Andrei Tarkovsky's Mirror (1975) — Movie Discussion
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A subtly ravishing passage through the halls of time and memory, this sublime reflection on twentieth-century Russian history by Andrei Tarkovsky is as much a poem composed in images, or a hypnagogic hallucination, as it is a work of cinema. In a richly textured collage of varying film stocks and newsreel footage, the recollections of a dying poet flash before our eyes, his dreams mingling with scenes of childhood, wartime, and marriage, all imbued with the mystical power of a trance. Largely dismissed by Soviet critics on its release because of its elusive narrative structure, Mirror has since taken its place as one of the director’s most renowned and influential works, a stunning personal statement from an artist transmitting his innermost thoughts and feelings directly from psyche to screen.
"Tarkovsky goes for the great white whale of politicised art — no less than a history of his country in this century seen in terms of the personal — and succeeds." (Time Out)
“You’d think Mirror might be a heavy, intellectual film, but it is direct, even basic: remembering, childhood, loss, speculation… It talks to people not through words, but through images and emotions." (Sight and Sound)
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Let's discuss Andrei Tarkovsky's magnum opus Mirror (1975), which was recently voted the 8th greatest movie of all time in Sight & Sound's international survey of filmmakers and the 31st greatest movie of all time in the related poll of film critics and scholars. We've previously discussed 6 other films by Tarkovsky in this group: Andrei Rublev (1966), Solaris (1972), Stalker (1979), Nostalghia (1983), Ivan's Childhood (1962), and The Steamroller and the Violin (1961).
Please watch the movie in advance (106 minutes) and bring your thoughts, reactions, and queries to share with us at the meeting. You can stream it here (check the player settings for English subtitles and to adjust quality) or rent it through Criterion or other streaming platforms (for best quality).
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Check out other movie discussions in the group, currently happening about once or twice a month.
This link here is a spreadsheet of the 150+ movies we've watched in this group and my ratings for each (titles in bold are my personal favourites). You're invited to share your list as well if you've watched a bunch of these movies with us. (I can add it here if you send me a link. You can make your own list on sites like Letterboxd or by copying my spreadsheet and filling in your own values. Note that my list doesn't include all the movies that Yorgo hosted on cause I didn't watch all of them.)