Mirror

1975 ‘Зеркало’ Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky

A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.

Margarita Terekhova Ignat Daniltsev Larisa Tarkovskaya Alla Demidova Anatoliy Solonitsyn Nikolay Grinko Tamara Ogorodnikova Yuriy Nazarov Oleg Yankovskiy Filipp Yankovsky Yuri Sventikov Tatyana Reshetnikova Mariya Tarkovskaya-Vishnyakova Olga Kizilova Ernesto del Bosque Luis Correcher Ángel Gutiérrez Dionisio García Zapico Tomas Pamies Teresa Del Bosque Tatiana Del Bosque Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy Arseny Tarkovsky

Alternative Titles

写真, Zerkalo, The Mirror, El espejo, De Spiegel, 거울

drama history

107 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Karsten Runquist ★★★★★ 21

What makes a life a life? The people who raised you? The places you went? The home you grew up in? The historical events that occurred? The relationships you had? The deaths you witnessed? The philosophies you learned? This film is saying these are all correct, focusing on the idea that life is based off memory. Which then poses the question, is life only based off memory? Is what you didn't remember not considered a part of your life? Told with a visual style that had me literally pausing the film to take it all in, Mirror introduced me to a life so distant from my own but through a lens that felt so familiar. It's silly to think I or anyone is going to figure out the purpose and meaning behind life, but if there's anyone that'll make you feel like you're a little bit closer to figuring it out, it's Andrei Tarkovsky.
Review by SilentDawn 17

Think about this.
Behind a massively thick wall of bricks, there's a delicious treasure trove of waffles. Freshly made and bursting with flavor, these waffles are stacked into the heavens, just waiting to be eaten.
However, there's a catch. The brick wall can only be broken using your bare hands, and here I am, desperately slamming my knuckles against this seemingly unbreakable wall.
Everybody is eating the waffles except me, and my hands are hurting.
Help.
Review by Eli Hayes ★★★★★ 74

Tarkovsky is the
greatest filmmaker
of all-time. By far.
No other filmmaker
even comes close.
Review by Darren Carver-Balsiger ★★★★★ 68

Dear Mum,
I never said "I love you" enough. I always meant to, but I never knew how to express my emotions. As a child I didn't understand, as an adult I don't have the humility to admit my many emotional failings. With dad being how he is, and me being me, I wonder if you ever heard it enough. But know this now, I love you. You are the reason for my every success.
As a child I didn't like to hug you. I didn't like contact, I didn't like closeness. Family to me always seemed arbitrary. But having you as my mother meant so much to me. Every single time I had an epileptic seizure, you found me…
Review by Stevie ★★★½ 8

Name a more iconic duo than Andrei Tarkovsky and me falling asleep. I'll wait.
Review by DirkH ★★★★★ 8

Film #7 of Make me watch your favourite.
Recommended by Adam Cook and Henrik Løberg.
Whenever I wake up from a half remembered dream I always wish I could go back and explore just what my subconscious was trying to tell me, or come to terms with. With Tarkovsky's The Mirror, which felt like just that, a waking dream, I had the luxury of revisiting it. And that I did. After finishing it I immediately watched it again. It is a film deserving of multiple watches, it needs it to come to terms with its architecture, to distill any meaning from it.
Before I watch this again, which I most definitely will, I will need to do more research as…
Review by Gaspar ★★★★ 18

I stand in front of a crowd of hundreds of thousands, all composed of eager Tarkovsky fans holding their assorted steelbooks. I grin nervously at the gathered crowd. I didn't think there'd be so many!
I clear my throat and turn my eyes to the space in between the spotlights.
"Mirror is..."
The crowd collectively leans forward in their chairs.
"...a high eight."
A confused murmur arises from the crowd. Surely I have misspoken! I didn't say "a perfect ten"? A "ten" would've also been acceptable. As I look out into the crowd, my expression not changing, the realization settles in. The murmur turns to an angry buzz. I've kicked the hornet's nest.
A copy of Nostalgia glances off my…
Review by puffin ★★★★★ 19

Tarkovsky is a bit different from other slow cinema artists that dominate other parts of the world. Like filmmakers such as Bela Tarr and Lav Diaz, Tarkovsky holds shots for long periods of time, perhaps with more camera movement than the others, yet when Tarr and Diaz move their shots, they match the mood out of necessity. Their films are slow, so their camera movements are slow as well, makes sense, and they do it spectacularly. Tarkovsky moves his camera slowly because there's so much detail in his colors, his lighting, every single detail is so pronounced, it takes time for us to absorb such minor objects into our world of the frame. He refuses to rush past the place…
Review by laird ★★★★★

Broken mirror in the streets, levitating woman in the sheets
Review by Eli Hayes ★★★★★ 12

"Each moment of our dates, not many,
We celebrated as an Epiphany.
Alone in the whole world.
More daring and lighter than a bird
Down the stairs, like a dizzy apparition,
You came to take me on your road,
Through rain-soaked lilacs,
To your own possession,
To the looking glass world.
As night descended
I was blessed with grace,
The altar gate opened up,
And in the darkness shining
And slowly reclining
Was your body naked.
On waking up I said:
God bless you!
Although I knew how daring and undue
My blessing was: You were fast asleep,
Your closed eyelids with the universal blue
The lilac on the table so strained to sweep.
Touched by the blue, your lids…
Review by Wesley R. Ball ★★★★★ 2

In Soviet Russia, mind bends you.
Review by Dirk Diggler ★★★★★ 9

Mirror is a poetic, abstract and deeply beautiful film that offers glimpses of memories from a childhood and life of a dying man, and also happens to be one of the most mesmerizing cinematic experiences i've had. It's a non-linear, jumbled, quiet, deliberate and slow film that puts you into a meditative state of mind with it's complex structure, lingering camerawork, dream-like atmosphere, and audiovisual treats. While the whole film is otherworldly beautiful, the burning barn sequence is a contender for the most beautifully filmed sequence of all time. And I was on the verge of tears during the ending. Mirror can be a difficult watch, but it is undoubtedly a masterpiece of poetic and visual filmmaking, a human and resonating film that left me speechless.

Recent reviews

Review by Optimus Slime

Rating this seems pretty counter-intuitive at the moment. I'm only tangentially familiar with Tarkovsky and am unable to connect the presumably self-insert to themes in his other works, outside of the obvious trauma of being raised in a wartime Soviet Union and the potential fear of passing on that emotional trauma to hypothetical offspring. Also, I went into this mostly blind...
Despite how unapproachable a non-linear, metaphysical, and vaguely/presumably autobiographical work of a highly-touted foreign to me language filmmaker ( who I forgot made stalker until after my one hour drive home from the drive-in... I still need to see that, as mentioned above) would seem, there's still a lot to marvel at for a first-time view. Lots of long…
Review by DowJones ★★★★½ 1

This was the first movie I’ve seen in a theater since seeing Come and See last March.
Just sitting in the theater seats and seeing previews almost made me cry. Fuck COVID.
Mirror’s a beautiful puzzle that makes a little bit more sense every time you try it. It never feels intentionally vague or overly mysterious.
Tarkovsky has some psychic way to his directing where everything feels captured, not performed. I can’t understand it.
Review by aleszandra ★½

This is a perfect movie for people who want to share aesthetic posts on an Instagram account dedicated to cinephiles
Review by Upakaew Here ★★★★★

great
Review by Brian Skutle ★★★★½

sonic-cinema.com/movie/the-mirror/
Review by Bertran ★★★★★ 1

de les millors pelis k he vist? SÍ
com tracta el tema de la família, els planos de la casa buida, la foto, l'actriu, la veu en off, els flashbacks, esk tot bé, no tinc queixes, quina passada
as a concept, s'ha convertit en un referent a la vida
Review by Churupito, El Matador

eu te amo Tarkovsky almoçando eu te amoo
Review by Niels Chapuis ★★★★½ 8

Comment est ce possible de faire autant abstrait et pourtant autant limpide ?
Je veux pas faire de review, ce film se ressent.
C'est d'une beauté poétique à couper le souffle. Les séquences du docteur, de la cabane en flamme et du final font partie des plus belles que j'ai vu.
Et ce vent... mystérieux, fantastique, presque angoissant. Un morceau de cinéma.
Je pense avoir compris la portée autobiographique du machin, et j'y reviendrai quand j'aurais fini la filmo de Tarkovsky. Je sais pas si c'est son chef d'oeuvre mais ça s'en rapproche.
Review by Prithwish Roy ★★★★½ 8

"Words can't express everything a man says. Words are flaccid."
As Mr. Tarkovsky once said, "if you look for a meaning, you'll miss everything that happens". So, I abided by his words and truth be told, it was a sheer delightful experience to watch past and present juxtapose with poetry and imagery, with brilliance.
That silence in between the frames speaks so much for the characters, their catharsis, and finally, a man's anecdotes in his dying days, feelings etched out in verses and quotations, a cinematic atmosphere thus created magnanimously, and those echoes amongst the lush green valleys stays with one after the screen turns black and the credits start rolling.
Review by Simon Reinhardt ★★★★★

wild energy
Review by aidan

shes hot
Review by Il_Capitano ★★★★½ 2

🇬🇧 Mirror
What really means the pass of the time?
Well Tarkovsky again get surprised me with this incredible film.
The poetry and the philosophy are enough things to explain the pain what can feel each person due to the pass of the time.
That thing is imposible to avoid and in this film I think that Tarkovsky explain to the viewer each feeling, each suffering... can't be represented in a better way as he did.
The mirror name of this film, explain a lot of thing about this film. Cuz the characters in a retrospective way are able to explain all the story (past and present).
Also is remarkable that all film is telling in retrospective I mean, explaining…