About the film
Mirror has no ordinary plot. A man we barely see looks back on his life: a childhood in the countryside before the war, a mother waiting for a father who does not return, a failed marriage, and the history of his country seen in newsreels.
Margarita Terekhova plays both the hero's mother and his wife, and Tarkovsky moves freely between memory, dream and reality. Many scenes, such as a barn on fire in the rain, are among the most famous images in cinema.
It is Tarkovsky's most personal film. Watch it like a poem rather than a story.
Did you know?
- The poems in the film were written and read by the director's father, the poet Arseny Tarkovsky.
- Tarkovsky's own mother appears in the film.
- Soviet officials found the film hard to understand and gave it only a limited release.
