Mirror - See, Like A Child
Quick Thoughts: Mirror (Зеркало, 1975)
A film we have covered many times before.
I have seen Tarkovsky's Mirror more times than I know. I have watched it for the first time, impulsively, in parts, I have read before watching, read whilst watching, I have watched The Mirror without subtitles. I still have no real grip on what it means. Every time it begins again - every time those green vistas gleam and pull, so impossibly textured, grass and soft light like unfathomable meshes of some ethereal life speaking to the wind; every time that brown water shines, silk, solid, untouched, rippling and undulating placidly - I am lost and see the film like it is almost new, almost as if it were a recurring dream. I know not all of the references to history and art that this makes, and I see not the logic of Tarkovsky's montage. In feeling ever so helpless as always, I sensed that the only way in which this can be watched is with a child's unknowing eyes. For, if anything, Mirror means to explore something intangible and unknown. And such defines the symbolic quality of Tarkovsky's work here. Unlike Andrei Rublev, which contains symbolism of a sometimes accessible and semi-known quality, Mirror, so personal and so abstract, is unintelligibly symbolic. Images so clearly emerge from the archetypal region of the psyche, but are contrived for the screen, contorted through time, in such a way that they are anomalously affecting. More words could be uttered, but to what end? Mirror is poetic mastery, but like breath on a cold window, its meaning is at once evidence of life and of its disappearing.
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End Of The Week Shorts #92
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Forest Of The Gods - Hush
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A film we have covered many times before.
I have seen Tarkovsky's Mirror more times than I know. I have watched it for the first time, impulsively, in parts, I have read before watching, read whilst watching, I have watched The Mirror without subtitles. I still have no real grip on what it means. Every time it begins again - every time those green vistas gleam and pull, so impossibly textured, grass and soft light like unfathomable meshes of some ethereal life speaking to the wind; every time that brown water shines, silk, solid, untouched, rippling and undulating placidly - I am lost and see the film like it is almost new, almost as if it were a recurring dream. I know not all of the references to history and art that this makes, and I see not the logic of Tarkovsky's montage. In feeling ever so helpless as always, I sensed that the only way in which this can be watched is with a child's unknowing eyes. For, if anything, Mirror means to explore something intangible and unknown. And such defines the symbolic quality of Tarkovsky's work here. Unlike Andrei Rublev, which contains symbolism of a sometimes accessible and semi-known quality, Mirror, so personal and so abstract, is unintelligibly symbolic. Images so clearly emerge from the archetypal region of the psyche, but are contrived for the screen, contorted through time, in such a way that they are anomalously affecting. More words could be uttered, but to what end? Mirror is poetic mastery, but like breath on a cold window, its meaning is at once evidence of life and of its disappearing.
Previous post:
End Of The Week Shorts #92
Next post:
Forest Of The Gods - Hush
More from me:
amazon.com/author/danielslack
