Movie Night: MIRROR (ЗЕРКАЛО)

MIRROR (ЗЕРКАЛО)
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky • Year: 1975
In Russian and Spanish with English subtitles • DCP • 106 minutes
New 2K digital restoration

A senses-ravishing odyssey through the halls of time and memory, Andrei Tarkovsky’s sublime reflection on 20th century Russian history is as much a film as it is a poem composed in images, as much a work of cinema as it is a hypnagogic hallucination. In a richly textured collage of varying film stocks and newsreel footage, the recollections of a dying poet flash before our eyes, dreams mingling with scenes of childhood, wartime, and marriage, all imbued with the mystic power of a trance. Largely dismissed by Soviet critics upon its release due to its elusive narrative structure, Mirror has since taken its place as one of Tarkovsky’s most renowned and influential works.