Structure and content Mirror depicts the thoughts, emotions and memories of Aleksei, a Soviet poet, as a child, adolescent, and 40-year-old. The film freely switches between three different timeframes: prewar (c. 1935),
World War II (1940s), and postwar (1960s or '70s). The drama is entirely shown from Aleksei's perspective; the adult Aleksei's face is never shown, and his body only briefly glimpsed. Tarkovsky said that because a memory reveals "what [a person] thinks, how he thinks, and what he thinks about", a film collecting a man's memories "build[s] up a graphic and clearly-defined picture of him" without needing to show the man himself. To represent the real-life experience of a man going over old memories, the film's structure is discontinuous and nonchronological, lacks a conventional plot, and combines incidents, dreams, memories, newsreel footage, and
Arseny Tarkovsky's poems in voiceover. Scenes are connected not by time or place, but by particular individuals and motifs that serendipitously come to mind, such as a book that Aleksei once read during an important moment, or a background character mentioned during a phone call. The film encourages viewers to embrace its nonlinear, seemingly illogical narrative by including an opening scene in which a woman in a lab coat performs hypnosis on a young man, apparently curing his severe stutter.
Synopsis Before the
Great Patriotic War (1941–45), Aleksei's mother, Maria, lives with her children in a plain countryside
dacha. A passing doctor notes that Maria's husband has left her. Before leaving, the doctor mysteriously rambles about how modern Russians do not "trust the nature that is inside us". Maria stares out the window and silently cries while Tarkovsky's father recites his poems in voiceover. Her barn burns down. The family stare at the flames, powerless to stop them. In a dream sequence (presented in black and white), young Aleksei sneaks out of bed to see his father helping his mother wash her hair. Water begins to pour down the walls, dissolving the ceiling. His mother looks in a mirror and sees a vision of herself as a proud, old woman. In the present day (1960s/70s), after the war, the adult Aleksei is afflicted by a mysterious malady and haunted by memories of his father. He has a testy phone call with his mother, with whom he frequently quarrels. She hangs up on him. In a second dream sequence, Maria rushes to her printing press to correct an embarrassing typo which turns out to have been imagined. As she searches for the typo, more poems by Tarkovsky's father are heard. Maria's coworker Liza criticizes her for her neediness, calls her a bad mother, and expresses shock that her husband stayed with her for so long. Maria begins to cry then rushes off to the office shower. Liza skips away down the hall, and after struggling with the water supply Maria begins to laugh. Returning to the present, Aleksei quarrels with his ex-wife, Natalia, who has custody of their son, Ignat. Aleksei remarks on her resemblance to his mother, and claims it is Natalia's face he sees when remembering her. (In fact, Natalia and Maria are portrayed by the same actress.) Natalia complains that Aleksei is selfish, and is at fault for his strained relationship with Maria. He protests that it is his mother's fault for being too controlling. Meanwhile their Spanish
Loyalist friends in the next room discuss the struggles of their life in exile, and the film cuts to newsreel scenes of the
Spanish Civil War, then a balloon ascent in the USSR. Ignat helps his mother pick up coins spilled from her purse as she prepares to leave him at Aleksei's flat, when he remarks on a sudden sensation of
deja vu. When his mother leaves he turns to suddenly find an unfamiliar woman having tea in the flat, empty moments before. She asks him to read a letter by
Pushkin. Pushkin argues that the split between
Orthodoxy and European
Catholicism gave Russia its distinctive character and says being Russian is a gift from God. Ignat leaves to answer the door, but when he returns, the woman has vanished, though the condensation from her teacup momentarily remains. Aleksei calls, and in conversation mentions a girl he had a crush on at Ignat's age. The film then turns to this time during World War II, when Aleksei is sent to a dour military school for boys. (At this point, we see that Ignat and the twelve-year-old Aleksei are played by the same actor.) One boy, an orphan, is admonished by the instructor, and in retaliation pulls a grenade from his sack. The other boys scoop it up and pull the pin; the instructor throws himself on it to save the children, only to find it is a dummy. Newsreel footage is intercut of the war, the atomic bomb, and the
Sino-Soviet border conflict. Tarkovsky's father recites a poem about living in denial of death, darkness, and fear. After the war ends, Aleksei's father returns. Maria is still bitter, but the children tearfully greet him. In a third dream sequence, Natalia and Aleksei argue about who should have custody of Ignat, whose grades are suffering. Aleksei claims Ignat has expressed a desire to live with him, though what we have seen previously was only his asking to stay with him temporarily during renovations. He poses the question to Ignat, who denies having said such a thing. After Ignat goes outside, Natalia flips through some photos of Maria and herself, remarking on their resemblance which Aleksei now denies. She mentions a man she is considering for marriage, whom Aleksei mocks, and reveals she remains in closer contact with Aleksei's mother than he. As Ignat burns a branch out the window they discuss Moses and the
burning bush, and Natalia complains that she has never received a vision from God. In voiceover Aleksei recalls a recurring dream of being at his childhood home but unable to enter, though the film presents us with different reminiscences of this time (in color, not the dream sequence's black and white). He laments his current unhappiness in contrast with the joyful feeling of possibilities from youth. The young Aleksei strikes a match, then another brief dream sequence begins: we see a vase filled with water and watch parts; young Aleksei calls out for his mother; he stands at the door to the dacha as it is pulled open, revealed to be empty; a rooster breaks through a window; a powerful gust blows through the brambles, leaving the table in disarray; Aleksei dashes around the house and tries the door to an outbuilding which will not open; after he turns away it swings ajar, revealing his mother behind it, peeling potatoes. She watches him go but says nothing. We return to another reminiscence where Aleksei is older. They have been evacuated from Moscow due to the war and are back in the country, visiting a neighbor Maria knows of but has not met. Upon entering the house Maria spills her items on the floor. Aleksei is left alone while the two women discuss an unspecified ladies' matter. The young Aleksei studies himself in a mirror as milk drips from a table to the floor. The film cuts to an indistinct face reflected in small hand mirror in a smoldering fire outdoors, then a mirrored cabinet being closed, revealing in its reflection the red-haired girl warming her hands before a furnace and an older man who quickly walks away. Back in the neighbor's house, the lantern flickers out and Aleksei sits in the dark. The neighbor tries on the earrings Maria has brought, apparently having agreed to buy them, and insists on showing off her child sleeping in another room. Maria appears nonplussed then suddenly grows ill. The neighbor complains that she cannot slaughter a rooster due to her pregnancy and pressures Maria to do it for her, but turns away at the fateful moment. Maria steels herself but we see only a puff of feathers and hear the bird dash away. She glances at the neighbor, then smiles to herself and gazes into the camera while water runs down the wall behind. She sees a vision of her husband (another black and white sequence), comforting her as she levitates above her bed. She laments only seeing him when she is upset and admits that she still loves him. Back in the neighbor's home she rushes away with Aleksei. Another poem begins, describing the soul's lament at being imprisoned in the body, while we return to the previous dream sequence of young Aleksei standing at the door to the empty dacha. This time he steps inside, carrying a jug of milk through the sheets that hang drying inside. The camera tracks in on a mirror at the far end of the room and Aleksei reappears, reflected in it, and raises the milk to his face. In the distance a dog barks and a train whistle blows. In the final sequence of the film, three story lines intersect. The camera again tracks through the sheets in the dacha but it is freshly furnished and a small puppy clambers about. The view shifts out the window revealing two children who look like Aleksei and his sister, but they are with the elderly Maria. Aleksei lays in his deathbed, where a doctor declares his only ailment is a guilty conscience. He bitterly casts his few loved ones away and releases a small bird. In the past, Aleksei's father asks a pregnant Maria if she hopes for a girl or a boy, but instead of answering she suddenly looks into the distance, as if she can see her elderly self there, walking with her grandchildren past the rotting ruins of a dacha. Tears well in young Maria's eyes while elderly Maria and the children continue on through the meadow. ==Cast==