Mirror

Deep across the innermost, grounded world of Tarkovsky’s mind, an extravagant house opens its doors ajar. It rises at the intersection of dreams and memory, claiming itself as the architecture of life - the very foundation upon which we live. It shifts, crumbles, burns; it is Spanish, it is Russian, it is new, it is ancient, it is lonely, it is floating, it is unfair. Yet somehow, this is what life is made of - or at least the life granted us - the convergence of self and history, woven together in the shaping of the self, like tapestry around our frame, the very science of our skin. In a metaphysically bending, inseparable dance of conformity, self and history shape one another, brick by brick, until a tower rises high enough to touch heaven’s gate, floating transcendently like a grand air balloon. They intertwine - an existential cog in a deeply personal machine of fear and dread, a pitiful attempt to understand. A semi-autobiographical attempt to reconstruct his own existence - Tarkovsky's formed space; its endless capacity and infinite scope - shapes a world defined in intricacy, one that juxtaposes starkly with my own: vastly different, yet uncannily familiar, profoundly at home, yet always the home of a stranger. This chimerical house is open to all who seek it, all who wander its halls. Sometimes it asks you to enter, sometimes it begs. Other times it commands, challenges, or even degrades, compelling you to step inside. To you, to all of you, to all who wish, all who can: I implore you to wander these halls - to explore, linger, listen, and remember. Yes it is haunting, perpetual and grim. But as a resemblance of life - in all its elaborate intricacy and fineness's - it is also astoundingly beautiful. Let it take its time; let it last And yet, life extends beyond the walls of this house. It must. Surely this cannot be all that life is, captured and preserved as a singular? And what of the things we forget then - are they not part of it as well? The remembered and the forgotten, the present and the absent, the neglected and the attended - it all shapes us with equal force. They are the threads that weave the self, as vital and intricate as memory. I have struggled this past year. The film echoed my own pain. It reminded me of Angelopoulos’s Eternity and a Day - my favourite film - in its aching, unflinching meditation of a dying man’s existential journey back home before death. I ask: what causes the suffering that grips the mind, the kind that can feel like death itself? History? War? Family? Absent fathers? Demanding mothers? All of it? Or something more? Something else, wholly beyond written comprehension? Life shapes us, but it also grants its tragedies. Why do some suffer more than others? Why do some minds crumble while others endure and survie? It feels unfair. It is unfair. Tarkovsky is no partisan to this weighted bias - this lottery of suffering, this injustice of being, this cruel partiality of existence. Yet even within his own film, Tarkovsky can do nothing but falter beneath the sheer magnitude of its soul-crushing weight.Stepping aside, watching from afar - there are no options. Giving up is impossible; one must refuse to let the mind be consumed. Otherwise, it becomes a bottomless pit, a promise of a traumatizing, brutal end. Surrendering shall not be worth it. It is not worth it. Never. Grappling with your very existence may, at least perhaps - at some point before death - allow a release, a glimmer of light before the end of the tunnel. You may break your chains. You may be free. You may be happy. Maybe. But in the eye of a hasty, premature death, your gaze will always be downward; you will never know if the shadowy floor is a reflection of the beyond - the heights above - or merely an antipathy to your world, a distortion of your own existence, an illusion born of suffering. It becomes an aperture onto a subjective, metaphysical reality where the physical feels unjust, and where meaning trembles on the edge between consolation and abyss. If you remain unaware of the other side of the world, why stop before you’ve felt it? The depiction of life, especially as it nears death, is at once painful and resonant. The dying man in the film is consumed by dread and loss, yet Tarkovsky refuses to impose hope or moral resolution. Instead, we are left to gather the pieces, to sift and riddle through his mind, seeking meaning - his, ours - in the cracks and silences he leaves behind. Watching this, I could not help but see echoes of my own life: past traumas illuminated anew, fractured family relations, the lingering presence of memory and regret. Life’s pain is truly universal, but it is also fiercely personal, and Mirror allows this duality to coexist without vindication or resolution, deliberately maintaining distance from any semblance of closure or moral certainty - undeniably, quintessentially Tarkovskian. To relive the past, to walk the same corridors over and over, to be haunted by what once was; it is inescapable. And yet, even amidst trauma and suffering, there is a longing, a bittersweet ache, because it is gone. We yearn for what is consummately realised, while the present remains unfinished, a river still running, abidingly forcing us forward, even as memory tries pulling us back - its a relentless, almost abusive leash - a whip for the mind. I live with my mother. My father is distant. I struggle, often without knowing why, or how. I look backward more than forward. I am addicted to memory, to the bittersweet pull of what has passed. It is a drug - pleasurable, destructive, inescapable. And yet, I am grateful for it. For I would not be who I am without it. Perhaps that is the point: we are the sum of our memories and dreams, good and bad, ugly and beautiful. To erase them is to become someone else entirely. What are we in the dark, and what does the light reveal? Or perhaps it is the opposite. The flames of Tarkovsky do not fully illuminate; they flicker, quiver, and cast shadows, revealing only fragments of what lies beneath. A fireplace, a burning cottage, the light dancing across cold fingers seeking warmth yet spiritually set ablaze - these are his images of incongruity, a somber paradox sealed in celluloid. Pain and destruction rebuilt within ashes. Yet the hurt is not extinguished; it is inherited, passed down, devastation mirrored in every newsreel, in landscapes scarred by war. His dreamscape remains fractured, incongruent: fire and water coexist, while wind and earth strain desperately to hold them apart. It is a vision that predates modern laws of physics, answering instead to the primordial order of the four elements - where destruction and renewal are bound together, indivisible, eternal. They entwine. The burning barn lingers as both facade and revelation. It’s a glowing gateway to childhood’s hidden corridors - to a father’s departure, to the trauma borne silently by his mother. Being partially seen through the dirtied glass of a mirror, it becomes less of a memory than a reflection of how memory itself distorts and refracts, wounds and invariably scars. Tarkovsky meditates on the passage of time, he doesn’t see it as chronology but as experience. For we do not simply live our past; we are relived by it. Some moments arrive with biting sharpness, fryed into our very souls forever; others dissolve into haze, slipping through our grasp. Memories cling not to dates but to places, sounds and gestures - an echo, a word, a song. A sudden touch, summoning what we did not even know we carried until it grazed our mind. Life is not linear; it is fragments, scattered pieces stitched together by recollection. In these flickering fragments, we discover ourselves. We are not whole, not resolved, but we are, undeniably real. The meaning of it all remains beyond reach. Facts and science can illuminate only so far. Perhaps this is why religion endures: to give shape to the shapeless, purpose to the inexplicable. Tarkovsky touches on this in Andrei Rublev - juxtaposing the painful sacrifices with the equally devestating devotion, the distance that preserves mystery while still allowing it to speak. He makes us understand, spiritually and intimately, without ever simplifying or explaining. Tarkovsky does not capture life as much as he shows it - allows it to unfold. You wander through your memories as through a film, searching for the source of your pain, yet it is everywhere and nowhere. It is all of it. The full, complete picture: the joy, the sorrow, the fleeting moments. And in that impossibility lies its beauty. Tarkovsky offers not answers, but refuge. The house, the memories, the faces - they are home, or atleast as close as you will get to one. A place to breathe, to connect with the few you love, to feel safe, before stepping forward into the world beyond. The unending wait for life’s only guarantee - Tarkovsky doesn’t prepare you, and perhaps he cannot even prepare himself. He might try, but the ultimate, unyielding message of Mirror, is that the day will inevitably come, and you can never - NEVER - be truly ready for what awaits. Reaching backward or forward is quintessentially the same. It won’t save you. It won’t grant salvation from your scorched life; only magnify the pain until it’s all too much to bear, or, perhaps eventually, for the strong-minded, you escape the relentless weight of poetic, existential torment and can live in a state of fragile peace - still unready, but enduring - maybe strenuously, maybe streniously - for life’s only certain promise, to come true.