Andrei Tarkovsky's ravishing Mirror gets the restoration cinephiles have been waiting for, February 5 to 18 at the Cinematheque
A refreshed look at the Russian master’s dreamlike 1974 meditation on war, time, and his own memories
The Cinematheque streams Mirror from February 5 to 18
“Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality,” Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky wrote in Sculpting in Time, his book about art and cinema.
And with that in mind, Mirror—the mid-career film that is the master’s most autobiographical—is pure poetry. Considered one of the greatest films of all time, the ravishing meditation on war, memory, and—most of all—time has just been restored by a 2K scan of the original negative, care of Janus Films.
In it the past and present collage together, as do black-and-white and saturated colours, fictional and archival footage. Tarkovsky draws from his own childhood recollections of growing up during the Second World War, and creates a world of hallucinatory imagery—a woman floating eerily above an iron bed as a bird flies by; the ceiling of an old house caving in and gushing water.
Made after his better known Solaris, it's well worth a look. Stream it on the biggest screen you own, and throw away all your notions of time and space.
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