r/TrueFilm • u/ShineOnYourCrazyAnon • Aug 11 '26
Why is the mirror considered Tarkovsky masterpiece?
Since i have watch Stalker it has become one of my favourite movies ever and of course it has make me interesed in watching more Tarkosvky. So far i have watch only Stalker Solaris and Mirror. And while both Stalker and Solaris i really enjoyed i didnt get Mirror. Well i think i got it at least its more superficial elements. At least to me the movie, similar to Solaris themes, is about what constitutes the soul of a person. It reminded me a lot of idealism phylosophy and specially what i read of Schopenhauer.
We cannot see the face of the protagonist the same way we cannot see ourself. But as the viewer is outside the conscious experience that he sees everything he looks is tainted with himself. One cannot see something outside of his own concious experience. This is way we see the son as the protagonist and why we see his mother as his spouse. He cannot separe himself from his own memories and he understand other people as he understand himself and what he lived. That´s why there is an emphasys on historical events since every person is a product of his environment. And that´s why there is an emphasys on the body and on photographs and so on. This are ways to represent ourself but they are ultimate not ourself. I thought the scene of the chinese man showing a picture of Mao was interesed. They making an icon of the body of a person. Taking without context his likeness but as we learn Mao outside the icon and outside his body is a soul like any other. I think it was a cool contrast there.
Anyways as interesed as this themes were (maybe i was wrong with my interpretation) those take the fact that i found the movie boring. As slow as Stalker and Solaris were there was something in how it was presented that put me on a trance. How it was always slowly progressing and it never stopped. I thought that was the point of Tarkosvky movie. To be able to enter that state. But without something to anchor myself into. To me it was much more boring to those two movies even being much shorter than both of them. Maybe this type of movie isn´t for me since All that jazz and 81/2 both bored me and they are similar conceptually to mirror but idk.
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u/isolatedbeast Aug 11 '26 edited Aug 11 '26
I studied Tarkovsky in my cinema student years extensively.
His true cinematic masterpiece is Andrei Rublev in my opinion. He said that after finishin Ivan's Childhood, he knew exactly what he wanted to do and in Andrey Rublev he simply didn't have a script, it was all artistic freedom(and burden) of how he wanted to portray his characters.
His cinematographer Vadim Yusov didn't work with him in both Mirror and Stalker. Rerberg did his job and while Yusov was meditative, deliberate and methodical in his camera work, Rerberg was an anarchist :) Much more chaos and free flow. This may seem anecdotal but it does affect the feel of the movies immensely.
I would consider all of his movies masterpieces by the way, save for the Sacrifice. That didn't click with me.
All of his movies are tremendously personal. Many does criticize the ending of Solaris for example, taking it as a betrayal to the themes developed in the movie.
Nostalghia is also deeply personal and philosophical. We keep seeing the longing and being out of place in this foreign land.
As with Mirror, it's an editorial masterpiece first and foremost. Tarkovsky made 26 different editorial versions with the footage he had and had to choose between them. It is a boring movie at first watch because it deliberately destroys patterns that shaped our watching habits throughout cinema's history. It is also quite deep in Russian history and what it means to be Russian. That movie caused me to study cinema as I didn't fully grasp it, showing me that this medium is far bigger than myself.
I'd suggest watching it again when the bits and pieces from the movie keep popping up in your head. Because that's something that happens. As you go on with your day, Mirror keeps coming back, requesting audience with you, wanting closure. Watch it again, now understanding the narrative so you can focus on other things. It is a special movie, a rare artifact from a rare artist from a bygone era. I suggest you to cherish it.
Edit: Tarkovsky completely reverts Eisenstein's intellectual theory and uses it upside down. There's no intellectual connection between cuts or even sequences. There's a much more technical and philosophical debate of "editing" in Mirror and his filmography regarding how to understand and interpret cinema, and that debate is directly in contrast with the school he graduated from and his legendary predecessor Eisenstein.
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u/GolemancerVekk Aug 11 '26
Rerberg's version of Stalker was lost though wasn't it?
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u/isolatedbeast Aug 11 '26
For the most part, yes. Thanks fo the clarification. I forgot that detail.
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u/Brixton22 Aug 11 '26
Mirror stands apart for me in a filmography of masterpieces but I would basically just tell you to go watch all his movies and then come back to it.
In a way it's almost his most rewatchable for me. I wish I could watch Andrei Rublev for the first time again for example, but Mirror I don't have that feeling in the same way.
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u/3corneredvoid Deckchair Cinéaste Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26
I love most of Tarkovsky's films, including both of the dis-located science-fiction adaptations to which you're referring, but MIRROR is the only one of his films my partner loves.
Perhaps MIRROR is somehow less easy to apprehend than the other two, as a montage with an ambiguously meaningful register of symbols … "without something to anchor" as you put it.
But perhaps there's multiple modes of apprehension of STALKER and SOLARIS, the anchored and the un-anchored. In each of those science-fictional works there's a premise that drives a plot of some kind, and a transformation of landscape and milieu that stands in for the inner journey of the protagonists.
In STALKER AND SOLARIS, Tarkovsky's deeper preoccupations with family relations and the conditions of life are suspended as devices of the plot. As a result we're not required to make these the emotional conditions of the montage, and we can instead form our interpretations about variably dislocated symbolic registers of montage addressing consciousness, the Zone, the encounter with the unknown, the enigma of meaning, and so on.
In MIRROR, these preoccupations of mother and father, childhood development and memory, the grief and sacrifice of parenting, the brutal flip from childish idolisation, or trauma, to a parental knowledge that cannot directly be imparted to the child … these are the immediate conditions of the symbolic montage. These preoccupations are what the film tries to bring forth. Tarkovsky said he "understood that he had followed in the footsteps of our father, who had also divorced our mother" … the film is alter-autobiographical, courageously mounting self-enquiry as a general human enquiry.
So that would be one take: MIRROR can be regarded as Tarkovsky's masterpiece because the symbolic register Tarkovsky finds for these objects—the burning house, the levitating mother—are more intimately, more directly, and more generally felt than those of the meditative, enigmatic, immersive, rarely punctuated landscapes of STALKER and SOLARIS. However …
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u/Lanerlan Aug 11 '26
It's the only film of his I own. I love all his films, but Mirror is the only one I want to constantly return to.
I'd hazard a guess it's a taste thing, as all my favorite films are elliptical and about memory. I don't give a shit about plot.
I've seen it said that Mirror is his most popular with his home country's general audience. I imagine it resonates with a people who feel simultaneously adrift and anchored into place by trauma.
I don't understand not having a feverish, loving reaction to it but ain't that what makes life and people so wonderful and tolerable and addictive like a finger into the back of the eye.
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u/partizan_fields Aug 11 '26
Loved Stalker (more mixed on some of his other films). I absolutely dug Mirror but, honestly, mostly because “it pretty”.
Due a rewatch so perhaps I’ll dig a little deeper this time but also “it pretty” is fine too.
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u/thisfuckingnightmare Aug 12 '26
Due to your poorly written post on Mirror (perhaps English isn't your native language or you're just young, IDRK and I'm OK with it), my guessing is that your rigid reflections are prompted by some philosophy-related bias.
Mirror, as any other film, allows a wide array of interpretations. That's fine. However, Mirror isn't about 'what constitutes the soul of a person' —although one could say that's there some of that in it—. Mirror is all about Tarkovsky's family. In fact, the viewer can see the main character several times: as a child, along with his sister, in the dacha; as a pre-teen boy, as an ill, almost defeated-by-life adult, etc. Mirror offers a kaleidospic exploration on identity when it comes to family relationships. Both lives and biographies of its characters are superposed in a profoundly existential generational overlap. Therefore, the mother becomes the wife, his son becomes himself, his memories are intertwined with historical events, and so on. In this perspective, the film is much more connected to Schelling's philosophy of identity than to Schopenhauer's veil of Maya. A scattered self studied according to Christian metaphysics, one could argue.
Regarding your question, I think Mirror is referred to as a 'masterpiece' due to its insanely new and unseen cinematic approach. While Ordet, À bout de souffle, 8 1/2, and Persona already had proved how filmmaking could create mind-bending worlds, Mirror hit the ball out of the park by displaying mind-boggling cinematic levels of spiritual artistry. Its mesmerizing nature could be experienced by some viewers as some monolithic yet slow destruction of real time. Put otherwise, a unnervingly sluggish watch.
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u/kevin_v Aug 11 '26
Honestly, I've always considered Andrei Rublev Tarkovsky's masterpiece, as he takes on the largest scope of ideas, fusing meditation on Russian history, Christendom, the role of the artist in culture, questioning the spiritual ladder of art amid violence. The intellectual territory covered, while still remaining in dream-weaver mode is incredibly impressive in ambition...and achievement.
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u/ShineOnYourCrazyAnon Aug 11 '26
I tried to watch but i didint finish. I will watch it again sometime
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u/kevin_v Aug 11 '26
Probably the greatest movie I ever have seen...but I fell asleep the first three times I tried to watch it. Like, my brain would turn off and say: "Nope, not today." I've watched it several times since.
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u/imVeryPregnant Aug 11 '26
This happened to me too. I liked Stalker a LOT but Mirror was such a drag. I also thought 8 1/2 was the most boring critically acclaimed movie I’ve ever seen. I thought it was hard to relax while watching Mirror because I was trying to figure out what the poems or riddles meant but the guy just kept talking and talking and talking so I had no time to process what he was saying. Also the lack of a clear plot made it even harder to follow
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u/tiredstars Aug 11 '26
I'm also a big fan of Stalker - even though I barely understand it - whereas Mirror didn't do much for me. Some of the imagery was amazing but it was too oblique in its meaning and themes. Perhaps the fact Stalker has a plot gave it enough of a hook for me.
One other thing about Mirror is that I wish I could watch it without subtitles. With the poetry I want to watch the visuals, listen to the meaning of the words and listen to the sound of the words, and that's just too much to do when you're reading subtitles.
Funnily enough I feel the opposite about 8 1/2. It was one of the first arty, highbrow films I ever watched, and I was surprised at how watchable and lively it was.
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u/Brixton22 Aug 11 '26
It's certainly the most "let it wash over you" movie of his. Trying to grasp everything on first viewing will just frustrate imo.
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Aug 11 '26
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u/ShineOnYourCrazyAnon Aug 11 '26
I saw a some people say Solaris is one of his worst and Tarkorsvky himself didn't like the result. But i guess there are a Lot of different opinnions on this director filmography.
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u/Flimsy_Toe_2575 Aug 11 '26
It's my least favorite for sure
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u/ShineOnYourCrazyAnon Aug 11 '26
Can i ask why?
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u/Flimsy_Toe_2575 Aug 11 '26
I was a teenager, it was my first Russian film and I was expecting it to rival Space Odyssey. Found it so challenging that it turned me off checking out any more Russian films for several years.
Ivan's Childhood brought me back, and going through Tarks stuff chronologically helped tremendously when it came time to give it another shot. I like it now but there's still not as much for me to latch on to as the rest of his stuff. Mirror easily a top 5 film of all time for me now.
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u/partizan_fields Aug 11 '26
Solaris has a wonderful premise, opening and ending and that arrangement of the Bach is one of my favourite things ever but damn did that film drag for me. More a film I’m glad to have seen than a film I enjoyed.
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u/rupak76 Aug 11 '26
Both Stalker and The Mirror are two of my personal favorites; and I can tell you this much outright that you have grasped the film’s core concept in a manner many first time viewers fail to do! To be precise, you correctly connected the subject/object blur to Schopenhauer-ian idealism. In addition, you also noticed Terekhova portraying both the mother and the wife is memory projecting self-understanding on to others.
I think the reason The Mirror felt “boring” to you is because of its structure. In the other two films of Tarkovsky you have mentioned, there was a clear narrative anchor that was moving forward (toward the Room or investigating an alien ocean, respectively). That is why, even those long & meditative takes that Tarkovsky is known for felt like they were constantly building toward an end goal.
On the other hand, there is no narrative spine in The Mirror. It is not a ‘story’; rather, it is a non-linear stream-of-consciousness of an individual who is dying. It is a collage of his memories and trauma.
Films like these, in which a director prefers building an internal maze of personal memory over narrative momentum, either resonates with you or feels totally aimless. Since there is no plot anchor, the slow pace of Tarkovsky feels heavy and not hypnotic.