Mirror

Loosely autobiographical, unconventionally structured and incorporating poems composed and read by the director’s father, the film unfolds as an organic flow of memories recalled by a dying poet of key moments in his life. In an effort to represent these themes visually, the film combines contemporary scenes with childhood memories, dreams and newsreel footage. Its cinematography shifts, often unpredictably, between colour, black-and-white and sepia. The film’s loose flow of stunning visually-oneiric shots, combined with its rich and symbolic imagery has been compared with the stream of consciousness technique in modernist literature. Mirror initially polarised critics and audiences, with many considering its narrative to be incomprehensible. It has however found favour with many Russians for whom it remains their most beloved of Tarkovsky’s works.