Mirror (1975 film)

Mirror
Russian DVD cover
Directed byAndrei Tarkovsky
Written by
Produced byErik Waisberg
Starring
Narrated by
CinematographyGeorgy Rerberg
Edited byLyudmila Feiginova
Music byEduard Artemyev
Production
company
Release date
  • 7 March 1975 (1975-03-07)
Running time
106 minutes[1]
CountrySoviet Union
LanguagesRussian, Spanish
Budget622,000 Rbls[2]

Mirror (Russian: Зеркало, romanized: Zerkalo)[a] is a 1975 Soviet experimental drama film[3] directed by Andrei Tarkovsky and written by Tarkovsky and Aleksandr Misharin. The film features Margarita Terekhova, Ignat Daniltsev, Alla Demidova, Anatoly Solonitsyn, Tarkovsky's wife Larisa Tarkovskaya, and his mother Maria Vishnyakova. Innokenty Smoktunovsky contributed voiceover dialogue and Eduard Artemyev composed incidental music and sound effects.

Mirror portrays a dying poet pondering his memories. It is loosely autobiographical, unconventionally structured, and draws on a wide variety of source material, including newsreel footage of major moments in Soviet history and the poetry of the director's father, Arseny Tarkovsky. Its cinematography slips between color, black-and-white, and sepia. Its nonlinear narrative has delighted and frustrated critics and audiences for decades. The film's loose flow of oneiric images has been compared with the stream of consciousness technique associated with modernist literature.

Mirror initially polarized critics, audiences, and the Soviet film establishment. Tarkovsky devised the original concept in 1964, but the Soviet government did not approve funding for the film until 1973 and limited the film's release amid accusations of cinephilic elitism. Many viewers found its narrative incomprehensible, although Tarkovsky noted that many non-film critics understood the film. Since its release, it has been reappraised as one of the greatest films of all time, as well as Tarkovsky's magnum opus.[4][5] It is especially popular with Russians, for many of whom it is the most beloved of Tarkovsky's works.[6][7]: 9–13 

  1. ^ "MIRROR (U)". British Board of Film Classification. 23 January 1980. Archived from the original on 11 October 2016. Retrieved 3 May 2022.
  2. ^ Tarkovsky, Andrei; transl. by Kitty Hunter-Blair (1991). Time Within Time: The Diaries 1970–1986. Calcutta: Seagull Book. p. 77 (July 11, 1973). ISBN 978-81-7046-083-1.
  3. ^ "Зеркало". cinema.mosfilm.ru (in Russian). Retrieved 19 June 2022.
  4. ^ "Sight & Sound 2012 Polls | BFI". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 16 August 2012. Retrieved 19 October 2015.
  5. ^ "Sight & Sound Revises Best-Films-Ever Lists". Studio Daily. 1 August 2012. Retrieved 1 August 2012.
  6. ^ Synessios 2001"...remains today most Russians' favourite Tarkovsky film."
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).


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