The Mirror (1975)

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A dying man in his forties remembers his past. His childhood, his mother, the war, personal moments and things that tell of the recent history of all the Russian nation.

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Directed By: Andrei Tarkovsky

Written By: Andrei Tarkovsky, Aleksandr Misharin, Arseni Tarkovsky

Starring: Oleg Yankovsky, Nikolay Grinko, Anatoliy Solonitsyn, Yuriy Nazarov, Alla Demidova, Margarita Terekhova, Filipp Yankovskiy, Tamara Ogorodnikova, Ignat Daniltsev, Larisa Tarkovskaya, Yuri Sventisov, Tamara Reshetnikova

Genre: Drama

AKAs: Mirror, Zerkalo

Country: Soviet Union

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The Mirror belongs to 108 collections

1. 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die (collaborative: moderated by kozan26 - 234 stars)

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5. They Shoot Pictures 1,000 Greatest Films (2008 revision) (collaborative: moderated by Scottathon - 39 stars)

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8. They Shoot Pictures 1,000 Greatest Films (2014 revision) (collaborative: moderated by Jehan - 27 stars)

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12. They Shoot Pictures 1,000 Greatest Films (2017 revision) (collaborative: moderated by iconogassed - 22 stars)

13. The Story of Film: An Odyssey (collaborative: moderated by rant1229 - 20 stars)

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All Ratings | With Reviews

Order by:

TCI | Percentile | Date Rated | # Stars (Reviews)

Stars	User	Rating
11	eveelun	87 _95th
I can't say I 'understood' everything, but I think that's besides the point. Beautiful, haunting imagery incorporating interesting use of color, smooth and fluid camera movement and transition, ambiguous temporal and character delineation, and vivid poetic monologues make this a memorable feature.
8	Hawkins	100 _99th
Fully submerged in the realm of shared dreaming, cinema steeped in the ineffable gestures of abstract painting and music rather than the concrete narratives of theater and literature. I felt like I stared into someone's soul unfolding and then saw my own. Sublime!
6	Farzan	100 _99th
Really hard to follow everything that takes place in this film, but with repeat viewings, and a decent understanding of the narrative, you can realize that you are watching one of the greatest and most beautiful films ever made. Tarkovsky is truly a genius, his cinematography is incomparable. This film is something else, it has such memorable scenes, and such a big sense of grandeur. One of my favorite scenes is that of which he speaks of his repeated dream. Extremely unique. Unforgettable film.
6	TedDedon	97 _97th
The Mirror is really quite astonishing in terms of what it produces and how it makes you feel. It's not the easiest movie to follow due to strange subtitles and lack of a cohesive narrative--which is entirely the point--but it's superb and truly beautiful all the way through. The Mirror is one of Tarkovsky's most poignant movies and surely one of his best.
6	goremeat	80 _76th
Several truly beautiful moments; like a tapestry of memories/dreams. It resonated with me much more strongly after reading about the background of Tarkovsky and what the film represented. Disappointingly, the film meanders and falls at many turns. Tarkovsky's metaphysical beliefs were a load of nonsense; and so his symbolism crumbled apart into the empty pseudo-philosophy mess they were designed to dress up. Very masturbatory film, but with some exquisitely haunting scenes.
6	IeuanDP	100 _99th
A non-linear collection of a person's peculiarly resonant memories and dreams. As the focus oscillates between generations, family members, colour, sepia, and black & white, he manages to create an authentically nostalgic, non-lucid portrayal of these images. Like our own dreams and memories, surrealism and reality overlap, and they're too rich and profuse to narrate, or even remember without foggy tangents, emotional biases and an uncertain clarity. Tarkovsky captures this beautifully.
6	dardan	100 _99th
Unregainable loss, and at the same time immortality through artifice. Once a man named Narcissus looked into the waters of his unconscious, looking for reflections to be put in an answer complete. Through meditative introspection, in a dislocated way, as selfobjects (Kohut), a world lost - parents, wars, now archival footage, a traumatic 'Real', reappear. It weighs on the subject as time: a childhood, a forgetting, a life - as sculptings, as poetic images, they fly by, live on without trace.
5	Pickpocket	3 _28th
So confusing and frustrating in almost every single way. You shouldn't have to read a plot synopsis after you're done watching a film to attempt to understand what you just watched. The voiceover adds to the confusion and it's nearly impossible to follow. Anyone who understood this is either a genius and shouldn't waste time watching films or is straight up lying. Yes, it does look pretty. But there's thousands upon thousands of pretty films so please stop confusing me with your absent plots.
5	paulofilmo	80 _98th
Greatest depiction of mind on film. It is simultaneously, inextricably, completely personal and completely impersonal.
5	purgatos	98 _99th
Don't feel like you need to "get" everything, you'll overthink it.
5	Cinema_Asia	95 _98th
We are born, we live, and then we die. There's a clear beginning and end of our physical being but throughout our lives our memories, dreams, and perceptions often live simultaneous in the past, present, and future. There is no time except what we perceive as human beings. The film captures this abstraction of the mind and how our memories play a part in how we perceive ourselves and others.
4	djross	99 _99th
Cinema is the art form with the greatest potential to expose the uncanniness of the human relationship to time, in its strangeness, repetitiveness, variety, beauty, terror and violence, and with this film Tarkovsky is perhaps the only one to have really grasped this potential. Re-watched in 2021, it seems to be about a man who wishes to atone for his life: although unclear, this does not diminish and in fact adds to a mysteriousness that builds to a crescendo with the magnificent final scene.
4	Suture Self	11 _99th
I've never been keen on Tarkovsky's metaphysical babble, which probably explains my lukewarm reaction to his more meandering movies like Stalker or Solaris. However, The Mirror is the first film of his that's truly moved me. It resembles, both in structure and mood, a nightmare, and, despite the stream-of-consciousness approach, has a very grounded human element, focusing on memories of family and childhood in a way that I have a hard time describing. I felt a great sense of sadness and longing.
4	emtilt	100 _99th
An unbearably beautiful film.
4	inhmn	100 _99th
Tarkovsky's cinema can't be beaten. It's a new form for aesthetic and magnificent. There's nothing to "get" - just flow with the pure energy that this movies delivers.
3	MartinTeller	82 _73rd
Very intriguing and loaded with mesmerizing imagery.
3	Magb	85 _73rd
This is definitely a film that will stand up well to repeat viewings. Even though it clocks in at a reasonable runtime, The Mirror is filled with so many different images and situations that taking it all in and "piecing it together" in your mind after seeing the film just once is practically impossible. Still, I got a lot from the experience. And this is the sort of film that has to be experienced -- it can't be explained without most of its impact being lost in the process.
3	Alex Watkins	5 _91st
A mesmerizing exploration of the memories of a man and a nation alike. It seems Tarkovsky is - in his own uncompromisingly radical and elliptical way - to capture nothing less than the soul of a nation. It's one of the few films that captures the scope and beauty of an epic poem. For that alone, it should be treasured.
3	frederic_g54	7 _57th
Repeat viewings probably won't help since Tarkovsky likes to leave most questions unanswered, I mean the plot is quite incomprehensible. One dream sequence aside (75 minutes in), I think the photography is far from being a staggering triumph. I respect the effort but I think it's impossible to love this film or think of it as a masterpiece. This is Tarkovsky's most personal work/creation, and what's more personal than the unconditional love for one's child.
3	deaddilly	95 _98th
On the past shaping the present and the present shaping the past. A kaleidoscope of the mind considering the lasting imprint of childhood memory as it forms the mysteries of our life. A nostalgia for curiousity. This is a filmmaker /really/ seeking an ultimate personal truth.
2	jimmynmu	94 _96th
Difficult to understand everything, but it's incredibly beautiful. Visually this is just as strong as his other films, full of strong camerawork and memorable imagery.
2	Moribunny	63 _60th
If you've wondered why Tarkovsky's cinematography is so revered, here you go. Audio-visually this movie is no less than a marvel to behold. It's also unabashedly literate and artsy. Obviously a very personal movie, it features a deliberately incoherent, almost incomprehensible narrative, goes back and forth in time without warning, mixes up the characters, digresses endlessly and abounds with symbolism, and I have to say movies like this don't affect me as much as they would like to.
2	PeaceAnarchy	90 _94th
Beautiful, haunting, magnificent, a great film. I can't pretend to understand what Tarkovsky was trying to say, but I got a lot out of it anyway, from the superb images to the emotional connections that underlie it. Tarkovsky is always slow and a bit hard to get into but this actually moves at a decent pace and the performances helped to keep me interested even when I wasn't sure what was going on.
2	kubricksucks	100 _98th
poo? ?????d
2	JooJoo	5 _80th
I love it.....and I don't love it.
2	Mentaculus	88 _87th
Accomplishes for Cinema what Marcel Proust's Swann's Way did for Prose. Its statement on Memory is so beautiful and honest to the Human Condition it leaves a pain in your gut.
2	amerigo	75 _37th
Look, let's be real. Yeah, it's Tarkovsky and yeah, he's got some great visuals here and there, but it's pretty much just context-less conversations of Russian intellectuals agonizing over shitty Russian life. It's dull and it's bleak and it didn't age well. This is a far cry from Stalker, a far cry from Solaris. Shit, even The Sacrifice was a better movie. And the common theme is coherence. It's easy to make a "very personal" film full of emotional masturbation--it's hard to make it watchable.
2	KasperL	50 _30th
Some shots were visually arresting, some scenes quietly intense. This is a movie that tries to produce feelings instead of a story. Frustratingly inaccessible.
2	Sarajevo	100 _86th
This is simply the greatest cinematic achievement in film history to me.
2	Luna6ix	73 _44th
Tarkovsky, as always, makes it look damn good. The problem with this movie is that it's so much work to follow the plot that it becomes exhausting, and by the end I just gave up and resigned myself to not understanding. Also, the voice over narration was intrusive and pseudo-intellectual crap. At least Tarkovsky made it beautiful, so it wasn't a total loss.
2	edkrak	60 _43rd
On the one hand I really liked the surreal structure of this film on the other I was bored way too often. Feels like Tarkovsky filmed one of his dreams - usually I love such experiments, but his dreams seem to be so different from mine that I couldn't quite get it. Even though I didn't really like this film I'm still glad I saw it.
2	Jeb	100 _98th
Tarkovsky nevers fails to amaze me. He's simply the most talented and incredible director ever to hit this world! During the first 5 seconds, you already know that this one of the most beautiful and awesome movies ever! It has such memorable scenes, and the imagery is great! The Mirror is simply a classic in my book!
2	astrakhan	80 _74th
Mesmerising but confusing, a bit like reading exquisite poetry in braille using your toes.
2	PierreTheron	100 _95th
Like all Tarkovsky, Mirror's beauty is transcendental, there's the feeling that these images that gorgeously pervade each and every iota of the film was done with a divine hand. Mirror doesn't seem so much to have been "built", rather it is an organic experience that has been "grown". The film appears to be extremely personal - as though molded single-handedly - and yet there's a sense of awe that exists simply at the pure deftness of technique displayed. Beautiful and majestic, definite watch.
2	waddayanuts	27 _0th
Even though I found this to be the most boring film I'd ever seen, I decided to give it another try. This second time I was prepared with lots of coffee and was really focused. But yet again I failed to really grasp what this film is about. And yes, there are some beautiful tracking shots but, hell, I could think of numerous films that are more beautiful than this one. Tarkovsky's own Andrey Rublyov for one. But well, it's maybe not THE most boring film - but top 3 (bottom 3?) for sure.
2	profmoriarty	95 _90th
Tarkovsky's "attempt to talk about" himself: The Mirror is a suspicious record of director's childhood, and the narration of his relations and feelings towards his loved ones. Mixed up the present time with dreams and memories by unclear transitions, The Mirror suggests a plot which is out of conventional narrative techniques. In other word the film can be seen as Tarkovsky's effort to picture one's soul. You may need to watch it more than a single time, because it requires an "active" watching.
2	feublo	90 _90th
A Tarkovsky masterpiece. If all of life's elements could wipe us free from this world, the memories would live on and continue to shape us.
1	Derekstar	60 _36th
The Mirror is clearly good, but I wasn't equipped to fully understand it. I got lost in the non-chronological stuff.
1	Stain	0 _8th
Another Tarkovsky film that's so boring that I'd caution anyone with a heart condition against watching it
1	Anomaly	81 _77th
Memories and emotions directly from Tarkovsky's brain. I'd probably understand it a bit better if I knew more about Russian history, but I do know that the use of the camera in here is some of the best I've ever seen.
1	immolations	100 _97th
A unique poetic film that combines aspects of Tarkovsky's childhood and early life in a dreamlike and non-linear fashion. Even if you fail to understand the 'plot', it is still a masterpiece of film making which should be watched. Tarkovsky successfully combines many tangents into what I believe is his best work.
1	chengming	75 _76th
I love the poetry in the visuals, not so much that which is recited.
1	psychedelicr	100 _99th
One of my favorites, because of its complex simplicity. Every frame is glorious! Not many filmmakers can do that! Gripping, even though the pacing is extremely calm. Borders on narrative, avant-garde, arthouse, and diary--the mix is too good to be true. A classic forever, at least for me.
1	Councillor	90 _89th
Watch this film as if it were a Mirror. See yourself and see Tarkovsky at the same time.
1	moraesfelipe	94 _97th
I could try to explain a lot of things about this movie, but I just can think about how beautiful, poetic and deep it is.
1	omgfridge	9 _92nd
Tarkovsky is like a Russian Terrence Malick. Beautiful cinematography where every shot tells a story. Obviously a personal movie for the director but a very powerful one for everyone else.
1	ZayanK	97 _97th
Sorry, Andrei Rublev, but this is now my favorite Tarkovsky.
1	Bown	77 _44th
um.......i guess you had to be there?
1	wetwillies	95 _93rd
Reflecting what, exactly? Seemingly all of human existence to be honest. A cryptically beautiful, reflexive and haunting masterwork. A film about Tarkovsky, about Russia, about the entirety of the human race. Memory, ambition, death. All of that good stuff.
1	roofs_runner	90 _85th
Beautiful piece of art. The plot is really difficult to follow but it is rather a complex canvas of human life, love and art than a feature film. Tarkovsky has created something that will remain in the golden history of cinematography forever, but this immense body of work wouldn't have been that bright without one of the greatest operators in the history - Georgiy Rerberg. So talented and so unfairly treated by Tarkovsky.
1	d_drudges	95 _98th
It's simply frightening how well Tarkovsky can depict abstract ideas like the human imagination, it seems effortless. The atmosphere is beautiful, melancholic but optimistic at the same time. The only thing that keeps the movie from being perfect is how it slipped into being overly confusing at times.
1	overrated	49 _46th
This is impressive in how directly someone's mind is being projected onto film, but Tarkovsky's consciousness doesn't offer any purchase for access or engagement. Maybe one day I'll try again, but most likely not.
1	PetrosTser	50 _19th
"Zerkalo" is quite a pretty film to stare at, has some good acting in it and I respect the intentions. But it remains boring and incoherent. If one needs to read plot summaries, reviews and interviews with the director to eventually discover what it's all about, then something's lost somewhere. And I could forgive that if the film was a pleasant watch or elicited strong feelings. But this is just meh; plodding and unengaging on both a cerebral and an emotional level.
1	DesertPunk	89 _96th
Emotionally crushing, and perfectly reflects the complex and bittersweet emotions we feel as we grow older.
1	Nepeta	100 _99th
Tarkovsky crafts a film out of memory - the image of Terekhova sitting on a fence, back to the camera, staring out over the fields is an image which stirred a deep sense of nostalgia within me with its warmth, with its very real beauty, with that certain intangible something which makes this film so exceptional. An overwhelming amount happens in this film at a slow, captivating, luxurious pace and it all happens extremely beautifully.
1	karamazov.	76 _94th
Not an "experience," but a film. Pure film.
1	lofisofi	93 _96th
beautiful

Average Percentile 76.18% from 2266 Ratings