TARKOVSKY'S MIRROR - Part 1: History and Development (Zerkalo / Зеркало) 

Mirror is the film that made me give up studying film theory. After watching it, I was stunned, and felt that no academic way of thinking or analyzing can do justice to it. No amount of theory will explain its beauty.

The furthest our art has gone. Looking forward to the next part.

Zerkalo for me is the greatest film ever made. Its purely magical and has the ability to evoke more than it physically has. I could hardly find any kind of detailed analysis that discussed Mirror, I'm glad to finally get to see one. Love your analysis as always and looking forward to see the next part.

Andrei Tarkovsky's films are visual poetry to me. And in terms of poetry and visual identity, the key film is Zerkalo. Thanks for this brilliant analysis, you’ve pointed out a lot of useful and interesting stuff. Looking forward to seeing the next part. Thanks :)

My favourite film and yet it is not a film! It is a visual poem immersing the viewer in a journey of memories and flashbacks in a dreamlike form drifting back and forth through time. Tarkovsky shares his emotions and feelings inspired by formative scenes and events as he looks into a mirror reflecting his life. In your next part on the film's structure I hope you stress the non linear flow of time. I wonder if the sequence and form of versions created in the editing process gives any insight into how the non linearity developed? I like to think that it was intended from the outset and follows the nature of fleeting memories and dreams which come to our conscious thoughts and then fade or recede like the image in the masterfully poignant and sad final scene! Thank you for putting this part 1 context together and I am looking forward to the next part.

Such a beautiful video, I've watched this entire series and it has surely affected my perspective on the human relationship with the metaphysical and ephemerality. Where did you get the music for these videos? I would love to know. Again, amazing work.

great film

this was fascinating

I can’t wait for the Criterion Collection to finally release this masterpiece on Blu-Ray!

How did I not find your channel earlier? Love this.

holy sh*t i can't imagine being Tarkovsky & trying to produce this film under the impression of the communist party & it's "art" criticism. Learning about his fight to make this made me respect him a lot more.

Magnificent!!! Thanks for such an in depth consideration of Tarkovsky's cinema Art. Look forward to part 2 and viewing your other well researched presentations.

Can't wait for part 2!

I own the criterion blu ray. Watched it for the first time a week or so ago. I think it’s the most beautiful film ever.

Great video, can't wait for part 2. Here's to hoping for that criterion announcement.

Hey man! Amazing content. Glad to see people trying to make tarkovsky more approachable to the big audience. Could you share the lectures on film directing that you mention in the video? Im really interested in what tarkovsky had to say in that matter. Thanks!

I like how you've done this.

This film is a life-changing experience, honestly. Can't wait to see the other parts of your analysis

This film for me, is bar none : the best cinematic feature of all time.

Cinema is fine art, not entertainment. It must be studied. Tarkovsky said or wrote that. Well it's true as far as my take upon watching the film. Your analysis here with explication of the somewhat tortured misgivings Tarkovsky himself experienced in making the film from earliest conception to numerous trial completions, demystifies the filmmaker's genius as I glimpse his clay feet. The hagiography I had felt now diminished. I grasped Stalker more readily, though a bit of critical retrospection by another film enthusiast aided that process with a few viewings. My mind associates the relationship of essential reality with actual existential reality of original experience of when we touched the pony or a tree, and now only experience metaphorically in the art of film. The filmmaker may see reality as subject one moment and as object alternately, or so I imagine. If we eat the same thing every day, it loses its taste from when we tasted it after not having had it for a long interval. And so it is with place and time, maybe, but I'm now talking more of my own experience than my understanding of Tarkovsky. The Cartesian revelation brought with it a new way of seeing life, but it has played out or is playing out. Western culture is decadent. With Tarkovsky one might glimpse through the mist, some Renaissance of a former civilization or a new revelation not fully birthed in the Carsonian epoch in which we already have lived since Rachel Carson was the prophet of in the post convolution period of two wars of the masses in revolt. Or so I think. Man [in the generic sense] the Good Husbandman, displacing the Cartesian man who gave us destructive and dangerous nuclear technology, and synthetic chemistry pollution of PFAS that will reside in the environment for a million years. What is this new revelation that also wields science in viewing scientific technology more circumspectfully, but goes back to or beyond to what? Tarkovsky's spiritual affinity for the natural world as a context for human life? I am I and my circumstances, wrote Ortega y Gasset, Spanish philosopher. Life among the fauna and flora Tarkovsky had such feeling for, against life in an urban cubicle of anonymous masses on laptops, controlled by mathematicians and computer engineers, functionaries for the financialist class.

You said something like: people of the time this film was released were not prepered for this kind of film o something close to that. I am not trying to ofend you by contradicting you, but i dont think that statement is true, cause all i can see by today and modern audience, is that they dont have the patience to watch a more than 2 hours movies they get bored at and they cant really get to understand, today we are more used to more action, movement, less than 2 hours movies with a straight plot we can get. I am a huge Tarkovsky fan, i get to your Channel trying to understand Nostalgia, but i am like most people of modern days, i get bored easily, the films are to long, and i dont get It most of the time, but i can certainly say i LOVE his films for some reason i just dont actually get to know. Just to end this rant, i think people of the time this movie were released had It better with this movies becuase those people hard times, maybe participated in some wars and childhood were harder. I think this would make them conect more, and sorry for my writings i probably has lot of spelling wrong, i am not english, i am better speaking. And great vídeo as always, i cant watch most of your videos becuase i dont watch that much cinema, but anytime you have anything of Tarkovsky i am here.

Thank you

Just watched Mirror and this series is a brilliant. I was wondering what your sources are, specifically where you found the list of western movies that Tarkovsky played for his crew to demonstrate experimental filmmaking (From Russia with love, The good the bad and the ugly, etc.)? Thanks!

According to Tarkovsky the cleaning lady explained Mirror in a couple of sentences, after a private screening in Moscow for the great and good of the Russian film world.

do you know where we can watch the lectures on film directing?

Great vid! Have you seen Bi Gan's film "Long Day’s Journey Into Night" (2018). He is clearly influenced by Tarkovsky (and Wong Kar-wai and others). If you haven't seen it: Highly recommended!

és portugues?

You have letterboxd?

What are the most intelligent books on film you’ve read?

it's hard for me to take this """in depth""" essay seriously when there is not a single mention of Georgy Rerberg the cinematographer of Mirror, the greatest cinematographer. Mirror is as much as Rerberg's film as it is Tarkovsky's. You should watch Rerberg's collaborations with Andrei Konchalovsky to see that Mirror's style is Rerberg's style. And he was the follower of Dovzhenko(see The Story of Asya Klyachina). Tarkovsky's gets too much credit.