Mirror

Oh Tarkovsky, what have you done to me? I don’t want to display a fake image, I don’t want to sound like I cajoled myself into loving this for the sake of fitting into the crowd. My rating is genuine and my opinion is sincere, I even gave it a second try just to be sure. Mirror is a brilliant film, it surprised me for being this good. It’s actually not a lie to say it has the most beautiful cinematography I’ve ever seen, the most breathtaking imagery no matter a dream or in reality. I didn’t even realize the absence of a plot, I was clearly deceived by the extravagant camerawork and the poems that divide the different timelines. A slow burner is best to describe this film, the introductory background setting and character development did not appeal much to me but as time went by, my love escaped the heart, possessing the film throughout its runtime. During some scenes, time felt extraordinarily swift; in other fragments of the film, time can be oddly slow moving. I believe this movie magic was created by Tarkovsky to accentuate the surrealism, the realness of a dream and how time is altered in it. There are many scenes that utilize the subtle art of slow motion, just so cool and alluring. Mirror sort of has that Wild Strawberries feel to it, the amalgamation of the past and the present and dreams. Whilst aesthetically pleasing, I don’t really see what the fuck’s going on in those exquisite dreams, but I suppose that was intended to force ourselves with an interpretation of our own. Nevertheless, there was never a direct indication of when time is shifted either into the past or to the future, I needed to rewind some parts to focus on the complexities. It was not the relaxing movie I thought it would be.  It was during some tranquil instances where a mirror can be seen reflecting the mother, or the wife, and in those precise moments we get to uncover the true identity of the woman as the Author dreamt of them looking the exact same, like paralleled lives they were both living. Confusion was always by my side, sometimes I don’t know what was going on. It was resemblance after resemblance, the mother and the wife almost becoming the same person, and also the Author himself being extremely similar to his son (another mirror reference). Numerous elements felt immensely personal, to Tarkovsky perhaps, and I was experiencing the film like raw thoughts spiraling in and out of my mind, which didn’t seem like a film anymore. So bona fide, the film progresses the same way a brain processes, darting to and fro.  By the time the concluding music started playing, I was terribly lost in the maze of memories, I was dazzled with Tarkovsky’s superb feat but I could still see the mother imagine her life in the future, when she has two kids that will never grow old, always staying by her side. That’s a dream that will never come true, maybe Tarkovsky acknowledges that as humans, we all have that kind of dreams…