THE MIRROR (1975) – Andrei Tarkovsky

Tarkovsky’s The Mirror: A Film That Breathes

There are films, and then there is The Mirror—a breath held in time, a memory unfolding not through logic, but through sensation. Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1975 masterpiece is not a story, but a soul remembering itself.

No plot to follow, no resolution to await. A dying man recalls his childhood, his mother’s face, a war, a breeze over a field, the voice of his son. But The Mirror is not made of events—it is made of perception. It does not speak; it listens. It does not show; it reveals.

Tarkovsky refuses the tyranny of narrative. Instead, he offers a fugue of time, woven from poetry, newsreels, dreams, and silence. His father’s voice recites verse, not to explain, but to echo what cannot be said. And the images—trees bending to wind, a woman levitating, a barn in flames—do not illustrate a meaning. They are the meaning.

This is cinema as prayer. As incantation. As a return to the elemental. The film is both mirror and flame, reflecting the inner world while burning through illusion. And we, the viewers, are not watching it—we are remembering something we never lived, yet always carried within.

Where other films conclude, The Mirror continues in us. It is unfinished, because we are unfinished. It is Tarkovsky’s most personal film, yet it belongs to all who have ever looked at the world with wonder and sorrow.

This is not cinema to be explained. It is cinema to be entered, inhabited, and breathed. And in that breath, perhaps, we remember that we too are light flickering in time—fragile, luminous, and real.

Let this be its gallery.