THE MIRROR Movie Review

Zerkalo
A White White Boy

Andrei Tarkovsky's The Mirror is a stunning, imagist memoir of a child's life in Russia during World War II, but that's only on the surface. Beneath that exquisite surface is an emotional history of his nation, told through flashbacks to key moments in Russian history which are then juxtaposed with the “modern” story, blending past and present in a way that infuses the film with truths well beyond the specific. This is an historical film about feeling, which seems, in the end, as valid a method of documenting the march of time as any—perhaps more so. It's a one-of-a-kind, masterful work of art.

NEXT STOP … My Name Is Ivan, Andrei Rublev, The Sacrifice

1975 106m/C RU Margarita Terekhova, Philip Yankovsky, Ignat Daniltsev, Oleg Yankovsky; D: Andrei Tarkovsky; W: Andrei Tarkovsky; C: Georgy Rerberg; M: Eduard Artemyev. VHS TPV, KIV