'Mirror' dir. Andrey Tarkovsky, 1974
This was a strange film, not going to lie. But I did enjoy some of the poems in the "voice over". I'm not really sure where to start with it because I feel like there's something to "get at" but at the same time like it can't be fully "solved".
I think the title of 'Mirror' is there because there seem to kind of be two sets of people that re being talked about at the same time. There was some convoluted linearity to it for the first few scenes at least, excludng the one before the opening credits. there was a lot of emphasis placed on things like imagination and dreams, which is represented by the idea of going through a looking glass, similar to the Alice in Wonderland concept. At first I thought that the main voice over was speaking to his mother while going in and out of dreams about her where he sees her as his girlfriend or ex-wife or whatever she is, who she has a son with. At least, that's how I wanted to tie it together.
I thought it was weird how we never see the main person who does the "voice over". I thought maybe that could be explained because if he is the one dreaming for most, or all of the time, it could be the type of thing where you yourself are in the dream and we were percieving it all through his eyes.
I think we might have watched this today because of all the historical footage that was thrown in there in between the scenes witht he actors in them. They also alluded to the fact that it was "wartime", and in the scene when the "voice over" is talking to his mother, the year 1935 was mentioned and thats during the purges...which would explian why the menntioned father left and is no longer in the picture (light bulb moment right there, is what that was).
There were some things that showed up as motifs that I noticed mainly when they recurred right near the end, namely the rush of wind, the bird that landed on the kid and got caught (smashed?) but then was set free in the end, and the book with the religious images in it.
New idea. What if the main voce-over guy was dying and that was what he was thinking about? The end scene we did actually see him, I think, on his deathbed. His life was possibly 'flashing before his eyes', in a sporradic and non-linear fashion?
I'm not really sure, but those are my guesses. The guy in the first scene had been asking the girl about perception, what she thought about it, etc. Maybe it was just trying to show the complexity of a mind?
I'm curious to talk about it tomorrow and see.
I'm impressed! You picked up on a lot of things that I certainly didn't when I watched it for the first time (which for me was about ten years ago). We'll explain and go over some of these things in class tomorrow and fit together some of the pieces in the puzzle--though Tarkovsky insisted that the goal wasn't to "get" his movies (at least not in a rational sense). They're very much like poems--and in this case the film is a very personal poem and one that's heavily based on his own experiences and reminiscences.
ReplyDeleteThe narrator does indeed seem to be dying at the end--and to add to your idea that we're experiencing dreams and retrospective flashbacks is the fact that the music we hear out in the fields at the film's very conclusion is the *opening* chorus from Bach's *Passion according to St. John*. The fact that the film closes with an opening chorus suggests....well, I'll give you my thoughts on the film's end tomorrow in class!
I agree, you thought of a lot of stuff that I had no idea about or even had a clue about. I did notice that there was some linearity as well, but not to the same extent as you did.
ReplyDeleteIt's about as close in film as you can come, I think, to presenting a "stream-of-consciousness" narrative...we're following the thoughts, memories, dreams and daydreams of a dying narrator...
ReplyDeleteYou really followed real good thru the movie. I wanted to comment on your first paragraph. That you are right if we would have the essentials to understand the film we would have solved it.
ReplyDeleteIt definitely was a strange film, no doubt about it. I also thought it was peculiar how they never show the man doing the voice over. I like how you worded your first paragraph, "there is something to get at but it can't fully be solved." I feel the exact same way.
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