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Soviet Union · 1975
1h 47m
Director Andrei Tarkovsky
Starring Margarita Terekhova, Ignat Daniltsev, Larisa Tarkovskaya, Alla Demidova
Genre Drama, History
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A film largely informed by the life of its director Andrei Tarkovsky as the thoughts, emotions, and memories of the 40 year-old Alexei intertwine through different time periods, including pre-war (1930s), wartime, and post-war (1960s), characterized through his subjective experience of each. The closest cinema has ever come to poetry.
While there is barely a story to tie it all together, The Mirror finds connections in the longings of Alexei. He longs to understand his past, his land, his family, his inspirations and fears, and that’s what the movie is able to convey in its abstract but persuasive way.
The New Yorker by Anthony Lane
The smallest details (a stammering child, the wrinkle in the turned page of a book) stick like burrs, and we are left to wonder if any director has delved with more modesty and honesty into the heartbreak of the past.
The Irish Times by Donald Clarke
Mirror is much copied, but as the recent run of Terrence Malick films demonstrates, eschewing time and plot for flotsam and psyche is much harder than Tarkovsky makes it look.
The New York Times by Lawrence Van Gelder
Mr. Tarkovsky appears so absorbed in grappling with his own demons that universality suffers. [17 Aug 1983, p.C14]
CineVue by Maximilian Von Thun
Tarkovsky possessed a sensibility for, and mastery over, the cinematic form that few directors – before or after – have been able to match; a mastery evident in almost every sublime frame of Mirror.
Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington
Truly original and unique: genuine film poetry, full of spellbinding images and sequences. [20 Mar 1998, p.L]
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
A startling piece of film-making, floating free of the conventional demands of period and narrative.
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