[THE FATHER]: At times something happens and I stop dreaming of the house and the pine trees of my childhood around it. Then I get depressed. And I can't wait to see this dream in which I'll be a child again and feel happy again because everything will still be ahead, everything will be possible... [1]
Hello everyone! I'm back this week with Tarkovsky's beloved Zerkalo, Mirror in English. I'll try to add enough background information as the film is known to be quite non-traditional. Thanks for being here and I hope you enjoy reading this post!
Zerkalo is Andrei Tarkovsky's fourth film and the one that holds a special place in his heart. The film contains a lot of autobiographical elements, such as the house we see in rural Soviet Russia and the depiction of the mother figure, Maroussia. The house from the film was in fact built on the foundations of Tarkovsky's childhood home, which is a very meaningful detail to me. Because of the movie's unconventional elements, (the non-chronological order, color palettes not aligned with the time period, using war footage, etc.), it received heavy criticism from Tarkovsky's colleagues and viewers. It sure was a new technique in cinema, the viewers weren't used to see life and dream getting blended ever so harmoniously on the screen, which was exactly Tarkovsky's goal. While it received backlash from a wide range of audience, there was a fair amount of viewers who got connected with the movie and found some parts of themselves in it. Here is an example of such a viewer from Tarkovsky's diary:" It is your best film, it is a film about life, the most truthful and realistic film of life that we have ever seen. How is it that you have such amazingly subtle understanding of all the confusion, complexity, and splendor of life?"[2] No matter how much hate he got because of his movie, I can only imagine the pleasure any artist would get from receiving such compliment. Tarkovsky's unique way of telling a story wasn't unaccounted for, the film eventually placed itself in The Criterion Collection and is still considered one of the best movies of all time. Without further ado, I'd like to go on and explore the characters more in-depth.
I'd like to start with Mourissia (The Mother) and Natalya (The Wife), both of whom are brought to life by the actor Margarita Terekhova. Mourissia is the narrator's mother and Natalya is his wife. If I didn't know beforehand that the actor who portrayed both Mourissia and Natalya were the same, I'm sure I'd get very confused. Tarkovsky in fact intended to put the same actor in those roles, not for the sake of symbolism (he hates symbols!) but he believed that people eventually get married to the people that are most alike to their parents. Knowing this little detail beforehand made me watch the movie from a different perspective. Back to these characters, Mourissia and Natalya share some similarities in their lives. To begin with, both of their husbands left them with their children. Mourissia is a mother who practically devoted her life to her children, she lives in rural Soviet Russia and takes care of her kids all her own. The character is depicted as an independent and strong woman, which seems odd in that time period. At some point during the movie, Mourissia receives heavy criticism from her best friend:" All your life is just that 'bring some water!' Just an appearance of independence. If something doesn't suit you, you pretend it doesn't exist." Some critics find it to be a symbol, (sorry sorry I didn't mean to say symbol) a representation of Soviet Russia mentality that always sees women in a fragile position, and expects them to fall apart when their husbands leave them. In contrast, Mourissia is a character that stands tall when her husband leaves her, which makes her my favorite character in the movie.
Let's move forward to our narrator and The Father, again both of whom were portrayed by Oleg Yankovski. Even though we don't see the narrator's face all throughout the movie, we could understand the comparison between certain characters (like Mourissia and Natalia), and we could guess that the narrator was paired with The Father from the past. Both of the characters left their wives and let them down, although they had to deal with their own demons afterwards. One of the movie's themes is the importance of love and family, and the film doesn't fail to show the agony one will go through if they can't show back the affection they received from their loved ones. This situation is depicted beautifully with these lines from Natalia:" What do you want from your mother? What kind of relationship? The kind of relationship you had in your childhood is impossible. You speak of some feeling of guilt, of her life being ruined because of you... Well, you can't get away from it." The narrator questions why he always fights with his mother and why can't they get along well. I especially liked his telephone conversation with his mom somewhere at the beginning of the movie, it showed the dissonance between the characters beautifully. While we don't know what caused this level of dissonance between characters, I appreciate the natural depiction of it in the movie.
The last but not least, we have the narrator (as a kid) and Ignat portrayed by the talented Ignat Daniltsev. The narrator and Ignat both live in their own worlds, they look so distant and alienated from adult issues that when the movie cuts to the war footage, you wish you hadn't left their reality. The director wanted to capture the children's lives as almost dream-like: they wander around the bushes, pet kittens, chase each other, etc. When we see the heartbreaking footage of the Spanish Civil War where parents have to leave their children, leaving them screaming and tear-eyed, we see where the children actually belong to be: out in nature, each of them living in their own reality but surrounded with their family nonetheless. For Tarkovsky, childhood is largely a lonely experience, and we see these lonely moments in those character's lives greatly.
My rating for this movie is 7 out of 10, which indicates that I wasn't moved by the movie as much as other people were. I appreciate the new techniques used in this film- never to mention the first-ever attempt to shoot a cine-poem- but I, unfortunately, failed to get connected with the movie as much as I wanted to. It may very well be because I couldn't experience this movie in a movie theater, but I did my best to capture the atmosphere! Some people start to see the natural flow of the movie in their third or even tenth watch, so with the hope of I'll be one of those people in the future, I'd like to end this post here. Thank you so much for reading this far! I linked the websites I received information as well as inspiration from to create this post, so don't hesitate to check their writings too. Also, you can now find me on Twitter and Instagram, both with the nickname moviesatdawn! Feel free to leave a comment or a heartfelt email to moviesatdawn@gmail.com! Ending the advertisement part, I wish you a spectacular week and see you later at the Oscars week!
[FORENSIC DOCTOR]: The trees, this hazel-nut bush... They don't run about. Like us who are rushing, fussing, uttering banalities. That's because we don't trust nature that is inside us. Always this suspiciousness, haste, and no time to stop and think.
Next post: Nomadland (2020) dir. Chloé Zhao
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