Mirror

Mirror is hailed as Tarkovsky’s greatest work. The film is autobiographical - a mirror is held up to both Tarkovsky’s childhood and to the destiny of the Russian people. It is many-layered and intertwines real life and family relationships with memories of childhood, dreams and nightmares. Tarkovsky also adds topical newsreel sequences. His father, the poet Arseny Tarkovsky, reads his own peoms on the soundtrack and his mother appears as herself. The actress Margarita Terekhova plays the dual roles of the mother as a young woman and the wife of the adult man. From the opening sequences of a boy being cured of a stammer by hypnotism, to a scene in a printing works which encapsulates the Stalinist era, “Mirror” has an extraordinary resonance and repays countless viewings.