Mirror

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.

Released	7 Mar 1975
Genres	Drama, History
Runtime	1 hour, 47 minutes
Countries	Soviet Union

Liked by

Michael Haneke

Source: BFI ↗
One of my biggest idols is Andrei Tarkovsky. He inspired me very early in my career. I was at film school and I didn’t know of him at the time. I saw a clip on TV from his film The Mirror that is supposed to be about his childhood, a very complicated story. We see a very long camera track towards a cabin at the edge of a field inside a pinewood forest. There is a mysterious woman sitting on a fence with a very sensual pimple on her head. Tarkovsky always had women characters with some defect and they’re always angry, of course. She sits on the fence and a doctor comes, well, he says he’s a doctor, everything very Dostoyevsky. The camera moves in toward the cabin, he sits on the fence. The fence breaks and they fall down. He’s laughing and she’s angry, of course. And he says: “It’s interesting to fall down with an interesting lady.” It doesn’t matter what he said, but to experience this was totally wild. Once in your life you experience something where you say: “This can’t be true.” To see this little cabin in this forest. It’s hard to say what’s special about it, it was magical, if something is from Mars and not from Earth. It’s almost like David Bowie, he was kind of from Mars. I saw it on a small TV, not even a big one. It was captivating. I was thinking: “What’s going on here?”. It was the small details that got my attention, but if you love the medium of film, it was mesmerising. It was a fantastic movie, unpredictable, in all ways. I don’t know if it was the colors, if you make a tracking shot that has no purpose in itself. It wasn’t just a shot that went from beginning to end. It was not the purpose of the camera move to get closer, it was a journey through the forest. I’m sure there was some slow-motion, he uses that a lot in the film. I was totally mesmerised for days. After seeing it 20–30 times, I still don’t understand it, any more than the first time I saw it. I was shocking I have to say.

Lars von Trier

Source: Vimeo ↗