MIRROR (1974), Andrei Tarkovsky - Evening is the most bewitching time of day, not midnight. And I will reveal a secret -- If you take a nap at twilight you will enter the most poetic of realms where memory and reality intertwine and pictures of the soul appear and disappear in the equipoise of this magic time of day. It has been said that Virgil, the poet, invented evening. It has also been said that he was a magician. If he had lived in the 20th century he would have been a filmmaker.That said, it is but a hop, skip and jump to Mirror, or Miroir, as I wish to call this preternaturally rich and beautiful film. The initial dream sequence is conducted in the spirit of that exact time -- evening -- and the images of fire are portents (in every sense) of the past fusing with the present and tipping into the immediate future, foreshadowing the demise of the narrator's (Alexei's) consciousness. But then the whole film is an extended reverie, taking place in the feverish brain of Alexei (Tarkovsky).
This is an elusive (difficult) film. It is a small bird that lands on your head, or a small bird held in your hand. It is a tender étude on mortality and memory, told through recollections of childhood caught in a mirror that is reflecting warped images of the contingent constructs of reality -- of the so-called empirical or the Real. The wind that parts an array of lace curtains suspended in mid-room to reveal a mirror, and the slow progression of the camera to that polished surface; the wind ruffling a summer field as a visitor/stranger walks away from a rustic dacha; the wind that rolls out of the woods and bends the small trees and shrubs at the edge of the clearing where the dacha sits; each of these is a gesture toward the ineffable and immanence -- i.e., the trace/mark of barely-discernable things that haunt both the mind and the natural world (a dialectic of mind/not-mind, as Rousseau sketched in Emile).
The two young women -- Alexei's mother (Maria/Masha) and his wife (Natalia) at the same age -- played by the same actress (Margarita Terekhova) -- and the two children (Alexei at 5 and 12, and Alexei's son Ignat at 12); the intervening footage of World War II and its aftermath; the waiting for the return of absent fathers (Alexei's father and Alexei himself); the accusations and arguments that return and metastasise (between Alexei's mother and father, Alexei and his wife Natalia, and Alexei and his mother); these are the wounds and the hauntings of the psyche that inform the transcendental work of art. Three different timeframes -- Alexei's childhood (1935), World War II and 'present times' (1974?) -- are interwoven to produce a tapestry of signifying moments that reside in a zone far removed from the conventional, linear experience of time. They in fact all take place in the memory of Alexei. And there are perhaps just three characters that metamorphose in his dream cycling between roles: Alexei, Natalia and Ignat become, respectively, Alexei's father, his mother (Maria), and Alexei himself as a child. He projects his estranged wife's image into the past and she merges with his mother. His own son Ignat fuses in his mind with himself at the age of 12.
Mostly subtle strains (musical phrases) from Bach, Pergolesi and Purcell drift through the mélange of recollections and reckonings. But they are not a 'soundtrack'. The score for a Tarkovsky film is dominated by long stretches of silence or barely audible moving water. Images reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci and Brueghel slip through the discreet apparatus of the film's imagery (yet as talismanic things, versus symbols) -- drawn from books Alexei studied when he was a youngster -- melding with memory. A levitating figure hovers in a room draped in a white bedsheet and is gone -- His wife or his mother? The seasons glide in and out of the windows. Plaster, blossoms from trees and feathers fall like snow. Alexei's memory favors summertime, sometimes winter, but most times it is raining. (Like Angelopoulos, today, Tarkovsky liked to shoot his films in inclement weather, or to simulate it.) A child climbs a wintry hill with revellers below sledding and a silver, unfrozen lake in the distance, a Brueghelesque 'tableau vivant' interspersed with World War II era footage of infantry hauling armaments across a bleak, watery landscape, or Mao's conquest of China with subsequent agitations on the Russian border, the jarring juxtaposition signalling a compelling coupling of innocence and carnage.
Bits from elegiac poems by Arseny Tarkovsky (the filmmaker's father) are layered over passages in the film where past and present elide and illuminate eternity. Tarkovsky moves from interior to window to landscape in a manner recalling medieval painting, lingering in the chiaroscuro where light dissolves into shadows -- a sigilistic (mannerist) gesture. The camera is nearly blinded as it meets daylight and all but blinks. A room with water running down the walls and plaster falling like snow heralds an end, but occurs early in the film, as does a signature Tarkovsky ever-so-slow pan to inflated, shroud-like black curtains in the dying Alexei's apartment. A telephone conversation he is having with his mother indicates he is disoriented. He thinks it's morning; it is evening. As he tells her about just waking from a dream of a burning barn from childhood, the camera passes a poster of Andrei Rublev, perhaps Tarkovsky's greatest film, making its way to the living room and the shroudlike curtains partly blocking the windows. Alexei is Andrei (is Alexei). Alexei also never appears in the film except in his reveries of childhood. At all other times -- 'present times' -- he is just off-camera. You hear his voice but never see his face. The voice is Oleg Yankovsky, who plays his father. (If you have seen Nostalghia, it is unmistakeably his voice.)
Alexei's young mother and his young wife are the 'same' person in Alexei's dream world. It's disconcerting. Alexei and his young son (Ignat) are also the 'same' person at age 12. Maria (his mother) approaches the water running down the walls of the family dacha and gazes into a mirror; in the reflected image she is old, no longer the image of Natalia. Alexei's mother has long coddled him, according to Natalia, "knowing what's best for him." Natalia has given up and lives with Ignat. She wonders aloud about marrying a 'writer' and gets a lecture on what constitutes a 'writer' -- "a book is an act, not a paycheck". Ignat lights a fire outside during the argument between mother and father, burning some branches in the yard. The characters blend one into the other -- as do motives and the elements -- and the wind sweeps through clearing away the debris of war and time and memory.
Alexei/Ignat hallucinates an old woman sitting at a table with a cup of tea. She tells him to take out a notebook from the bookshelf and read the underlined passage from a letter by Pushkin. The letter is a reflection on the difference between Russia and the West -- and on the importance of honoring Russia despite its tragic history. Tarkovsky's films surpass Pushkin's admonition and fly quite simply out of this world. (No Western filmmaker has ever achieved quite the same level of poetic filmmaking, the films of Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski notwithstanding). Alexei/Ignat looks back to the woman but she has vanished (vaporised). As he approaches the table where she had been sitting all that remains is a slowly vanishing circle of moisture on the tabletop, the imprint/signature of the cup of tea.
Gavin Keeney (January 2002)
Apologies - The PDF was taken offline 07/16/05
Tarkovsky's Stalker (1979) / Tarkovsky's Nostalghia (1983) / Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972)
Tarkovsky Site (University of Calgary) / More Tarkovsky (Tea @ 5) / Tarkovsky Bibliography (Tom Korolewicz) ...
Mirror (Sovexport Film, 1974) - directed by Andrei Tarkovsky - 106 minutes - color/B&W - Russian w/ English subtitles - w/ Margarita Trekhova, Oleg Yankovsky and Ignat Daniltsev
NOTES ON THE KINO EDITION DVD TRANSFER (2000) - JAN BIELAWSKI (NOSTALGHIA.COM)
1. The color balance of the current DVD transfer is wrong. Not a paramount issue but annoying;
2. On top of that, the B&W sequences should be either sepia or steely blue/green;
3. This is one of those films you have to see on the big screen -- lots of detailed backgrounds which Tarkovsky probably spent hours to prepare.
A forthcoming RusCiCo DVD edition is expected to fix at least (1) and (2).
RusCiCo - "RUSCICO (RUSSIAN CINEMA COUNCIL) is a commercial association of Russian and foreign companies, created for the purpose of realizing a complex program of restoring, remastering, replication and world distribution of a collection of the best Soviet and Russian feature, documentary and animated films, as well as of film versions of the best ballet, opera and theatre productions, in a DVD format. The project's budget will allow RUSCICO to release on DVD discs, within the 1999-2005 period, over 120 motion pictures produced at MOSFILM, LENFILM, GORKY FILM, GEORGIA-FILM, SOYUZMULTFILM, and other studios."
Andrei Tarkovsky Companion (Artficial Eye) - "Moscow Elegy" (Alexander Sokurov). Conceived to mark the 50th anniversary of Tarkovsky’s birth, this is a highly personal tribute by Alexander Sokurov -- the acclaimed director of "Russian Ark" and "Mother and Son" -- to the man who was both his mentor and friend. Reflecting upon Tarkovsky’s life, his far-reaching influence and the void left by his defection from Soviet Russia to Europe in 1982, this elegiac film features fascinating footage of the man at work and rest, and, of course, his films. Russia 1987, 88 minutes, Russian & Italian with English subtitles / "One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevitch" (Chris Marker). This appreciation of Tarkovsky made by his friend Chris Marker for the French television series "Cinema du Notre Temps" is both an illuminating personal portrait and a poetic study of the Russian master’s films. Granted access to the set of "The Sacrifice" Marker captured fascinating and insightful behind-the-scenes footage, including the editing process which the then gravely ill Tarkovsky conducted from his sickbed. France 1999, 55 minutes, colour, French, English, Italian & Russian with English subtitles / "Tempo di Viaggio" ("Time of a Journey") (Andrei Tarkovsky & Tonino Guerra). Tarkovsky’s documentary explores the creation of the screenplay for his penultimate film "Nostalgia". It shows his wide-ranging discussions with his Italian co-writer Tonino Guerra (Antonioni’s regular collaborator) and the hunt for suitable locations that might embody his vision of the film. Italy 1983, 62 minutes, colour, Italian & Russian with English subtitles.
***Larissa Tarkovski, Andrei Tarkovski (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1998) - "En six longs métrages seulement, de L'Enfance d'Ivan (Lion d'or du festival de Venise 1962) au Sacrifice (Grand Prix spécial du jury au festival de Cannes 1986), Andreï Tarkovski (1932-1986) s'est imposé comme l'un des plus grands artistes du XXe siècle. Il n'existait pas à ce jour de biographie de ce cinéaste dont les films plongent leurs racines dans sa propre vie. Mais Larissa Tarkovski, qui partagea son existence et son travail pendant vingt ans, n'a pas composé une biographie traditionnelle. Elle n'a pas voulu retracer année pas année la vie et la carrière d'un jeune espoir du VGIK, la grande école de cinéma moscovite, entré très vite en résistance, privé de travail et condamné à l'exil, mais livrer un livre 'tarkovskien', tout entier basé sur la sensation, le rêve et la mémoire. Un livre à la fois sinueux et limpide, où le démiurge s'efface derrière l'homme, mais qui, en nous révélant son intimité, nous promène, très simplement, sur les sentiers de la création et aux origines d'une des oeuvres majeures de ce temps. / Provenant des archives personnelles de sa famille, une iconographie inédite ou rarissime fait exploser tous les clichés sur Andreï Tarkovski."
ON THE CONCEPT OF "SUTURE" IN FILM STUDIES
Slavoj Žižek's The Fright of Real Tears: Krzysztof Kieslowski Between Theory and Post-Theory - reviewed in Central Europe Review
Excerpt from above review: "Žižek claims that the standard operation of suture is 'subverted' by Hitchcock, Kieslowski and others to produce disconcerting effects—typically by presenting it as an 'impossible' visual perspective on a scene. For instance, an 'uncanny poetic effect' can be created if the subject (character) can be made to seem to 'enter his own picture' (39). In Kieslowski's work, aspects of drab reality are made to operate as the 'door of perception' -- magical interfaces are opened between different realities, not through melodrama but mundane detail such as a glimpsed reflection or the interior of a Polish post office."
More on Suture in Film Theory (UCSC) ...
See also, Kaja Silverman, "[On Suture]", The Subject of Semiotics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983); This essay also appears in Gerald Mast, Marshall Cohen, Leo Braudy (eds.), Film Theory and Criticism, 4th edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 199-209
Regarding mise en scène, see Jim Hillier (ed.), Cahiers du Cinéma: The 1950s / Neo-Realism, Hollywood, New Wave (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985) / Regarding "phenomenological realism" and its aesthetic categories apropos of Rossellini, et alia, see Amédée Ayfre, "Neo-Realism and Phenomenology" (1952), ibid., pp. 182-191 ...
