[31] Howard Hampton argued that the work's central subject is "the inescapable persistence of the past. (But although The Mirror would be “a film built in its entirety on personal experience”, it wouldn’t, as Andrei Tarkovsky maintained in Sculpting in Time, be Andrei Tarkovsky talking about himself. He survived the entire Soviet era—suffering a leg amputation during World War II—by his work as a translator of poetry. This is the key to understanding the movie. If the scenes were arranged in a particular pattern, Misharin said, some other scenes would be left out. Een gemeenschappelijke taal, maar tot een niveau van puurheid gebracht die onze westerse cinema slechts bij wijze van uitzondering heeft gekend. At the same time, viewers will not need to know where and when some of the newsreels were shot. Mirror started to take shape around 1968, when Andrei Tarkovsky worked with his co-writer, Alexander Misharin (Tarkovsky had asked Misharin to help him edit the script of Andrei Roublyov, which Misharin had been reluctant to do, because Andrei Konchalovsky was the writer, but wasn’t around at the time. Andrej Tarkowskij und sein Film "Der Spiegel" ("Serkalo"). [24], Mirror is now frequently listed among the greatest films of all time. More Poetry from Arseny Tarkovsky: Arseny Tarkovsky Poems based on Topics: Birds, World, Fate & Destiny, Curiosity, Time, Speech, Leading & Managing, Kings & Queens. In: R. Zwiebel / A. Mahler-Bungers (Hrsg. The young Alexei, his mother and sister watch as the family barn burns down. Rather than being the narrator of a novel, however, The Mirror’s narrator is the narrator of poetry, because The Mirror is a ciné-poem, rather than the cinematic adaption of a novel. “I believe if one tells the truth, some kind of inner truth, one will always be understood”, Andrei Tarkovsky commented, pace The Mirror. “I wanted to tell the story of the pain suffered by one man because he feels he cannot repay his family for all they have given him [Tarkovsky wrote in Sculpting in Time]. By leaving out school and friends, Tarkovsky presents a highly selective view of childhood. Arseny Tarkovsky . Andrei Tarkovsky had originally planned filming interviews with his mother with a concealed camera, using questions such as “when did you begin smoking?”, “do you like animals?”, “are you superstitious?”, “are men or women stronger, do you think?”, “do you ever have friends outside your circle?”, “do you always speak the truth?”, “what would make you especially happy now?”, “have you ever envied youth?”, “which are your favourite poems?”, “are you capable of hatred?”, “which part of your life would you say was happy?”, “what do you think about space travel?”, “do you like Bach?”, “what do you remember about the war with Spain?”, “what was the funniest thing that ever happened to you?”, “are you a good swimmer?”, “do you remember the day when you sensed you would become a mother for the first time?”, “which is your favourite season?”, “have you ever starved?”, “what do you think about war?”, “what is freedom?”, “how many years did you work at the printers?”, and “are you scared of the dark?”. It is a movie of fierce self-reflexive intensity – something like Rimbaud in his poem of childhood ‘Les poètes de sept ans’. As Tarkovsky put it himself, he started writing poetry “from the potty”. The Bright, Bright Day screenplay had opened with a scene in a cemetery, and a funeral. Initially, Tarkovsky considered Alla Demidova and Swedish actress Bibi Andersson for the role of the mother. In Tarkovsky’s poem “Dagestan,” ing a meeting of a poetry group with his father in first published in Zemle—zemnoe (The Earthly—to 1913, Arsenii met the visiting Russian poets Konstan- the Earth, 1966), modeled after the nineteenth-cen- tin Bal’mont, Igor’ Severianin, and Fedor Sologub. The movie, though, soars above pretension and artifice by the magnitude of its passion. This script was titled Confession and was proposed to the film committee at Goskino. As Misharin told it, Tarkovsky’s wife Larissa had sewn a kind of sack with pockets in it, which they hung on the wall and placed the scenes in each pocket. In 1968, after having finished Andrei Rublev, Tarkovsky went to the cinematographer's resort in Repino intending to write the script for The Mirror together with Aleksandr Misharin. The final scene plays in the prewar time-frame, showing a pregnant mother, Maria, intercut with scenes showing Maria young and old. Misharin recalled that he and Tarkovsky only fell out seriously once or twice. He is considered one of the great twentieth century Russian poets. The film then returns to the quarrel between Alexei and his wife Natalia in the postwar sequence. The dacha of the past is built on (the foundations of) Tarkovsky’s real childhood home (it was important for Tarkovsky to build his childhood home in the exact spot it had once stood). The exterior and interior of Alexei's grandfather's country house are seen. The concept, according to Misharin and Tarkovsky, was to trace the “spiritual organization of our society” through “the rightful fate of one person; a person whom we know and love, who is called Mother”. He is the narrator of the poem that is the movie. Synessios (2001). There is so much going on, so much that is startling. His poems appeared in the films The Mirror and Stalker, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, his son. A book of poetry by Russian poet Arseny Tarkovsky, translated by Virginia Rounding. A poster of Tarkovsky's 1969 film Andrei Rublev is seen on a wall. It is a ciné-poem, complete with metaphors, allusions, references, historicity, lyricism, concrete and abstract images, a number of voices, motifs and symbols, autobiography, stanzas and refrains. Upon hearing that Mirror would not be allowed to be shown in Cannes, he unsuccessfully threatened not to take any other Soviet film. Andrei Tarkovsky’s own step-daughter was the red-haired beloved of the teenage Aleksei, and Tarkovsky’s second wife, Larissa Tarkovskaya, played the doctor’s wife. June 12] 1907, Elisavetgrad May 27, 1989, Moscow) was a prominent Russian poet and translator. Includes many poems used in Arseny's son's films (Andrei Tarkovsky). [28][29], While highly acclaimed, Mirror continues to be viewed as enigmatic. Arseny Tarkovsky (1907–1989) is one of the great Russian poets of the twentieth century. Mirror draws heavily on Tarkovsky's own childhood. It’s limp. It is a motif out of the dumbest pop promo (don’t Queen have a video where Freddie releases a white dove?). Instead it is magnificent and profound. It might have turned out self-indulgent and pretentious. A likely opening of The Mirror would have been: (1) the titles followed by (2) the long tracking shot around the narrator’s apartment, establishing the present-day location, and the narrator, then (3) the printing works scene, then (4) the mother and doctor scene in the field. A movie of acutely remembered places. Photograph: [Public Domain] Wikimedia Commons Arseny Aleksandrovich Tarkovsky (25th June 1907–27th May 1989) has only garnered a growing international following in recent years. By the late 1930s, he had become a noted translator of … [14], Principal photography began in late July 1973[15] and ended in March 1974. Some of the newsreel will be familiar (the nuclear bomb explosions require no gloss). Arseny Aleksandrovich Tarkovsky was born on June 25, 1907 in Elisavetgrad into the family of a Narodnik (a revolutionary-minded person). These episodes were published as a short story under the title A White Day in 1970. The first episodes of Mirror were written while Tarkovsky was working on Andrei Rublev. It is a ciné-poem, complete with metaphors, allusions, references, historicity, lyricism, concrete and abstract images, a number of voices, motifs and symbols, autobiography, stanzas and refrains. The title was taken from a 1942 poem by his father, Arseny Tarkovsky. A lot of the footage is familiar from the countless documentaries on World War Two, on Russian history, on Nazi Germany, and on 20th century history (there are whole cable and satellite channels now dedicated to airing this kind of material). Arseny Alexandrovich Tarkovsky was born in the Ukrainian city of Elisavetgrad (now Kirovohrad) in 1907 and moved to Moscow in 1923, working as a newspaper journalist and publishing his first poems. With a bibliography of both Arseny and his son Andrei Tarkovsky, and illustrations from Tarkovsky's movies. The stuttering and hypnotism scene (which opens the film) was probably going to be put somewhere in the middle of the film, because the twelve year-old Ignat is seen turning on the television in the present-day Moscow apartment. Outdoor scenes were shot in Tutshkovo near Moscow and the indoor scenes were shot at the Mosfilm studio. In 1968, after having finished Andrei Rublev, Tarkovsky went to the cinematographer's resort in … And now summer has left..., by Philip Metres and Dimitri Psurtsev And now summer has left / as if it never came at all. In addition the actor who appears in the film as Alexei’s father looks quite a bit like Arseny Tarkovsky did at the diegetic times (30-40 years prior to the filming) of his appearances in the story. [5][6] It has also found favor with many Russians for whom it remains their most beloved of Tarkovsky's works.[7]. is better, but obscure.” It’s not just in pre-1989 Soviet Russia where filmmakers were forbidden to use a title by state institutions. Mirror initially polarized critics and audiences, with many considering its narrative to be incomprehensible. Tarkovsky has described the dramaturgy of Mirror as following “the associative laws of music and poetry” (6), laws that are – at the same time – transformed through their contact with the medium of film. The Mosfilm movie would be about a mother, Andrei Tarkovsky said: “any mother capable of arousing an interest in the authors,” Andrei Tarkovsky and Alexander Misharin wrote in their proposal for The Mirror (when the film was called Confession): “as all mothers, she must have had a full and fascinating life. In the end Margarita Terekhova was chosen. The film's loose flow of visually oneiric images has been compared with the stream of consciousness technique in modernist literature. Arseny Alexandrovich Tarkovsky (Russian: Арсений Александрович Тарковский, June 25 [O.S. It was, rather, ultimately a movie about feelings: about his feelings towards his loved ones and relatives, and about his own inadequacy – “my feeling of duty left unfulfilled”). His renown grew with the publication of his first book in the 1950s and when his son (the filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky) used readings of his father's poems in his films The Mirror and Stalker. I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky (Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2015) Arseny Tarkovsky. The reunion of Alexei and his sister with their father (Oleg Yankovsky) at war's end is shown. The movie could be extended indefinitely through a variety of age ranges: 2, 8, 15, 19, 26, and so on. The post-production of The Mirror was troublesome because the first rough cuts of the movie didn’t work (and it wasn’t simply a case of the filmmakers hating the first rough cut, as they so often do). It is loosely autobiographical, and combines many elements, from poetry read in voiceover by the director’s father Arseny Tarkovsky, to dream sequences, flashbacks, newsreel and mnemonics (memory devices). The film combines contemporary scenes with childhood memories, dreams, and newsreel footage. Scenes included the demolition of a church in 1939; the mother selling flowers in a market; a horse riding lesson; a scene at a ractrack; and a forest scene at night. / Under the sun it's warmer, / Only it's not sufficient. That Arseny was the primary influence on Andrei is irrefutable, attested to by the fact that Andrei chose to quote seven of his poems in his films, across Mirror, Stalker and Nostalgia. Known in the United States as The Mirror [this is a rare 1975 Russian art film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky.It is loosely autobiographical, unconventionally structured, and incorporates poems composed and read by the director's father, Arseny Tarkovsky.The film features Margarita Terekhova, Ignat Daniltsev, Alla Demidova, Anatoly … The Mirror was not sent to Cannes (Tarkovsky and co-writer Alexander Misharin blamed Filip Yermash, Goskino’s chairman, for this). Timo Hoyer: Filmarbeit – Traumarbeit. It was The Bright, Bright Day (or The White, White Day) for a long time (this title comes from one of Arseny Tarkovsky’s poems). A famous instance occurs in The Wizard of Oz [1939], although that’s not time travel). In cinema, Tarkovsky said he wanted both the documentary, factual approach, in which every detail must be accurate, and the emotional, subjective, inner truth. Tarkovsky acknowledged that The Mirror was the most complex of his films structurally and dramatically. [8] The film switches among three different time-frames: prewar (1935), war-time (1940s), and postwar (1960s or '70s). The present exists beside the past, not only in dreams and memories, but also in people, in their faces, personalities and actions. Images from Zerkalo [The Mirror] (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975). [19] Some viewed it as a major work that would be better understood upon the analysis of future generations; others dismissed it as an unfocused failure and believed that even more cultured viewers would find its story opaque. Like the poems of Rilke, Cavafy and Rimbaud, The Mirror is a dense mesh of constellations of images and memories, a veritable mnemonic banquet. Instead he chooses two ages, five and twelve, in which children are still children, and not restless, disaffected, disappointed teenagers. 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