Mirror [Zerkalo] ***** (1975, Margarita Terekhova, Filipp Yankovskiy, Ignat Daniltsev) – Classic Movie Review 3568

Co-writer/director Andrei Tarkovsky’s masterly 1975 kaleidoscope of personal imagery has a strong, poetic and characteristic use of the elements and images – the wind constantly moving the tall grasses, the burning barn, the flooded room, trees, water – to evoke an almost tangible atmosphere of hope, fear, confusion and wistful nostalgia, the temporary nature of relationships, the delicate transience of individuals, and the deep echoes they leave behind.

The mirror is the mind of the poet – a dying man in his forties – who remembers his past and narrates his musings on his life and relationships with his wife and son, his own childhood and adolescence, and the lives of past generations of his family, his mother, World War Two and the history of Russia.

Narrated by Innokenti Smoktunovsky, Mirror is a film about how people place themselves in relation to the people and the things closest and most influential in their lives, perhaps even about how a society chooses to view itself. Margarita Terekhova, Filipp Yankovskiy and Ignat Daniltsev star.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3568

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