The Mirror - 1975

This film is considered to be an autobiography of Tarkovsky, including some of his childhood memories, as well as poems written by his father. While this is considered to be one of Tarkovsky's best pieces, as well as his most personal piece, we struggled follow along with the plot of this story. However, it was a relief to us that through our research we found there to be no apparent plot within this film. When discussing this film, Tarkovsky states:
"It is an autobiographical film. The things that happen are real things that happened to people close to me. That is true of all the episodes in the film. But why do people complain that they cannot understand it? The facts are so simple, they can be taken by everyone as similar to the experience of their own lives. But here we come up against something that is peculiar to cinema: the further a viewer is from the content of a film, the closer he is; what people are looking for in cinema is a continuation of their lives, not a repetition" (Tarkovsky, 1993, p. 367).

Ironically, we found it interesting that parts of this film were in color, because after viewing and researching "Ivan's Childhood", Tarkovsky was very adamant about using only black and white within his films. He stated, "On the screen colour imposes itself on you, whereas in real life that only happens at odd moments, so its not right for the audience to be constantly aware of colour" (Tarkovsky, 1993, p. 356). Maybe Tarkovsky was using color within this film to help his audience catch of glimpse the real life they were striving to capture within his autobiography.

By using his father's old films, and the distinction between black and white and color, we found these to be the most prominent visual tropes that stood out to us. A narrative pattern that worked for us within this film was the use of Tarkovsky's father's poetry, which tied the story together. Also, Tarkovsky used a sequence of "oneiric images" which are considered "dream-like images" within a film to exhibit dream-like states throughout a story. A scene where this can be found is seen in the images below.





Due to the challenges this film presents for viewers, many asked questions of Tarkovsky and why he director and filmed the movie in this way. Tarkovsky's responds with, "I should like to ask you all not to be so demanding, and not to think of 'Mirror' as a difficult film. It is no more than a straightforward, simple story. It doesn't have to be made anymore understandable" (Tarkovsky, 1993, p. 370).