I promise that this will be the last time that I mention this, but this past week has made me a bit nostalgic, eager to look back on what my life has meant to me. As I was searching for a movie to watch this past Tuesday, I found myself as I usually did on The Criterion Channel, rummaging through movies that I had saved to my ‘Watch Later’ list. The list goes deep, having plenty of Harold Lloyd movies that I never watched after one impulsive night of me being like “Oh yeah, I’ll watch Billy Blazes, Esq. (1919) one day.” I even looked at their recent Czechoslovak New Wave collection and thought “Oh yeah, I wanted to watch that, too.”
Then I found one that I had placed in the collection near the beginning. There had to have been a special on Andrei Tarkovsky movies because I had a handful listed there. On this particular night, there was something alluring about popping one of his films on and getting lost in the rich cinematography, a story that evolved with time and made you see the world differently. I had seen Stalker (1979) the year before and was even more blown away. It’s one of the fastest three-hour movies I had ever seen, and the way that Tarkovsky used cinematography in that felt even more revolutionary than the movie that I selected tonight.
The Mirror (1975) is my second entry into this giant of Russian cinema. Going in I only really knew of this one film essay that I had watched on YouTube of this shot early on in the film. If you’re a fan of practical effects, then I’m sure you’ll appreciate what Tarkovsky achieves with this single take.
The camera begins in a recently vacated room. It’s lingering on a table where a cup is sliding towards the edge of a table. As it begins to leave the room, the sound of something crackling draws the listener into this curious sensation. What could it be? It sounds like rain at times, but you can’t be sure. As it lingers long enough, we see from the porch a group looking out at this barn atop a hill that’s on fire.
It’s a radiant shot and one that dazzles the mind. Before I knew a Tarkovsky movie, I knew that scene. When watching The Mirror, I forgot that it was in this movie, so the context suddenly felt new. I understood why the subtle details of trick photography were considered mind-blowing, as this film is full of small moments that radiate the cinematography with purposeful ideas that linger with us. There is another moment that is nothing more than sheets blowing in the wind, and it may be among the most beautiful things I have seen. How was I staring at nature, a story in stasis, and finding the meditative moments so fulfilling? Was something spiritual going on? Did I mistakenly put on an Ingmar Bergman movie halfway through?
That’s the thing about Tarkovsky that I’ve only begun to realize. Whereas I’ve seen a few masterpieces in the past few months, I feel like I’m on another level when I step into his world. He’s trying to make something more ambitious, more interesting every time he gets behind a camera. You wouldn’t think that he could make a forest full of trees into something symbolic of fragmented memory, but he does it so ingeniously and gradually that you’re left wanting to applaud, realizing that he has an eye for natural symbolism that your average filmmaker doesn’t have. There is no wasted space in this film. If he has a field of overgrown weeds, he finds a way to make it work. Everything is crucial to the story.
With that said, the story of The Mirror itself is one of those great unraveling creations that will grab you, even if it’s not entirely clear why things are presented in such an off-kilter way. All these decades later, it’s considered an enigmatic achievement whose answer isn’t fully clear. Much like my recent experience with Nights of Cabiria (1957), I find myself getting to the end of the film feeling like I understood the story, but if forced to give clear reasoning for everything that Tarkovsky said, I would be at a loss. As it stands, I was a bit confused at times where the story was even going.
The Mirror is a story about a man looking back on his life as he exists on death’s doorstep. There are three concurrent timelines exploring various aspects of Russian life that include “archival footage” full of familiar scratches, the most impersonal and voiced-over detail about the story. There’ another in color that is more in contrast with black-and-white, capturing different eras of this man’s life. The narrator, Arseny Tarkovsky, only exists as this cryptic poem that he speaks throughout the story, finding ways to make it all connect on this deeper symbolic level. It’s a story where a few verses will be spoken before being expanded upon by visuals, reflecting an art style that’s not unlike Terrence Malick, though with a more purposeful exploration of visual styles to convey the story.
To read about the film as being “political” and a “loss of innocence” is something that makes sense in hindsight, though I was more captivated with the how of this story. How it presented its story is a meticulous creation, finding ways to convey its subject with a free-form association where art and humanity have equal responsibility for where the next scene lands.
For instance, there is a scene where somebody off-camera is flipping through a book. There is no explanation yet, but we watch them flip through the pages, landing on these portraits of royal figures. The journey is slow and meandering, but you’re curious about what answers we’re looking for. After crossing three or four portraits, we land on one that draws forth a memory that breaks us to a flashback, of looking through books. The conversation seems menial, but holds its own form of answers. Once again we don’t know why we’re there until the moment clicks. The Mother (Maria Vishnyakova) asks the son to withdraw a book that opens up to the picture that we had initially been exploring.
It kind of makes sense, though it’s not clear what these are all supposed to be connected to. From what I’ve read, there are studies of Russian history and Tarkovsky’s personal experiences that inform scenes such as a young boy’s military training, or a moment when The Mother desires to have a girl and gets stuck with a boy. Is that why he becomes an arsonist, seeking attention because he has no other way of expressing himself? Tarkovsky doesn’t care to give deliberate answers, just ones that exist as these lingering images, asking us to interpret what we think they mean.
While there have been a few excellent depictions of memory, I don’t know that anyone’s ready for how Tarkovsky uses it. He supposedly had 33 versions of this film before settling on the final one. It’s clear that he was playing with form, finding ways to make every transition feel purposeful, allowing the “A-ha!” to strike the hardest. It often comes in the quietest moments, where it felt like nobody was paying attention. Things feel the most personal because there has to be a reason that this, of all things, is being remembered. It’s a mystery wrapped up in a history lesson, showing how an association can allow for these repressed ideas to spring forth with brilliant detail.
One of the more underrated aspects of the film is that sometimes we forget that it’s presented in a first-person point of view, meaning that there is a person walking through the scenes, being ignored in these conversations. It adds an underlying sadness to the beautiful symbolism, finding things like wandering through a room into something ominous. One of the few times that we see behind that P.O.V. is when the protagonist, Alexei (Filipp Yankovsky as a young boy), looks up at a mirror, appearing like a ghost out of nowhere. It’s a reflection of self that we’ve been looking for, but this isn’t the end. There’s still quite a ways to go.
Because of the ambiguity, the film exists in large part as a memory that is being held together in this abstract form. A moment cuts the second that something familiar shows up. Sometimes it jumps to the imagery of war, other times it’s The Mother working at a printing press. We’re not sure how we got here, but it doesn’t matter. It could be fabricated, but this gives us perspective as to how this man sees the world. It’s trying to be sympathetic, coping with something that’s absent in his life. Why are we so eager to hear this woman talk about the gender of her child, or why they need to serve in the military?
It’s times like this that I wish I knew more about Russian history because I believe it might have given some clarity to an even more invisible subtext. Without knowing what these scenes of children wandering around with mirrors in the archival footage, I am left to assume that there are some ties to war, some form of attack, and oppression that I have never studied. I recognize it as a moment of holding onto something pure and honest as death is about to linger over this moment. The child cannot be innocent because they have seen humanity at their worst, and it may inform why Alexei thinks so little of his parents.
That is what’s amazing about The Mirror. Even as we’re taking everything in, it’s using the power of filmmaking to engage with the viewer and hold a more meaningful conversation. What are we doing to children on a psychological level, to make them stand frigid as they look towards the future with nothing but a negative outlook on life? The film opens with a hypnotherapist asking a man to relax and forget his troubles so that his hands won’t tense up. It’s the summary of the film perfectly, asking repression to disappear so that the acceptance can begin to occur. Sure there is pain along the way, but maybe it can explain why Alexei’s not happy.
Everything about this film is insightful to the human experience, and one that has been considered unwelcoming for good reason. If you want a conventional narrative, this is a far cry from that. If you want a story that is formed by the strand of ideas clicking in a sporadic, often spiritual and emotional, way then The Mirror has something fulfilling. I think to witness the magic is to have a visual depiction of how we think, where there is no linear structure to our answer. Sometimes it’s buried in the menial, and we have to wait through it and find answers. Even the “pointless” moments here have something meaningful to say about Alexei, and probably about the Russian identity during World War II as well. Again, I’m not a historian so I don’t entirely know.
Even if I will plead ignorance and admit that this film is a bit confusing and sometimes loses me, it’s still a powerful experience. If the story doesn’t win you over, I guarantee that you’ll find a few magnificent sequences in this film that show Tarkovsky’s ability to create dazzling imagery out of vacant rooms, corroded fields, or even a conventional exterior shot. Somewhere out there is an answer to a question. He makes you think about every frame in such a way that it’s already forming memories on top of ones he wants you to be exploring already.
I’m aware that he has a film called Nostalgia (1983) that might have been more symbolic of what I wanted to achieve with my viewing. However, the idea of looking into someone’s mind to better understand what makes up an identity is a perfect substitute, and I’m glad to have been in the hands of a master, who I’m pretty sure is one of the greatest people to ever shoot with a camera. He gives a really challenging perspective and makes us see the world and ourselves in more meaningful ways. Everything in The Mirror matters and I wish I had more than Stalker to compare it to. It’s clear that I’ll only fall more in love with Tarkovsky as I continue down this path. I just have to remember to do it.
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