Watch Mirror For Free

Don't Believe the Hype

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

THE MIRROR is another art-house drama by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. I'm no fan of this guy, so I'll keep my thoughts brief. In terms of visuals, this film is very good, well thought out, with carefully constructed compositions and the like. Tarkovsky would make a good painter and his style reminded me a little of Herzog's HEART OF GLASS. As for the rest, it's typically long-winded, personal, boring, and familiar from the rest of his work. The characters are dull and the plot events strive for meaning but feel quite obtuse. The only part of this I found interesting from a historical perspective is the segment detailing Communist China.

This is such a great movie, it was a pleasure to watch. I haven't seen such beautiful pictures in any other movie. They just open up your imagination - delicate and touching, stunning harmony. Every frame of Tarkovsky is a work of art. He just shows how it's done. You have to see it if you are a movie fan but if you are a Russian - it is an obligation.

"Zerkalo" is, if it were "poetry" as most non-reading reviewers and critics seem to call it (I suppose that watching and talking about films doesn't draw the same intelligence that reading and writing poetry requires, so we're not working with the cream of the crop) -- very beautifully written poetry, but shallow. A ton of rhetoric -- the fire, the water, the mirrors, the bird, the burning house, the soft green/pink childhood scenes...) -- but it ultimately doesn't lead anywhere reflective. Tarkovsky tricks his audience into believing they have seen the memories of a man's life, and that something profound about their own conception of memory might come out of it. This is not the case, and what we get instead are well- composed scenes and maudlin snips of acting that amount to a pseudo-emotional scam.It is hailed for being "personal", but it is simply far too personal. It is a short film of 20 minutes extended almost half a dozen its natural length. It would function beautifully were it completely cut to its memorable scenes -- but as it stands, it is a dramatic failure that rests upon an excuse of being "Proustian". The difference is that Proust was a fantastic writer, and Tarkovsky only a good photographer by this point in his career. The film is an excuse to bring the memorable scenes to life. Tarkovsky could have cared less about the rest -- which is filler narrative.It might prove useful to myself and others interested in the visual art of film composition, but as an experience, it is scruffy around the edges and drunk.

Tarkovskii's Mirror is profoundly episodic in that it consists almost exclusively of dredged up memories, real or imagined, from the life of the central figure, Alexei. The structure is nonlinear, but the viewer never seems to get caught up on the slight confusion created by this. The only aspect that truly hinders understanding is the decision to have Terekhova play not only Alexie's wife but also his mother; one is always a little unsure of which time sequence the film is in. This uncertainty can only be intentional as it enhances the overall theme of the fallibility of human memory. The viewer, however, is oftentimes too distracted by Tarkovskii's beautiful sequences to mind having to untangle the nonlinear plot. The camera follows characters like an unseen eye, although occasionally veers off to focus on a seemingly-unrelated poetic image, like a vase that slowly falls off the edge of a table. The color cinematography saturates the world in a dreamlike palette, such as the early scene in which Alexei's mother sits on a fence in the Moscow countryside. When Tarkovskii switches abruptly to sepia and black and white tones, it's hardly noticeable, and is remarkably well done. Surrealist elements are interspersed, such as the scene in which Maria washes her hair as plaster falls all around her and water floods the house. These instances, combined with the occasional poem narrations, make the disjointed remembrances even more dreamlike. At the end of the film, it is still unclear what exactly the viewer has seen, and another viewing is necessary. The memorable scenes stick in one's head just as much as casual pans of the camera. Tarkovskii's Mirror is full of something, and it's just not clear yet what that something is.