christophermerritt-36367

Mirror was an extremely personal film for its director Andrei Tarkovsky. It's based off his life but I think Tarkovsky wants this movie to be as personal to us as it is to him. The movie is a series of memories and dreams of the main character yet we only see his face in those memories and never in the present. I think this help us put ourselves in the characters shoes and reflect upon our own lives.

The movie is called "Mirror" which is a device used to reflect an image, essentially that is what this film is about, the reflection of our own lives/history. Mirror uses beautiful cinematography and music or lack of music to raise the questions of what kind of things we reflect on and how we reflect on them.

What do you reflect on? The main character never reflects on happy or positive moments. Sure his life was hard, but I doubt he never experienced joy. He was married, he had a child, he was an inocente child himself yet we never see positive or happy moments from any of these points in his life. He said all he wanted to be was happy yet every reflection since his childhood is bleak.

How do we reflect? It's obvious none of his reflections are accurate portrayals of events as they happened but are simply his own memories. He remembers some events is black and white, others in color, and he always remembers his mother looking like his ex-wife. All of us remember things differently than they actually happened. Do we do this on purpose to convince ourselves of a different reality or is it something that happens naturally as we move further past the event? Can we even trust our own memories?

I think this is a film that can be understood a million different ways because as I've said it allows you to reflect on your own life. This film can lead you to ponder your childhood, marriage, war, dreams, death, and even your own ability to remember.