of any other director. Not a movie for those with a short attention span one could argue that The Mirror is about the overwhelming power that memories can have on our lives. As stated the movie more or less is autobiographic as we see Tarkovsky's childhood years in the country, to which many Russians fled from WWII, brought there by his mother. His father, the famous Russian poet Arsenii Tarkovsky is not present, except through citations from his poetry by means of a voice over, while we look at beautiful Russian scenery or archive images of soldiers walking through swamps. Apart from a visual feast the movie also offers an auditorial banquet not only of recited poems but also wonderful music, which plays a crucial part (as always in Tarkovsky's movies).
The story timeline of the movie at first viewing may prove to be somewhat confusing, as there is continuous interplay between past and present. In the present time of the movie the main character is a divorced man, obviously an intellectual, who both spiritually as well as emotionally is in a crisis. In this state he has a series of childhood recollections and the movie throws in an extra free of charge bit of 20th century Russian history into the mix. It is shown how he grew up in the country, how Spanish civil war survivors fled to Russia, how he was military trained in Leningrad as a boy during WWII and got to know his first love, how his mother lived in a printing shop under Stalin's censorship, Soviet-Chinese border tensions after the Chinese revolution etc.
Confusing in all this is that his mother in the flashbacks is played by the same actress as the main protagonist's current ex-wife, even though he says as much in a phonecall with his ex that when he has childhood recollections of his mother she always looks like his ex. The story itself is pretty simple, but it's complex through the way it is structured, especially the first time one sees the movie, but this is true for any Tarkovsky movie. Each movie should be watched at least three times to get any kind of understanding of what they are about, which however doesn't mean one can't immensely enjoy them first time around. What worked for me on first viewings was not over analyzing too much and simply let the movie take me along, the perfect acting, the beauty of the images, the musical splendor and magnificent poetry.
This was the first Tarkovsky movie I ever saw a long time ago and it changed the way I looked at art in general and cinema in particular.
It's my sincere wish to any Tarkovsky 'newbie' to have a similar wonderful experience.
The one star missing in my judgment is due to the rather bad visual quality of this release, which is quite a shame and, as a Russian friend assured me, quite bad translation. (Luckily Moskwood did a better job on both counts.)
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