Directed by:
Andrei Arsenyevich TarkovskyScreenplay:
Andrei Arsenyevich TarkovskyCinematography:
Georgij RerbergComposer:
Eduard ArtemyevCast:
Margarita Těrechova, Oleg Yankovskiy, Filipp Yankovskiy, Ignat Daniltsev, Nikolay Grinko, Алла Демидова, Anatoly Solonitsyn, Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy (more)Plots(1)
With THE MIRROR, legendary Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky crafts perhaps his most profound and compelling film. What started off for Tarkovsky as a planned series of interviews with his own mother evolved into a lyrical and complex circular meditation on love, loyalty, memory, and history. Time shifts and generations merge as a single extraordinary actress (Margarita Terekhova) plays the narrator's former wife as well as his mother. Tarkovsky's memories as well as those of his mother are intermingled as a dark, sumptuous, and dreamlike pre-World War II Russia is evoked, accompanied throughout by the voice of Tarkovsky's father reading his own elegiac poetry. The spectacle of nature and its ubiquitous and ever-shifting presence is captured by Tarkovsky's camera as if by magic--the family cabin nestled deep in the verdant woods, a barn on fire in the middle of a gentle rainstorm, a gigantic wind enveloping a man as he walks through a wheat field--all creating indelible images with deep if mysterious emotional resonance. As the timeline shifts between the narrator's generation and his mother's, newsreel footage of Russian wars, triumphs, and disasters are juxtaposed with imagined scenes from the past, present, and future, crafting a silently lucid cinematic panopticon of memory, history, and nature. (official distributor synopsis)
(more)Cast
Margarita Těrechova
Soviet Union
Best movies:
D'Artanyan i tri mushketyora (1978) (TV movie)
The Mirror (1975)
Rus iznachalnaya (1985)
Oleg Yankovskiy
Soviet Union
Best movies:
Doctor Zhivago (2005) (series)
The Shooting Party (1978)
The Mirror (1975)
Filipp Yankovskiy
Soviet Union
Best movies:
The Mirror (1975)
Tri muškeťora (2013)
Afghan Breakdown (1990)
Ignat Daniltsev
Best movies:
The Mirror (1975)
Nikolay Grinko
Soviet Union
Best movies:
War and Peace (1965)
War and Peace: Part III (1967)
Andrei Rublev (1966)
Алла Демидова
Soviet Union
Best movies:
Father Sergius (1978)
The Legend of Till Ullenspiegel (1976)
The Mirror (1975)
Anatoly Solonitsyn
Soviet Union
Best movies:
Andrei Rublev (1966)
Stalker (1979)
The Legend of Till Ullenspiegel (1976)
Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy
Soviet Union
Best movies:
Hamlet (1964)
Crime and Punishment (1970)
The Legend of Till Ullenspiegel (1976)
Larisa Tarkovskaya
Soviet Union
Best movies:
The Mirror (1975)