It's certainly his most simple and focused story, without the artier abstractions of Sacrifice or the mystifying sci-fi of his most famous films, but deeper than his Ivan's Childhood or his early works. Well, I guess on paper it could be seen as a lot to work through. You've got the film traversing through two distinct timelines at once: the protagonist's adult age with his ex-wife, and his childhood age with his mother, who's (mostly) played by the same actress. And you've got dream sequences, black and white scenes and documentary footage providing historical backdrop. So if you watch movies by scrolling through socmed on your phone and sporadically glancing up at the screen, yes, it's very easy to get completely lost. But if you're paying proper attention from beginning to end, the film actually keeps you clued in the whole way, even to the point of following the film's first dream sequence with a character explaining on screen that he'd just had this dream. This is no Inland Empire; you shouldn't be guessing at interpretations or opaque meaning. It's a very straight-forward emotional journey.
And a damn enriching one. All of Tarkovsky's films are great, but none are quite so flawless. Like, Nostalghia is a beautiful movie, but it feels a little "back to the well" with its imagery, Some of its overt artistic statements feel pretentious (and that's an allegation I'll almost never lodge at a piece of art), and Domiziana Giordano's character feels like a clumsy chauvinist attempt to write a female character. Mirror on the other hand, is written with real empathy and maturity. If you had to boil his whole body of work to one piece, this is the quintessential masterpiece.
Mirror has been available on a fairly maligned, barebones DVD from Kino since at least 2000. I think I even owned it at one point, but I was quick to replace it with the highly touted Ruscico international special edition that came out in 2013. Then in 2016, Artificial Eye released it on blu, and I've been tempted to upgrade again, but rumors floated for years about Criterion putting out a better edition. I almost broke down before it was finally officially announced, this summer they were putting out a 2-BD set with a new 2k restoration from the 35mm original camera negative.
2013 Ruscico DVD top; 2021 Criterion BD bottom. |
Another thing about Ruscico's DVDs: they're always great with language options. They have the original Russian mono track, and in a fit of over-ambition, a 5.1 mix, but with optional English, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Japanese, Swedish, German, Portuguese, Hebrew, Chinese and Arabic subtitles. They same subs apply to all of their special features. Criterion drops all the foreign stuff, but keeps the removable English subs and bumps the mono track up to a more robust LPCM.
So like I said, Ruscico's DVD was a pretty full special edition, although it feels a little desultory in what it includes. The star inclusion is a lengthy on-camera interview with Tarkovsky's co-writer, who's got a lot of great memories and anecdotes about their work together. After that, there's a ten-minute interview with Grigory Yavlinsky about Tarkovsky, but you'll probably spend most of it being distracted trying to figure out who this guy is (apparently a Russian economist?) and why he's being interviewed here. Then there's vintage stuff from Russian television, like a 3 minute featurette on Nikolay Grinko. He's an actor who has a bit part in Mirror, but this TV piece never mentions it, just some of his other work. There are slightly longer but otherwise very similar ones for bit players Anatoliy Solonitsyn and Innokenty Smoktunovsky, and again their TV pieces focus only on other, unrelated works. More on topic is an 20-minute interview with composer Eduard Artemyev, but even here he's talking more about other Tarkovsky films, and it doesn't seem like this was conducted with Mirror in mind. Finally, there's a ten minute tribute to Tarkovsky, which sets interlaced, non-anamorphic clips from his films to music, and the trailer for Solaris.
Andrei Tarkovsky: A Cinema Prayer |
So this is a pretty definitive release in my book, and the documentaries rise above the level of special features to works worthy of our collections in their own rights. In other words, even if you're perfectly satisfied with your previous edition of Mirror and don't feel inclined to replace it, you should still get this just for the other docs. But this is also a fantastic edition of Mirror, looking and sounding great; a real must-have from Criterion this summer. You might want to hang onto your DVD, just for the odds and ends, but if you don't already have it, I wouldn't seek it out. This is all you need.
Now onto our next killer new release!
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