Mirror

Year of Release:  1975
Director:  Andrei Tarkovsky
Screenplay:  Aleksandr Misharin and Andrei Tarkovsky
Starring:  Margarita Terekhova, Ignat Daniltsev, Larisa Tarkovskaya, Alla Demidova, Anatoly Solonitsyn, Tamara Ogorodnikova, Arseny Tarkovsky
Running Time:  106 minutes
Genre:  autobiography, drama

If you are unfamiliar with the work of acclaimed Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky it's worth bearing in mind that he once said that no film that is any good should be "enjoyable".  Even by Tarkovsky's standards Mirror is inaccessible.  This largely plotless film blends autobiographical fragments, Russian history, dreams, nightmares and fantasies.  It features many Tarkovsy hallmarks such as long languorous takes, switches between colour, black-and-white and sepia,  images of nature, fire and water, and levitation.  Tarkovsky's father, Arseny Tarkovsky reads his own poetry in voice over, and the director's wife, Larissa Tarkovskaya, and mother, Maria Vihnyakova, appear.  It is not a film that can be understood in the way that a normal film can be, it's like a film poem.  If you give yourself over to it's unique spell you will be rewarded with beautiful imagery, that lingers for years after you've seen it.  In fact it is a film that it's hard not to feel affected by.  It's a demanding film, but worthwhile.  At least after it, you feel like you have had an experience.

  A look into Andrei Tarkovsky's Mirror