Because of time’s perpetual presence and abstract notion, it becomes “a new muse” (59) for the artist who believes, as Andrei Tarkovsky, that the purpose of his work is to find and communicate “the meaning of his existence” (36). For this reason, Tarkovsky’s Mirror seems to be such a sincere depiction of the author’s life with its singular mosaic quality. “The image makes palpable a unity in which manifold different elements are contiguous and reach over into each other” (38). In fact, the seemingly disjunctive scenes, which range from dreams, present time, newsreels, memory, flashbacks, and fantasy, talk to each other with an intangible dialogue that provides a coherent direction to the whole film.
Events that enclose entire populations, such as wars, are scaled down to the private lives of individuals whose mix of routine and sporadic events provide an accessible foundation to the idea of time circularity, duality, and infinity. For example, with the swift glimpse of a cat crossing the hallway while Ignat is talking on the phone, Tarkovsky provides a faint connection with Alexei’s summerhouse where he would play with his black cat while having breakfast. Further events mildly mirror past and present throughout the film. For instance, when Ignat helps his mother pick up the content of her purse from the floor, he mentions, “it’s like it all happened once. But I’ve never been here before.” This remark functions as a premonition for a later scene that is set in his father’s past: before stepping into a neighbor’s home, Alexei’s mother drops the jewelry she was trying to exchange for food. The visual correlation of these scenes cannot be disregarded even if the transmutation of events is far from literal or obvious. The spectator perceives such images in a subconscious way since they are never markedly brought to the foreground. Tarkovsky provides these kinds of cues in such an elegant manner that the spectator does not know exactly the reason why a scene echoes another one in an emotional level. Their resemblance is thus a barely perceptible whisper that caresses the viewer’s memory.
Nevertheless, Tarkovsky also explores dualities in a more candid manner by using the same actors to represent his mother and wife, as well as Alexei as a teenager and his son Ignat. This deliberate aesthetic choice emphasizes the inescapable relativism that lies in the eye of the beholder. The fact that everything which is set in the past was reassembled and projected through Tarkovsky’s eye, is explicitly explained by Alexei as he tells his wife “when I recall my childhood and Mother, somehow she always has your face.” This provides the tacit understanding that even flashbacks are the product of memory, and thus altered from the actual past. As he explains, “I see chronicle as the ultimate cinema; for me it is not a way of filming but a way of reconstructing, of recreating life” (65).
Such recreation of life, as Tarkovsky put it, is not exclusively about the director’s concerns but rather those shared by entire generations. In fact, one of the most gripping traits of film is its capacity to encapsulate the mindset and concerns of a precise period. Population’s scars are interpreted and revealed by the artist who is trying to come to terms with his own anxieties. Tarkovsky conciliated with his past by confronting it through the cinematic prism, which provided him the means to suture his personal wounds as well as those shared by his generation.
As the film unfolds, the political undertone never leaves the frame. However, it is sharply brought to the foreground in the flashback where Alexei’s mother evokes her job at the newspaper. This black and white sequence candidly conveys the deep angst and fear that the Soviet regime had generated across the population.
Even though Margarita Terekhova is a stellar actress who was able to trespass the screen by emotionally touching her viewers, Tarkovsky’s use of cinematic tools enhanced her performance and brought it to an even higher level. For example, as she runs under the rain in the beginning of this sequence, the camera gently floats as it follows her. The movement of the camera is synchronized with her heavy respiration. This overwhelming sound diffuses the tone of the suffocating regime, a period through which people had to grasp for air in order to survive. Such suggestive use of sound is furthered explored when Maroussia and Liza cross the printing office. Here, the methodical sound of printing machines invades the scene, overruling any adjacent sound and conversation. Such unstoppable pounding also alludes to the Soviet regime as it had suppressed the multiplicity of ideologies and viewpoints.
In addition to the sound, the mise-en-scéne of this sequence plays an important role to allude to the repressions and fears of the period. In particular, after Maroussia discovers there was no mistake in the special edition, she leaves the printing office to cross a white corridor as the camera, at a slight low angle, tracks backwards while she walks towards it. This striped and symmetric hallway resembles a hospital: it is white, sterile, and clear. Such metaphor unveils the idea that, just like a hospital, newspapers were an antiseptic institution meant to contain and eradicate the proliferation of different ideologies. Thus, they were a medium with spotless editions that covered up the stench of the fermenting death and terror caused by the regime.
As numerous other sequences, this scene’s closure is related to water: Maroussia enters into the communal bathroom to take a shower. However, this scene does not reach a state of complete placidity because the sound of dropping water hunts the frame. Once again, Tarkovsky’s elegance for intrinsic undertones is corroborated. The consecutive sound of water alludes to the famous Chinese psychological torture that aimed to drain sanity out of its targets.such soundtrack is a reminder of the Soviets in power and the unavoidable danger they represented.
In addition to evoking the Soviet’s presence, the perpetual sound of doping water connects this sequence with a previous black and white dream-scene: a nightmare composed by Alexei’s childhood fears and memories, namely the presence and absence of his father. This is the first time Alexei’s father is introduced. The camera captures a fleeting glimpse of his hunched and drizzled back while he pours warm water in Maroussi’s hair. The emotional damage done by Alexei’s father to Maroussi is projected in a literal representation. After he had poured the water on her head, she slowly raises, morphed into a marine monster, as her long and wet hair drapes and covers her face. Slow motion emphasizes the terror engraved in this scene as the mother flaps her hands, loosing all trade of her persona. However, from Alexei’s viewpoint, not only has his father intrinsically damaged his mother with the void left by his absence, but he also destroyed the whole family structure along with its safety. This is once again signified by a tangible metaphor: the house falls into pieces as water drips through the walls and ceiling. This scene exemplifies Tarkovsky as the poet of images, proving that he “has the imagination and psychology of a child, for his impressions of the world are immediate, however profound his ideals about the world may be” (41). He translated his childhood’s feelings and interpretations of the world around him with outstanding sincerity.
This dream-scene, which revolves around the destruction of a safe world by the irruption of water, transitions into Alexei’s present time through the mise-en-scéne: the paint in the walls is chipping off as a result of water infiltration. Tarkovsky’s floating camera wanders through the hallways while Alexei’s voice fills his visual absence. Because we are not presented with a person, a body, and a face to connect with Alexei’s voice, there is an unavoidable humanization of the insights of the home. The mise-en-scéne is thus scrutinized as if it were the body of Alexei and an insight to his subconscious. It becomes evident that the crumbling walls of his childhood have left visible marks in the walls of his adulthood like childhood traumas mark adults’ psyche. Therefore, the walls are not only walls but rather the pillars that safeguard his feelings and past, which have acquired a rotten quality due to water and childhood damages. The visible decay of the walls represents the childhood scars that were revealed in the previous scene, proving the dialogue established through the seemingly unrelated scenes of Mirror.
