Legendary Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky’s fourth feature film, Mirror (1975), is his most personal—an elliptic non-linear dream reverie that roughly corresponds with three periods: childhood circa 1935-36, adolescence during WWII, and adulthood (presumably early 1970s).
In the opening scene, a boy turns on a TV and watches a black & white program in which a woman hypnotizes a teen and cures him of his stutter (like many sequences here, this will—at least on the surface—relate to nothing else in the film).
The central narrative (using the term very loosely) follows the reminiscences of a dying poet named Alexei, who recalls his boyhood impressions of his mother Maria (Margarita Terekhova) after his father has left. In one impressive set-piece, Maria fears that a manuscript galley may have an error and she races through the printing company where she works, running past the methodically operating presses before frantically paging through the proof—and finding no error. In an American film, this scene might signal type-A professional anxiety, but in Soviet Russia, it plays more like deep dread over possible state repercussions.
Alexei’s (Ignat Daniltsev) experience of military training at the age of 12 is dealt with briefly but memorably as a youngster’s errant grenade toss sends the gruff trainer to the ground, where his heart pounds so heavily that (in one of the movie’s moments of magical realism) the pulse visibly palpates the top of his head.
The scenes from Alexei’s adulthood mostly revolve around conflicts with his ex-wife, Natalia (also played by Terekhova), over custody of their 12-year-old son, Ignat (also played by Daniltsev). As might be expected, the dual roles of the actors lead to some confusion on the viewer’s part over who is who at any given time—a sense of disorientation that is only partially mitigated by shifts between scenes shot in black & white, sepia, and color, along with a generous sampling of archival footage from 20th-century Russian history.
Ultimately, Mirror is a film in which the parts are greater than the whole: it is never less than wonderfully cinematic (wind, fire, and rain are captured with exceptional elemental beauty) and is often fascinating in its utter unpredictability, but it is also quite cryptic and will surely alienate those accustomed to more traditional narratives.
Mirror is presented with a luminous 2K digital restoration and extras including Andrei A. Tarkovsky’s (son of the director) 2019 feature-length documentary Andrei Tarkovsky: A Cinema Prayer, Louise Milne and Seán Martin’s new documentary The Dream in the Mirror, the 2007 documentary Islands: Georgy Rerberg on the titular cinematographer, a new interview with composer Eduard Artemyev, archival interviews with Tarkovsky and screenwriter Alexander Misharin, and an 88-page booklet with an essay by critic Carmen Gray and the 1968 film proposal and literary script by Tarkovsky and Misharin that ultimately developed into Mirror. Recommended for fans of Tarkovsky and experimental cinema; optional for others.