Mirror (1975)

Mirror (1975) is a meditative, non‑linear film by Andrei Tarkovsky that unfolds as the interior recollections of a dying man in his forties. Rather than a conventional plot, the movie strings together childhood memories, wartime scenes, intimate family moments and a painful domestic breakup with archival newsreel footage, spoken poetry and dreamlike images. The result is a personal portrait that doubles as a reflection on recent Russian history and collective memory. Watching Mirror is an immersive sensory experience: long, lingering takes; striking compositions in color and black‑and‑white; a layered soundscape of voices, music and ambient noise; and recurring visual motifs (water, wind, hands, landscapes) that echo and refract one another. The film asks viewers to assemble meaning from associative jumps and fragments rather than from explicit exposition, so it rewards patience and openness to visual poetry. Expect an emotional, contemplative ride rather than a tidy narrative. Mirror is best seen as a cinematic poem — slow, enigmatic and richly textured — that invites you to inhabit a mind between memory and mortality and to feel both private loss and the sweep of history.

Actors: Margarita Terekhova, Filipp Yankovskiy, Ignat Daniltsev

Director: Andrei Tarkovsky

Runtime: 107 min

Genres: Biography, Drama

82 /100 7.9 /10 8.1 /10