Mirror (1/21/19)

     One of my favorite concepts to portray in art and especially in film is memory. Whether it be in the form of nostalgia or in a depiction of the fragility of memory, art that tackles these concepts always interests me. After watching this film and reflecting on it a bit two things sort of came to mind when thinking about the themes and meaning of this film. One is something that we have brought up in class before and the idea that everyone dreams and remembers in black and white, the idea that color is something that isn't important in thoughts and memories. Another thing that I was thinking about is a video art piece that I saw last year, I forget the title and the artist sadly, I tried to look for it but I couldn't find it. The general gist of the film was a series of family videos that played on loop a few times however on every repeat the video file was corrupted and sort of "glitched out" more and more on each loop. The piece was supposed to show the fragility of memory and how things can fade away and get changed so easily especially when the documentation of our memories has turned from analog and physical, permanent, to digital and easy to change. These two things were floating around in my head as we viewed Mirror, the stream of consciousness collage of memories in various colors and tones really struck a cord with me even if I was only able to find meaning in some parts of the film. I was really just blown away by this and I think it's because while the film moved slowly by the time it was over I was expecting another 30 minutes, it flew by quickly even with the scenes lingering and moving slowly. I think this could have meaning in the film in the sort of fleeting nature of life and memory. While the film is hard to decipher and I have a feeling there is a lot I am missing and misinterpreting, I want to talk about some scenes that stood out to me and attempt to decipher the film as a whole.

     The film was as I've said before a stream of memories and a collage of thoughts coming from the Father of Ignat, the man who we never see, the reader of the poetry and the one who is shown dying on the bed clutching the bird. We see his life and the lives of people related to him, we learn of his mother, of his son and wife, and a brief few shots of his father. We never see him, but the actress who plays his wife also plays his mother, the person who plays his son also plays him at a younger age so we can only assume that his father looks a lot like him. There is even a shot where it is teased that we will see the face attached to the voice but instead it cuts back years and years to a shot of the poet's father on the day that he leaves. The cutting back and forth to the past and the present and the future and the sort of mending of all those time periods really made it seem like it was all happening before our eyes. Like a kind of loop, it made it seem to a point like there is no past or future and only the present with the memories. With these memories at first it is made to seem as though color scenes are one time period, sepia are another, and black and white are a third. I could be wrong but that does not seem to be the case at all. Some memories are in color and some modern scenes are in sepia. This also lends itself to the idea of no past or future only right now. Yesterday is just as much of a memory as 30 years ago and I think that is what is shown with the sort of random scattering of different colors for the scenes, I could be wrong about this though but it did seem sort of random with the distribution of black and white, sepia, and color. One thing that was constant with that though was that all the war footage was in sepia, I am not sure of this but maybe scenes involving war were all in sepia as well, however when the poet's father leaves it is in color and I imagine that is related to war so I am not sure about this.

     Speaking of war this film was interesting in regards to that as parts of it took place in the 40's and it was supposedly "about" WWII, but all that was really there was loss. There was no heroism from the war, there were not battles won, it was only tragic memories and scars left from the Great Fatherland War. I found that interesting, it was memories that the poet rarely voiced over, and always showed in sepia. This could be because they are not as fond of memories as the ones he shared with his mother, or the ones he made in his time with his redhead girlfriend with the blistered lips. Another theory for the use of color in this film could be the memories he is fond of could be in one tone and the others could be in another. I imagine the memories he is frightened of would be in color if this is the case as those include his father leaving, the strange doctor bringing the wind to his childhood home, the burning of the barn in his backyard, and his mother murdering the cock. Perhaps these memories are in color as they are the ones he remembers the most vividly as they are sad and hard to forget. The black and white scenes seem like dreams, the surreal image of his mother with the wet hair obscuring her face with her arms contorted in a broken fashion like a ghost from a horror film, and she dances while the house crumbles around her. Another black and white scene shows his mother floating while pregnant, a bird flies across the screen. This is just a theory I could be wrong. 

     A lot of the memories seem disjointed and sort of pointless in the grand scheme of things. While I loved the scene where Ignat was visited by a ghost who left only the steam from her coffee, it didn't really play into the grand narrative of the memories of a dying poet in the way that other scenes did. Like the visitors from Spain were rarely mentioned, and the boy with the stutter at the begining as well. It could just be the memories of the dying man, there is not supposed to be sense or meaning or logic in what it is he remembers as he clutches the bird and takes his last breathes proclaiming that "he just wanted to be happy". The slap delivered from the Spanish man to the dancing girl stood out to me, there was a line about teaching and her misusing that, I related that to the Poet's time at the military camp with his shellshocked captain. There were a lot of moments like this, with vague connections from one scene to another. These memories sort of feel like mine now in a bizarre way. The really loose, abstract connections made between the burning of the barn and the lines about the kerosene stove being left on when the poet's mother is older. The strange mysticism of the curing of the stutter and the levitation of the pregnant woman. It all fits together in the same way our memories do. It seems strange to say it but this really does feel like the last thoughts of a dying man. There isn't time for an entire life to flash before his eyes, there is not enough energy yet to make anything brilliant of cohesive in his mind, what he does see is not up to him and that is really what this film felt like. It was really beautiful, I felt like crying at a few scenes in this film as I saw people I knew and myself in the vague characters in this strangers memories. This reminds me of my thoughts on the title of the film, Mirror, it seems to me that other people and the poet are mirrored in others and the poet if that makes any sense. The poet as a young boy is mirrored in his son, Ignat, the poet's mother is mirrored in his wife, so Ignat's mom is essentially the same woman as his grandmother. Just as people are mirrored within the film I believe it would be easy to see yourself or people you know mirrored in it as well. The idea of the family being mirrored in different generations and the characters from the old times coming alive again also relates to one of the poems in the film that went something like "both granddad and grandchild sit at the same table" and spoke of immortality frequently, saying not to worry about death as forever for us is a lifespan. Something along those lines. All the poems in this film were beautiful and it was interesting to me that the person who wrote and read them (meaning he also played the poet, Ignat's father) was related to Tarkovsky in some way, or at the very least they had the same name. Making the whole mirrored idea go farther as I imagine Andrei Tarkovsky saw himself mirrored in the poet, the person who was related to him.

     A few specific scenes that really stuck out to me regardless of the film as a whole include the scene towards the beginning that I have mentioned before. Where the poet's mother washes her hair and dances all contorted like a horror movie monster as her house falls down. She looks in the water dropped mirror and wipes at her reflection but nothing changes. I vaguely remember one one of the lines of a poem from the film that was mirrored in this scene it said something about "it is impossible to wipe away your own reflection" or something like that. All the poetry mirrored scenes, but the scenes that the poetry reference or add to are very distant in the film from the poem making the connections vague like other ones in the film. The film sort of turns into memories while you watch it and the poetry reminds you of scenes from the beginning and makes them come back to you in the same way that they are coming back to the dying man. This film already feels like a dream to me I have trouble remembering specific lines and scenes but I kind of like that. Another scene I found interesting was the scene where the poet's mother kills the cock (and all the scenes with birds for that matter). This scene seemed very phallic and sexual to me. I kind of saw it as the cutting off of men from her life. Her husband, the poet's father was gone, the woman who's house they were in needed a man as she was weak and pregnant, the only one who could "cut off the cock" was the woman who already lost her husband, even though the poet was "already a man" his mother wouldn't let him do that to himself, then she stares menacingly into the camera and I just thought that shot was beautiful. This theme of the lack of men and the lack of the phallus also pops up in the talks that the poet has with his wife, he claims he turned out odd because he had no man in his life so he is asking that she gets married again so that Ignat will grow up normal with a man. 

     The image of the bird pops up a lot in this film, he grips one as he dies, he pulls one off of his hat as a child, one flies by him while he is floating and unborn. I am not sure what this symbolizes but it is one of the main recurring themes in the film. I think that the bird is a connection to his childhood, in his childhood he feels safe, with his mom, she offers maternal protection that he needs, that is why he marries a woman who reminds him of her, in an attempt to feel safe in his adult life. In his childhood he feels that he cannot die, that he is immortal, like the poem says "to not fear death at 17 or 70". However in his adult life he forgets this and fears death and cries out that he just wanted to be happy. For him, even though it really doesn't seem like it to us, he was happy as a child and he wishes so badly that he could go back to it.

     One last thing I wanted to touch on was the repetition of sound in the film. Right at the beginning the sound motif of squeaking is associated with the mother. She squeaks on the bench peacefully until the strange doctor comes and offsets the balance. The bucket from the well squeaks as she watches the barn burn. I found this interesting to me it kind of resembled the squeaking of a marital bed as a big part of this movie is about love and relationships and birth. Also there was at some points in the film squealing or a repeating dog bark could be heard in the background. At first it was noticeable but over time it sort of drained into the background I think this not only showed the apathy that was present throughout the film and another major theme that I didn't even touch on, but it also adds to the memory motif. It is impossible to remember everything we've ever heard, but yet all the same sometimes a specific noise, or song, or smell, or image will take us back to a time we didn't know we remembered and I feel like that is what the repetitious cacophony of noise in the background of this film represents. I imagine some people would find it off putting but I found it to be sort of calming.

     Overall I loved this film I loved the stream of memories and the dreamlike flow of the film drew me in. Also I have a deep love for art discussing the fragility of memory, and also I have a deep love for surreal film. This film satisfied all of that for me. Every long take was incredible every memory was tragic and sad. The surreal visuals were breathtaking and I bet a lot of people thought this film went on for too long but I honestly thought there was going to be another half and hour left when it finally ended and the trees turned into dark voids and faded the screen to black. This is a film I am definitely going to have to watch again but for right now it is giving me something to think about. A lot happened in it and while I know that in class we were told "not to try to complete the puzzle" I kind of felt the need to. For me while I loved each individual scene the loose connections that can be made between each dream and memory was such an attractive idea to me that I felt the need to at least try in some extent to piece together this dying man's thoughts. This film was really unlike anything I've seen I loved the interplay of family and history and repetition, I imagine this film will be one where each time you watch it you see something completely different. I feel like this is the perfect film to watch in a social, round table setting, as I feel that everyone will have their own personal takes and I am really excited to gain all of their thoughts on this film.