De spiegel (The Mirror)

During a severe nervous breakdown, the lead re-experiences his childhood. Images of his beloved mother, grandmother (played by Tarkovski’s mother), his first love and his childhood home flood his mind.

Nostalgia, melancholy and dreams: Tarkovski referred to The Mirror (Zerkalo) as his most personal work, however audiences wrote the director angry letters castigating him for the film’s ‘hermetic nature’.

The Soviet authorities also turned on the director due to his emphasis on cinema as an artistic expression without referring to the societal-socialist context. The Mirror is definitely complex: past and present mingle, the script is idiosyncratic and the performances are often improvised. The Mirror is therefore an archetypal Tarkovski film, in which the human soul metaphysically elevates itself above the quotidian.