Mirror (1975)

As I completed watching Zerkalo, I was fulfilling a little promise I made myself last September at the Russian (formerly, Soviet) Cultural Centre. It was during the Tarkovsky Film Festival they organized in September 2005 just prior to the 75-day long Surya Festival. Mirror was the one film that was left out, and it may have been because they did not have a DVD of it... in any case. I promised myself that I would watch all Tarkovsky films and blog on them pretty soon. And today I am a bit closer to it (two more blogs remain).

Zerkalo is perhaps the film Tarkovsky treasured close to his heart. It is strongly autobiographical. All his films have the biography element in it, but in this film he has been very frank about it. Mirror is all about reinventing history through the erring recollections mingled with fantasies. It is just as it is in life.

The very first scene is indicative of what is in store: the suggestionist cures Yuri of his impairment, and Tarkovsky himself is a believer in miracles: the miraculous power of love to bridge impossible chasms wedged between human hearts. In the film, Tarkovsky also tells us that wedges between human souls are inevitable, and even essential.

And in the end, when the bird is released, so does the tormented, but liberated, soul rise from the ailing, sinning, son.