Mirror

10 “One day everything will come to an end—and everything will begin again.” Mirror is a tapestry of memories, poetry, dreams and imagery that tell a story of a Soviet family throughout its generations It’s shot and edited like a dream, it carries an eerie almost surreal atmosphere that serves to make the movie a collage of fading memories rather than a structured retelling. The shots are long, the music is minimal but the ambience is palpable. You can feel the cold air, the burning fire, the smooth flow of the river.  Memories and stories fade into each other, our storytellers mom in memory takes the form of his wife as similarities turn into spitting resemblance through the passage of time as the mind struggles to compete. Memories and dreams fall into one another, and parts of them lose to time. You’re left with their DNA, but not their entirety. Stories only survive through inheritance, and ultimately our tale is met with a bittersweet end, but one that is perfectly natural. Our storyteller is on his deathbed, passing down memory even as they fade and the home which made his youth is gone to overgrown grass. The previous generation is being lost through memory and physically, and the culprit is time. Time covers up old to leave room for new, and it won’t be long until the storyteller’s son is telling his stories to his kin.  It’s a poetic tale that captures the untouchable essence of time, and the silent battle to hold onto memories. To pass them on, even as your mind struggles to keep them intact.