Rating: 
Summary: Impossible to view only once
Review: I admit that I was not properly prepared when I first watched "The Mirror" (or "Mirror" or "The Looking Glass" or whatever it's really supposed to be called.) It was not my first Tarkovsky movie, but I found it disjointed, confusing, incohesive, etc. I even thought of turning it off in the middle and giving up on it. But as I thought about it the next day, the meanings and symbols slowly became clear. What was confusion and exasperation the night before turned into intrigue and curiosity the next day. I actually watched the entire movie again the next night. What I discovered was a beautifully and poetically created masterpiece that discards the narrative structure in place of disjointed memories and images. The film is more like a painting in that to understand it each portion of the canvass must be mulled over and revisited to get the true impact.
The images in this film are absolutely stunning and unforgetable; the burning barn, milk dripping from an overturned glass...
It may go without saying but this film is for those interested in film as art and not film as blockbuster entertainment. In fact, I'm sure that if this film were shown even in an art house half of the audience would get up and walk out.
Rating:
Summary: Haunting, Cinematic Poetry
Review: I admit that I was not properly prepared when I first watched "The Mirror" (or "Mirror" or "The Looking Glass" or whatever it's really supposed to be called.) It was not my first Tarkovsky movie, but I found it disjointed, confusing, incohesive, etc. I even thought of turning it off in the middle and giving up on it. But as I thought about it the next day, the meanings and symbols slowly became clear. What was confusion and exasperation the night before turned into intrigue and curiosity the next day. I actually watched the entire movie again the next night. What I discovered was a beautifully and poetically created masterpiece that discards the narrative structure in place of disjointed memories and images. The film is more like a painting in that to understand it each portion of the canvass must be mulled over and revisited to get the true impact.
The images in this film are absolutely stunning and unforgetable; the burning barn, milk dripping from an overturned glass...
It may go without saying but this film is for those interested in film as art and not film as blockbuster entertainment. In fact, I'm sure that if this film were shown even in an art house half of the audience would get up and walk out.
Rating:
Summary: Impossible to view only once
Review: I admit that I was not properly prepared when I first watched "The Mirror" (or "Mirror" or "The Looking Glass" or whatever it's really supposed to be called.) It was not my first Tarkovsky movie, but I found it disjointed, confusing, incohesive, etc. I even thought of turning it off in the middle and giving up on it. But as I thought about it the next day, the meanings and symbols slowly became clear. What was confusion and exasperation the night before turned into intrigue and curiosity the next day. I actually watched the entire movie again the next night. What I discovered was a beautifully and poetically created masterpiece that discards the narrative structure in place of disjointed memories and images. The film is more like a painting in that to understand it each portion of the canvass must be mulled over and revisited to get the true impact.
The images in this film are absolutely stunning and unforgetable; the burning barn, milk dripping from an overturned glass...
It may go without saying but this film is for those interested in film as art and not film as blockbuster entertainment. In fact, I'm sure that if this film were shown even in an art house half of the audience would get up and walk out.
Rating: 
Summary: Awful picture quality ruined one of my favourite films
Review: I'm never impressed with DVD's ability to handle black and white, but this is barely watchable. Even the colour scenes are terribly pixellated. I don't know why Kino released this - I would have happily paid more for better quality. It's a great shame - they seem to have the rights to several good Russian films, but on the basis of this, aren't able t handle the responsibility. Get VHS. Great film etc etc, but I do feel I have wasted my money....
Rating:
Summary: MIRROR is just one discovery.
Review: If you are seeking a film that can demonstrate an image's capacity to exceed beyond powerful, this is just one of Tarkovsky's films that achieves this. It may take some effort to stay with the film's patient and meandering pace, but that's the revel of this picture. If you have ever wondered what it might feel like to visualize a dream while awake, MIRROR is a film to watch. Any of Tarkovsky's movies introduce you to a visual experience and vocabulary that is wholly unique in its execution and original in its expression. There is a tremendous amount you can learn from his films, especially if you want to be a filmmaker. Technically, they are a marvel. His films are executed with such flawlessness you might forget to question how they are done. MIRROR is exceptional in that Tarkovsky's explorations and meditations on issues of self, relationships, mothers, women, time, love, memory, history, art and poetry are deceptively straightforward. Experience this movie. There are new and exciting things to discover in MIRROR as well as any of Tarkovsky's films.
Rating:
Summary: The challenging depths of memory and time
Review: In his films, Andrei Tarkovsky rarely gives the audience any help in grasping what is happening on the screen. He demands a level of attention and receptivity which is not always automatic with most audiences, since our viewing habits are formed by easier stuff. It's a bit like trying to read Heidegger or Kant after a life of reading nothing but pulp novels. In my estimation "Mirror" is his most difficult film. A depiction of the inner world of a dying man, the film jumps between different eras of the protagonist's life, with sometimes only very subtle connections between them. Shots are often composed for their emotional impact, rather than their narrative effect, the idea being that the audience will feel what the protagonist feels as he reflects on his life. I often see films described as poetry, but here is a case where that comparison is most precise. Like poetry, layers of meaning are waiting to be discovered in this film. Each time I watch this film it affects me more and more. My last viewing, perhaps my tenth, was the most profound. I encourage everyone to give this film the time it demands, and deserves, because the rewards are great. The quality of this dvd, like others have written, is not the best. The version put out by Artificial Eye in the U.K. is reported to be superior, and is probably the better choice if you have a multi-region player. I have given this disc 5/5 stars because the film is so great it overpowers the limitations of the disc, and there isn't a compellingly better version available in Region 1 at the moment.
Rating:
Summary: Tarkovsky's Masterpiece
Review: Mirror (rus., Zerkalo, 1975), is unquestionably the masterpiece of Andrei Tarkovsky's opus. It is an autobiographical film, with a rather unconventional timeline. Its structure is somewhat convoluted, making it relatively inaccessible on first viewing. Fortunately, the beauty of its images and its lyricism carry you along, and most certainly compel you to a second viewing, and then you are "hooked." At least, this was my experience with this film.
Mirror represents the recollections of a dying man, weighing the episodes of his life in his conscience. It is also autobiographical reflection of the author on the final stretch of the race toward the finish line of his life. His thoughts ebb and flow, as he contemplates his life's journey.
What kind of mirror is it? It's the author's broken mirror, whose shards have been re-assembled and glued in a random fashion, with each piece reflecting an aspect of his soul. Tarkovsky's mind wanders as he recounts some of the events of his past at least the way he remembers them. The memories are set against a Russian historical backdrop from the early Stalin years to the early 70s. Tarkovsky weaves newsreels, poems, and dramatic scenes to suggest his symbolic inner world; his relationships with his mother, his ex-wife, and his son, and with the world in which he has lived.
The film, based on Tarkovsky's own screenplay, contains events of his life-time. Some press interviews and writings of Tarkovsky leave no doubt that all of these events are true recollections concerning his family, his life as he has lived it and felt it. All the episodes are really part of his family history, except for one, and he undertook to literally replicate what was fixed in his memory. The only fictional episode is the illness of the narrator, which is intended to convey the author's spiritual crisis. As such, this fictional contrivance is a foundation for all of the others, utterly true remembrances.
The pace of the film is slow. As in most of Tarkovsky's other films, we see long shots, which lead to lengthy contemplations on the viewer's part, requiring the absorption of a considerable amount of fine visual details. This in turn leads the viewer into an emotional involvement with the characters. By using long shots and few cuts in his films, Tarkovsky gives the viewers a sense of time passing, and the relationship of one moment to another, as opposed to the speedy jump-cut, Hollywood style. Tarkovsky developed a theory of cinema that he called "sculpting in time," which was, using the unique characteristic of cinema as a medium, to take one's experience of time and alter it. This film is the best example of the application of his theory.
Not only does Tarkovsky "sculpt in time" by manipulating events in an apparent random-time fashion, he also manipulates time within a particular event by using mirrors, which reflects different times, past or future, which are not of that event. There are many such examples throughout the film.
The beauty and lyricism of the images are due to Tarkovsky's unmistakable poetic style. The childhood memories, hypnotic in their intensity, are the most visually stunning filmmaking imaginable. These dream-like sequences are also the most enigmatic moments of the film, which most likely accounts for the film's alleged impenetrability.
Mirror is about the lives of the most important figures in Tarkovsky's life: his mother and his wife (interestingly, played by the same actress). From Tarkovsky's own admission, his father had no inner influence on him. His mother was the most important person in his life so much so that, for Tarkovsky, there was no question that she had to appear in person in several scenes.
Although Tarkovsky never made an explicitly political film, the relationship of the individual to history was central to his world view. In terms of a person's spiritual experience, what happened to that person yesterday may be as significant as what happened to humanity a hundred years ago. From that point of view, the film is about the nature of Russia as a mediator between the East and the West, as portrayed in the scene where Ignat reads Pushkin's letter to Chaadayev (October 19, 1836), and a little later in the film, in the footage of Russian soldiers holding back a demonstration of Chinese Maoists.
Mirror is also about the Stalinist purges of the mid-to-late 1930s and World War II. Tarkovsky shows us archive footage of contemporary events with complete detachment in contrast with the extreme intimacy of the memories. It is expressed, for example, by the apparently strange inclusion of the documentary footage of the Soviet army crossing the Sivash marshes. The poem by his father, Arseni Tarkovsky, which accompanies the Sivah crossing, is particularly telling.
To summarize this beautiful and unusual film, I will quote the author himself (upon leaving the screening of Mirror), "When I left the cinema I was thinking that here was a film made as a poem, that it was - a cinematic impossibility it would seem - an intimate lyrical monologue."
A more complete review of this film appears in
http://www.epinions.com/content_164343287428
Rating: 
Summary: A beautiful art work by a highly skilled artist
Review: Of all the people who say they would like watching movies, probably very few would like this one. There will be even less who would say they understood this piece. But many will agree that it is a beautiful piece of art and those who can understand this film will derive immense pleasure out of this masterpiece. About this particular edition, I wish the picture and sound qualities were better since they are too blur. Try DVD.
Rating:
Summary: Breathtaking! Buy this movie.
Review: One of the most moving and beautiful films I've ever seen. Contrary to what I'd expected, I found it pretty easy to follow. Sensual AND spiritual. Imaginative AND realistic. A supreme masterpiece in my view.
Rating:
Summary: s-titles
Review: Subtitles are "glued" to the screen, there is no possible way to turn them off, this idiocy spoils the greatnes of the visual sequence...
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