Zerkalo (The Mirror) - My Review

This film by Andrei Tarkovsky is my favourite film of all time. I could watch it over and over again and never get bored with it, just like I can listen to my favourite music over and over again, and with every viewing something new is found. It is almost endlessly deep and powerful, a true work of film art like few others. Tarkovsky said “This is a film about you”. He made a film about everyone by making a film about himself and his own memories. It is deeply personal and simultaneously about each and every one of us.

The simplest complete explanation for this complex and many-layered film that I have ever seen is this one:

"It is about a man who had caused too much pain to the ones whom he loved and who loved him. Now he is dying and he is trying to ask them for forgiveness but he does not know how."

Whilst this is a reasonable description, it only skims the surface. Some have put it even more simply: this is a man’s dying thoughts flashing through his mind, disordered and seemingly random.

We get image after image, some apparently unrelated to the others. We get different episodes that initially don’t appear to be related but upon deeper inspection, are. In Tarkovsky’s own words: “every symbol, image, dialog, and sound was there because they belonged there”. These images and sounds accumulate in the mind as the film is watched and affect the viewer: you are stirred to emotion, even if you do not wish to be. He picks examples from his own memories and puts them together and the combined effect tells a universal tale that can have meaning for each of us, if we search for it. The poems we hear, for example, are those of his own father.

One of Tarkovsky’s recurring themes is the struggle to find meaning in life, both on a personal level and on a much wider scale. That is certainly present here as is memory, both individual and collective, and nostalgia.

David Lynch has been compared with Tarkovsky because of the dream-like nature of his films, and this is a reasonable comparison. Mirror is a sequence of dream-like images. Like a dream the images start, proceed and then end, just like the film does, but at the end we have been changed. Even if you have no inclination to concentrate on what is being shown to you, you can just sit back and watch, and appreciate the beauty of the images you are shown. The images have a beautiful simplicity and such texture that you feel as if you could reach out and touch them. Shot after shot is utterly, perfectly beautiful. Every tiny detail is under Tarkovsky’s careful control: the movement of grass in the wind, shadows, the minutiae of expression of the human face.

But there is one thing Tarkovsky could not control: You. Each of us brings to this amazing film our own memories, our own experiences and we use these to make meaning of the images from Tarkovsky’s past that we are shown. We use our own past to interpret his past, and I think this is the meaning of the title Mirror: we the viewers are reflected in the film.

This is not a conventional film and someone expecting a straight story will be disappointed. But, if you want a different cinematic experience, one that has the power to change lives, then this just might, might be the one you have been looking for. My words are deeply unsatisfactory as a description of this film, but I hope they have managed to convey why it is worthy of watching.

Cheers, Tom.