Zerkalo (The Mirror)
1974
Director: Andrey Tarkovsky
Starring: Margarita Terekhova, Ignat Daniltsev
Not for the faint of heart, Tarkovsky is undoubtedly among the greats of cinema. His work transcends traditional film narrative, and it is unlikely that there is a better example of this than in his The Mirror. Called by many a “film poem,” this is a rather apt description of a film that should never be spoken in the same breath as Hot Tub Time Machine.
IMDB informs me that the plot, nominal as it is, is about a 40 year old man who is about to die, reflecting on the memories and regrets of his life. The memories and regrets part I got; I did not realize while watching it that the man was about to die. Ah well; doesn’t really matter. What does matter is the sense of nostalgia and wistfulness that flows throughout the film. The film is composed of episodes, essentially, that are only linked by being different parts of the man’s life. There are stories of his young childhood in a cabin in the woods, of some of his military training when he was 12, of arguments with his mother when he is a man, of arguments with his ex-wife, and reminiscences of what his mother was like when she was young. What is interesting about all of these episodes is that none of them are what we would categorize as “life-changing.” He does not remember the day his son was born. He does not remember his wedding day. Rather, he remembers a party he had where a Spanish man re-enacted a great bull fight. He remembers the day that his mother, a young woman, panicked that she had mistakenly allowed a misprint to be printed in the evening newspaper. He remembers his father, mostly absent, helping his mother wash her hair in a basin. These are the episodes that speckle The Mirror; these tiny, seemingly insignificant moments that make life what it is. We have few “big days” in life; it is as if Tarkovsky is saying that the “regular days” are just as memorable, if not more so. They deserve to be preserved and remembered too.
