Zerkalo (1975)

User Rating:

7.9/10   

Director:

Andrei Tarkovsky

Writers:

Aleksandr Misharin (writer)
Andrei Tarkovsky (writer)

Release Date:

April 1975 (Soviet Union)

Genre:

Biography | Drama | History | War

Plot:

A man in his forties is going to die and remembers his past. His childhood, his mother, the war, personal moments but things that also tell the story of all the Russian nation...

Plot Keywords:

Childhood | Flashback | Divorce | Russian History | Poetry

Cast

Margarita Terekhova	...	Natalya / Maroussia - the Mother
Oleg Yankovskiy	...	The Father
Filipp Yankovsky	...	Aleksei - 5-years-old
Ignat Daniltsev	...	Ignat / Aleksei - 12-year-old
Nikolai Grinko	...	Printery Director
Alla Demidova	...	Lisa
Yuri Nazarov	...	Military trainer
Anatoli Solonitsyn	...	Forensic doctor
Larisa Tarkovskaya	...	Nadezha - Mother of 12-y-o Alexei
Tamara Ogorodnikova	...	Nanny / Neighbour / Strange woman at the tea table
Yuri Sventisov	...	Yuri Zhary
Tamara Reshetnikova
Innokenti Smoktunovsky	...	Aleksei (voice)
Arseni Tarkovsky	...	Father (voice)
E. Del Bosque	...	A Spaniard

Also Known As:

Зеркало (Soviet Union: Russian title)
Sarke (Soviet Union: Georgian title)
The Mirror (USA)
White, White Day (English translation of working title)

Runtime:

108 min

Country:

Soviet Union

Language:

Russian | Spanish

Color:

Black and White | Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Iceland:L | Canada:G (Ontario) | Australia:M | Singapore:PG | Argentina:13 | Finland:K-12 | West Germany:12 | UK:U | Hong Kong:I

Company:

Mosfilm Unit 4

Trivia:

In the first scene involving a telephone call, the shot tracks past a poster for French adaptation of Andrey Rublyov (1966), another Andrei Tarkovsky film.

Goofs:

Boom mic visible: In the hypnotizing-scene at the beginning (second minute of the film), when the hypnotist is holding the hands of the boy, the whole shadow of the microphone is visible on the wall to the left for over a minute.

Quotes:

Father: It seems to make me return to the place, poignantly dear to my heart, where my grandfathers house used to be in which i was born 40 years ago right on the dinner table. Each time i try to enter it, something prevents me from doing that. I see this dream again and again...

Movie Connections:

Featured in Im Laboratorium des Doktor von Trier: Zurück zur Magie des Kinos (1998) (TV)

Soundtrack:

Johannes Passion - BWV 245

See it and die

We are talking visual poetry here. For almost the entire film, every square inch of screen is minutely painted. Ordinary criticism doesn't apply, there is no comparison between this and any other film.

So many scenes have you holding your breath in awe. The smallest movement of light is choreographed precisely. A shadow across someone's face, the wind in the trees - these are not simply images of those things, but the ungraspable nature of life, regret, beauty, memory. So much more lies beneath the surface, as we are shown a reflection in a mirror that momentarily purports to be reality, but need not necessarily be interpreted as such.

The film's magic derives from Tarkovsky's surefooted ability to succeed with a succession of intense, beautiful images. He cannot put a foot wrong. Discontinuity in the narrative give the appearance of complexity, but Tarkovksy would insist that the basic thrust of the narrative is simple. The film is immensely personal, and the disconnections only serve to involve the viewer more – we are allowed to fill in the gaps ourselves.

To appreciate all this you need an essential sympathy for nostalgia and memories, for the passing of life, and for regret. You need an appreciation of a silent room and what it previously held, and of nature. You will need a sense of living in a turbulent and dangerous world, where all beauty is transient and sad. You will need to understand how small moments in life can become the most precious.

The film is tragic because, like memories, it lingers. It shows us details beneath the surface and how they can affect us. It shows life in the context of death, nature, the times and places we have passed through. The camera ponders and paints all this in beautiful detail.

Of course, real life is never so rich nor so intense - only momentarily so. The film wants to distil as much of that precious beauty as possible in a number of disjointed moments, coloured through memory and imagination, from childhood through to the point of death.

Apply it to your own life. There is no more than this.