Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

SteinMo What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

Murphy Howard I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Ian (Flash Review)This film didn't connect with me. I went into it cold knowing nothing about the plot. I liked Stalker and this was another Tarkovsky film so I gave it a go. Significant portions of the story were told through poetic dialog that I can never fully connect with, which made it challenging to fully grasp the choppy and seemingly unrelated scenes. Scenes which were knitted together to portray a dying man as he reminisces through somber, emotional moments of his past. While some scenes were picturesque, they were less bold, striking or communicative compared with the captivating and cinematography from Stalker for example. I didn't get much from my first viewing. Many reviewers said after a second and third viewing, the film began to click more for them. Perhaps like a fine wine, it'll take a few impressions to get a full impression.

enginpoyrazz You can consider this article a movie review or a poetry analysis. This is more about how you consider Tarkovsky's art of cinema. Connoisseur of the poetic cinema, Mirror film of the Russian director Tarkovsky consists of memorable moments in his personal life and referral to persons, as mentioned in his book "Sealed Time".Mirror is a tale of nature, based on the immortality of motherhood, widowhood and the immortality of the mother's role.The sharp riddles attract the utmost attention in Mirror, like other Tarkovsky films. Since Tarkovsky uses his camera together with nature, this method that is also effectively used by Bergman, the film hits the audience that successfully. Each frame of the scenes in the Mirror film contains a natural event or a natural element, it is hard to ignore. The riddles of Tarkovsky reflect the old memories, which we recall on a sunny day, they reflect the memories floating in our minds when the raindrops fall from the roof and facing. It is like we follow the line that the bird leaves on the sky when we look through the window out of boredom. Surely, Tarkovsky films reflect the sum of the visual reflection of the human spirit at the actual size."I wanted to talk about my feelings about the people close to me, my relationships with them, my understanding that would never be consumed away, but at the same time about my sins and failures that I think I would never fix, rather than talking about myself, in Mirror." It is something different to read the story of the film from the Mirror director.In the film, black and white and colored scenes are intertwined. In terms of time, it is almost impossible to estimate the time zone in both scenes. In fact, the basic narration of the director is reflected by the moments and the fact that the moments are not disconnected. Man has an internal sequence independent from time. In fact, human lives continue to live the memories, as lively as the moments. So, a "moment" that is past, it will time wise continue to be "in the present", indeed still and in the future.Another feature of the Mirror is that the frames are widely used in other films of directors after Tarkovsky. For this reason, Mirror is a unique and rare work that has actually created a revolutionary line in the cinema. In connection with this information, for example, milk is also used extensively in the film. The "purity/clarity" attribution on milk has continued to be used in a wide range of filmmaking including Kieslowski and many successful directors.Some movies have unforgettable "scenes". In this film, the wind blowing on the bushes was a memorable scene. It also has a unique effect both in terms of visual and meaningful when the woman dressed in whites standing when she came out of the water and then the house's ceiling collapses, which mutually references to the inner world of the human kind and the woman suspended in midair on the bed.Mirror film is the film of Tarkovsky, which includes the least of the philosophical discourses, apart from the wonderful conversation of the foreigner on the entrance screen. In this film, Tarkovsky chose to focus on the clarity of the tear, the purity of the milk, the glow in the tree, the density of the peels, the spread of the raindrops on the leaves and on the grass.The film has a theme of 1935. Since it contains real images of the War and the children were dressed in uniform, it directly refers to the World War II. The scene that most impresses me is that a uniformed child soldier (or candidate) has shown a meaningful stand against the war when he took a turn of 360-degree against when he is ordered to turn "backwards".With Mirror, which is all about Tarkovsky's own life, the director of the film, he holds a mirror to his past and present and makes us see ourselves in the mirror. The film, strengthened by the poetry of his father Arseniy Tarkovsky, is dragging us into a series of literary metaphors. Especially, the narration that is combined with the visuals used in the first poem prepares the audience for the emotional intensity in the film.The uncertainty in the film regarding the time makes it difficult to distinguish the role played by children, babies, mothers, elderly women, and short-haired children. Father and child roles seem to be independent of each other. When the child is visible, the father is depicted with a "voice", and the child is not included in the scene when we see the father figure. Because, the child role represents the childhood of the father, in the father's eyes. For the child, the role of the father has become his own future; the current father is the current child in the film. Thus, the uncertainty in terms of time makes the film hard to understand for the audience. Tarkovsky does this consciously.The film will have the same effects for people with emotional intensities. Because that is exactly what Mirror accomplishes. Our individual life is actually the experience of humankind, too. Some of us observe it in our life and when you see it in such deep films, you start to feel differently and close to such films. Hence, as the camera moves along the peels of the tree, we smile and we get connected the film even more.

WondrousMoose Film is a unique medium in that it communicates to us through our two most important senses, sight and sound. By these mechanisms, we experience much of the world around us, and by their reflections, we hold our memories of those experiences. Film is then in a special position to present the thoughts, beliefs, and actions of a character or characters by a creator talented enough to convey them. This can, of course, come in the form of a thrilling action movie with scenes and dialog that stick with us long after we see them, and in its purest form, it can come as an expression of the inner workings of someone's mind.The Mirror, the fourth feature film of the Russian master auteur Andrei Tarkovsky, is a semi-autobiographical film presented as the memories and dreams of Aleksei, a dying poet. In no particular order, we see scenes from his early and late childhood, as well as more recent events in his adulthood. The unconventional, stream-of- consciousness structure of the film presents these scenes as one might recall them in real life, connected by moods and moments that prompt recollection of others.Many of his earliest memories have little bits of dialog, giving a general sense of what is happening since the specifics have been long forgotten; memories of his adult life with his son and ex-wife contain more complete conversations.At several parts in the film, Aleksei's memories are also paralleled by reflections on Russian history and society, as we are shown footage of soldiers in World War II and hear an excerpt from a letter written by Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, among other moments. Audio is also played over some scenes of Tarkovsky's own father, Arseny Tarkovsky, reading his poems. The camera moves deliberately through all these scenes as an observer; the long takes, as well as the movie's manipulation of time and sound, are key to accomplishing the intended effect.Tarkovsky himself maintained that he structured The Mirror as one would a piece of music, focusing on the material's form rather than on its logic. More Ligeti than Mozart, though, this film is challenging and eschews anything resembling a standard structure or plot.I often comment on the score of a film – especially a great one – and how it contributes to the overall viewing experience. The problem with The Mirror in this regard is that the formal score is so sparse that it hardly stands out as a strong or weak aspect of the film. Passages from J.S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion play through a few key scenes, and electronic ambient music plays over others. Instead, the deliberate soundscape of the film itself becomes a sort of score in its own right, such as a strong wind blowing over a field or the oppressive noise of a printing press.Visually, the film is rife with haunting, surreal imagery. In a black-and-white dream, Aleksei's mother stands in a large, empty room, shaking water off of her arms and the hair covering her face, before the room dissolves around her in a dampened cascade of rain and wet plaster. In another, the same woman levitates several feet above a bed until a white bird flies over her. In one of the film's more well- known scenes, the family's barn burns as Aleksei's family and neighbors watch, their small figures helplessly standing at a distance as the structure simply burns.Watching The Mirror is artistic bliss. The depth of many of Tarkovsky's shots is enrapturing; the texture of the world around the characters is palpable. You feel the cold, hard wood of the floors and walls of Aleksei's childhood home and the cold of a Russian winter. The film reaches a certain part of your mind and supplants a man's consciousness into your own, leaving you in something of a trance.I can never fully explain this movie, and in that knowledge comes some of my enjoyment and appreciation of it. Each idea and realization I make about particular aspects of the film is nothing compared to the work as a whole. The Mirror is ultimately a film that is meant to be experienced rather than to be fully understood or explained. The human mind is itself nebulous, and how appropriate it is that a film meant to visually portray one should be as such.

t-viktor212 When I saw "the mirror" and heard in an interview Nolan claiming that he took as inspirational that film for certain aspects of "Interstellar", I asked myself what the hell was he thinking. The mirror is definitely a really personal movie to Tarkovskij, he even had his own mother do the main character's mother.What is very good in this movie is the cut. Even though the film seems to make no sense at times, actually every scene naturally flows one into other. I heard somewhere that it took a lot of time for Tarkovskij to achieve a cut he liked of the film.Then, the idea of having multiple characters acted by the same actress to get the reflection's concept, the way certain dreams where depicted, the fact that you never actually see the main character, everything just works perfectly for you to like this film nonetheless.