The Mirror (1974)

IF YOU LIKE THIS POEM, THIS MOVIE'S FOR YOU, OR YOU HAVE A BRAIN TUMOR

'A man has one body/so solitary/The soul is sick/of this solid sheath.../with eyes and ears the size of buttons.../and skin, a mass of scars,/a skeleton's robe' ... And on and on for 30 lines of VO commentary over cryptic visuals of obtuse behavior which relate not in any way I can see with the other dour, jumbled, drumming elements of this pastiche of words and pictures that have no meaning or connection.

This is not an entertaining film. Nor edifying or interesting. Other reviews have said, like it's a good thing, that audiences were churned and divided. Must be true. And frustrated and confused and wishing the jumble of meaningless scenes faded quickly.

I have other AT films, like Solaris and Stalker. Each much better than this whatever it is. The case cover says 'Extraordinarily Beautiful'; not so. Also it says 'Haunting masterpiece'; half-right, haunting it is, but not in a good way. Save your rubles for vodka. August 23, 2008

Don't Get Bogged Down with the Technical Issues, Just Watch It.

I know there are websites devoted to comparing different transfers of Tarkovsky's movies. The age-old Kino vs. R.U.S.C.I.C.O.. They both have their pluses and minuses. There is first, the difference in color. Kino (this edition) is more saturated, but the audio track has a tin-can reverb to it, delaying it almost to the point where the music doesn't match. And then there is the matter of translation.

I consider myself a huge fan of Andrei Tarkovski's work. I own both versions, and had to obtain it long before Amazon even carried it. (They are the same editions though). I am reminded of an old scratchy King Pleasure record I own. It's been played for so many years, you could hear every scratch, pop, and click on it. But it doesn't take away the least bit from the enjoyment. Why? Because IT IS THE QUALITY OF THE WORK THAT COUNTS, not the quality of the media.

I have seen this movie on the big screen at Lincoln Center in New York City recently, carefully restored with corrected translation. I came home and watched both my copies the next day to compare. In my opinion, as a non-Russian speaker (but a graduated English major), the minor discrepancies and lack of transfer DOES NOT outweigh the fantastic quality of film-making presented here.

Tarkovsky is one of the recent Russian film greats, and this movie is seen by many as the apex of his creativity. Last time I checked, film is more than mere images. It is audio, visual, script, angles, color combined to tell a story. You have Tarkovsky's father (the acclaimed Russian poet Arseny Tarkovsky) reciting his stately poems in his rich voice over long continuous shots detailing the director's childhood memory in the countryside, when his father went off to fight the war.

Created scenes intersect with historical footage to present a fugal magnum opus onscreen. Tarkovsky studied Arabic in the university, and he had a love of J.S. Bach's music (which is present here along with Purcell's works and Eduard Artemyev) which means he has an appreciation from Zakhrafa art and labyrinthian schemes. For those who may not be familiar with Bach's compositions, three or four melodies interweave with each other to create a *fugue*, which uses sound to play off each other in a device called counterpoint. Tarkovsky recreates this structure visually, where time is nonlinear, and each actor plays several characters, switching between present and past.

This is Tarkovsky's way of presenting our persona as a composite of all our experiences and memory.

Do yourself a favor. Don't wait for the right version. This movie is strong enough to pull through all the scratches, pops, hiss, clicks, and color discrepancies. May 11, 2008

KINO or RUSCICO?

This is a case where there can be no argument whatsoever: Ruscico's "Zerkalo" wins hands-down. The image is far superior, the audio is vastly superior (so clear that things can be heard whose existence would not even be suspected on the Kino disk), and the subtitles are more extensive and clearer.

Allow me to mention: The audio I refer to on Ruscico's disk is the original mono; the drastically-modified 5.1 mix is an abomnation. (It proves, however, that there are no such things as ghosts -- if there were, Andrei's would bedevil the guy that did the 5.1 remix till the end of his life.) From what I've read, not all editions of the Ruscico DVD include the mono track, so beware! On the subject of subtitles, I have to say that I far prefer Russian-written English subs to English-written English subs any day. The Russian-written subs may be ungrammatical and contain Russian idioms you may not catch, but they are far subtler and clearer (and usually more extensive) than any written by a native English-speaker.

An interesting additional tidbit on the Ruscico disk: Check the photo gallery to see how Andrei achieved the lovely wind effect at the end of the scene between Margareta Terekhova and Anatoly Solonitsyn.

Watching Ruscico's "Zerkalo" is like watching a different movie.
May 4, 2008

A mirror on memory

No other film conjures the landscapes of memory the same way, and no other is so unforgettable. To recount things like a fantastic cast or a riveting camera-work feels trivial--these are givens when dealing with Tarkovsky. The magic lies elsewhere. Tarkovsky called his film-making sculpting in time and this phrase suits The Mirror perfectly. The richness of its imagery is reminiscent of that other great sculptor in time--Marcel Proust. Watching The Mirror feels very different from reading Proust, but Tarkovsky has that unparalleled understanding of memory that Proust has in literature. The film is not surreal or strange or difficult to watch; to the contrary, it feels bewitchingly light and liquid. It does not look as a dream or a flashback, but memories never do--although they are often represented as such on the silver screen. And yet Tarkovsky's luxurious pacing and exquisite framing are also dream-like in their haunting beauty and power of absorption. In The Mirror, as in The Remembrance of Things Past, memories are not representations of reality; they are reality. Watching the film feels as if someone caught your memory in a mirror and reflected it back. What you see is at once both personal and social--a view into your innermost emotions as well as their historical fabric. Its realism lies not in the specific events it portrays but in the structure of feeling it captures. Every Tarkovsky film has left me somewhere between a shock and a trance, totally dumbfounded that a film can be like this, and none more than The Mirror. This is film as poetry. January 1, 2008

Poor DVD, distracting degraded experience

I found this KINO DVD to be very disappointing. The fullscreen format is a huge problem (I have to assume, never having seen Mirror in widescreen), as one the great joys with Tarkovsky is his mastery of widescreen. And the translation is very bothersome; I know no Russian, but it is obvious that a significant portion of the dialog is never translated. We have to assume the skipped portions are unimportant to the story, but what a distraction. This DVD takes what should be a 5 star experience for Tarkovsky fans, and turns it into 3 stars.

I am fairly new to Tarkovsky: I really love Stalker, one of my favorite movies of all time. Solyaris is very good, although a bit depressing for my tastes. Mirror I am more than willing to work with (and understanding it clearly requires work: other reviewers suggest doing some background reading combined with multiple viewings). But I will wait for a better (hopefully Criterion) DVD that gives Tarkovsky and Mirror their proper due. December 3, 2007

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