The Mirror (1975)

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Movie
German title The mirror
Original title Зеркало
Country of production Soviet Union
original language Russian
Publishing year 1975
length 108 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Andrei Tarkovsky
script Alexander Mischarin ,
Andrei Tarkowski
production Erik Waisberg
music Eduard Artemjew
camera Georgi Rerberg
cut Lyudmila Feiginova
occupation

Der Spiegel ( Russian Зеркало , Serkalo ) is a film made by the Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky between 1973 and 1974 . The autobiographical work, alternating between film drama and film poem, links elements of individual memory and collective history. Tarkowski freed himself from the conventions of narrative cinema even more consistently than in his other films. Instead of a linear action, he set a free change of different time levels, thereby interweaving various non-narrative elements (dream images, documentary material, reproduction of works of art) and thus achieved a complex interweaving of inner and world views.

Emergence

Already from the work on his first feature film Ivan's Childhood , Tarkowski developed thoughts that foreshadowed the conception of Der Spiegel - comparable to the lyrical self of a poem. The cinematic representation of thoughts, memories and dreams of a character who would remain outside the picture, whose inner world become visible.

Soon afterwards, Tarkowski began to write down haunting memories of experiences from his childhood, which was overshadowed by the onset of World War II . From these notes the story A White Day , published in 1970 in the film magazine Iskusstwo kino and served as a template for the screenplay , developed, the title of which is taken from a poem by Arseni Tarkowski , the director's father. This text and an idea sketch entitled The Confession , which Tarkowski had already submitted to the Mosfilm film company in 1967 , illustrate the development of the conception of the film. The combination of three components was provided at this stage: passages of extensive interviews with Tarkovsky's mother re-enacted scenes from the childhood of the director and einmontierten newsreel -Ausschnitten. Since the project initially failed to receive the necessary support from the Goskino film authority , Tarkowski put it aside in favor of the film adaptation of Solaris .

After the realization of Der Spiegel (initially under the working title White, White Day ) was made possible in 1973, Tarkowski changed the conception, dispensed with the interview, instead of paying homage to the mother, let the autobiographical aspect take center stage and gave a brief demonstration At the end of the shooting there is a present story. The linking of the narrative levels and the final arrangement of the episodes only took place after the filming in a lengthy process after around twenty editing variants.

Plot and structure

Due to its discontinuous, achronological structure, the film defies conventional retelling. The larger context to which the plot fragments fit consists in the visualization of the world of emotions and thoughts of the protagonist Alexei and their biographical prerequisites. Anchored several times in the epic present, which shows the protagonist trapped in a life crisis marked by illness and alienation, the film consists primarily of flashbacks to formative childhood experiences.

The more extensive flashbacks contain scenes of a summer stay in the country, overshadowed by the separation of the father from the family and ending with a fire in a haystack; There is also an episode in which the mother, who works in a printing company, panics because of an imagined proofreading error; Scenes of pre-military training for schoolchildren in which an orphan of war defies instructions; and an episode in which the mother, who was in distress due to the war-related evacuation, and Alexei seek help from wealthy acquaintances. The boy's dreams are interwoven with these sequences, as are film documents from contemporary history, such as from the Spanish Civil War , the march of Soviet soldiers through Lake Siwasch , the capture of Berlin by the Red Army , the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and the Soviet-Chinese Confrontation at the Ussuri .

The structure of the film resembles the literary process of the stream of consciousness and corresponds more to the involuntary, associative process of remembering than to an objectifiable consistency. The time levels are bracketed by the use of the same actress (Margarita Terechowa) in the roles of the mother and the divorced wife of the protagonist and the same actor (Ignat Danilzew) in the roles of the adolescent Alexej and his son Ignat. Likewise, the alternating use of color and black and white sequences is not entirely congruent with the narrative levels of the film. In addition to the alogical, mysterious structure and the abundance of depth psychologically significant moments, the atmospheric camera work gives the film a dream-like character beyond the actual dream sequences. Following the common understanding of the end as a death scene, the impression finally arises “of a strophic sequence of moments in which life passes by in the face of death. "(Eva MJ Schmid)

Themes and motifs

The mirror was placed as a cinematic counterpart in the tradition of the romantic confessional literature, in which “ the self is reflected in the world and the world in the self ”. According to his film-poetological concept of a “ sculpture from time ”, Tarkowski assembled “ the whole chaos of the circumstances [...] which confronted the hero of this film with inevitable questions of being ” into a multi-layered poetic psychogram . Autobiographical references can be demonstrated in key points: the absence of the father, who remains present in the poems he has composed; the mother who raised her two children and worked as a proofreader; the distress experienced after the war-related evacuation. In addition, self- comments show that the work processes fragments of an inner biography: “ In this film I decided for the first time to speak directly and unreservedly about what is most important and most valuable, most intimate for me. "The intimacy is expressed in the enigmatic images of the dream sequences, nourished by childish wishes and fears, as well as in the visualization of the intense childlike experience of a world that is perceived as magical and animated, such as in the perception of the beautiful Mary-like mother or in the epiphanic motif of the burning haystack in the rain.

Historical events that were inscribed in the collective memory of that time, such as the pre-military training courses and the evacuation in the wake of the Leningrad blockade , the presence of refugees from the Spanish civil war and the repression of Stalinism , on which the printing works, have an impact on individual memories Episode alludes. The built-in newsreel material extends these historical references to include additional aspects. But the story is also embedded in a larger context: that of “eternal” nature, which in its elementary manifestations permeates all levels of the film: “ On the one hand, the small time dimension of individual human fates coexists with the large time scale according to which history is measured the historical time seen against the background of natural phenomena that endure the times. "( Maja Turovskaya )

In the central theme of time and memory, art ultimately plays a role through its ability to give things duration in a creative form that makes them an object of contemplation that spans generations. The reminiscences of Leonardo da Vinci's works and a scene based on the winter landscapes of Pieter Brueghel the Elder are just as important in this context as the four poems by Arseni Tarkowski recited by the author himself ( First meeting ; From the morning I waited for you yesterday ... ; Leben, Leben ; Eurydice ), the text quotations woven into the plot (by Dante Alighieri , Fjodor M. Dostojewski and Alexander S. Pushkin ) and the music used by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi and Johann Sebastian Bach . Joining itself in its own way with the tradition of artistic world view, Tarkowski's most personal work is at the same time a film-poetic reflection on the human condition , on dignity and self-assertion against the background of an epoch of totalitarianism and violence.

reception

The Soviet film authority Goskino criticized the film as difficult to understand and mysticistic, as an " impenetrable picture puzzle " and " Freudian navel gazing ". The documentary material used was also criticized as being too naturalistic and a more heroic, triumphant depiction of the war was suggested. The director, who is considered an elitist, once again failed to comply with the cultural doctrine, which called for generally understandable, positive messages. In contrast to the censored Andrei Rublev , after initial delays, the film was finally released without profound changes, but it was not until 1978 that it was distributed in the West. A performance at the Cannes International Film Festival , where Tarkowski's two previous works ( Andrej Rublev , Solaris ) had received awards, was not made possible by the film authorities.

Not least because of his free movement in the dimension of time, he is praised as a solitaire in film art: “ Tarkowskij succeeds in making us feel time as if we were entering a space - and it is probably this time-space metonymy , the Serkalo turned into an event comparable to Ingmar Bergman's art and yet quite unique in the history of film to date. "( Klaus Kreimeier )

literature

  • Timo Hoyer : Film work - dream work. Andrei Tarkovsky and his film "Der Spiegel" ("Serkalo") . In: R. Onion / A. Mahler-Bungers (Ed.): Projection and Reality. The unconscious message of the film . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2007, pp. 85–110. ISBN 3-525-45179-2 .
  • Maja Josifowna Turowskaja, Felicitas Allardt-Nostitz: Andrej Tarkowskij. Film as Poetry - Poetry as Film . Keil, Bonn 1981, ISBN 3-921591-12-0
  • Andrej Tarkowski: The sealed time. Thoughts on art, on the aesthetics and poetics of film . Ullstein, Berlin 1985 (3rd, expanded edition 1988), ISBN 3-550-06393-8
  • Andrei Tarkovsky . Hanser, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-446-15016-1 ( Film 39 series )
  • Andrei Tarkovsky: The mirror. Novella, work diaries and materials for the making of the film . Limes, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-8090-2322-1
  • Natasha Synessios: Mirror . IB Tauris, London 2001, ISBN 1-86064-521-6 ( KINOfiles Film Companion 6)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andrej Tarkowski: The sealed time . Gustav Kiepenheuer, Leipzig 1989, pp. 32–33.
  2. ↑ Andrej Tarkowski: The sealed time . Gustav Kiepenheuer, Leipzig 1989, p. 145.
  3. ↑ Natasha Synessios: Mirror . IB Tauris, London 2001 ( KINOfiles Film Companion 6), p. 12.
  4. ↑ Andrej Tarkowski: The sealed time . Gustav Kiepenheuer, Leipzig 1989, p. 149.
  5. ↑ Andrej Tarkowski: The sealed time . Gustav Kiepenheuer, Leipzig 1989, p. 130.
  6. ↑ See also: Making Pictures: A Century of European Cinematography . Abrams, New York 2003, pp. 334-335.
  7. ↑ Eva MJ Schmid: Memories and Questions . In: Andrei Tarkovsky . Hanser, Munich 1987 ( Film 39 series ), p. 57.
  8. ↑ Maja Iossifowna Turowskaja, Felicitas Allardt-Nostitz: Andrej Tarkowskij. Film as Poetry - Poetry as Film . Keil, Bonn 1981, p. 119.
  9. ↑ Andrej Tarkowski: The sealed time . Gustav Kiepenheuer, Leipzig 1989, p. 215.
  10. ↑ Andrej Tarkowski: The sealed time . Gustav Kiepenheuer, Leipzig 1989, p. 152.
  11. ↑ Maja Iossifowna Turowskaja, Felicitas Allardt-Nostitz: Andrej Tarkowskij. Film as Poetry - Poetry as Film . Keil, Bonn 1981, p. 81.
  12. ^ Andrei Tarkovsky: The mirror. Novella, work diaries and materials for the making of the film . Limes, Berlin 1993, p. 313.
  13. ↑ Maja Josifowna Turowskaja, Felicitas Allardt-Nostitz: Andrej Tarkowskij. Film as Poetry - Poetry as Film . Keil, Bonn 1981, p. 7.
  14. ↑ Natasha Synessios: Mirror . IB Tauris, London 2001 ( KINOfiles Film Companion 6), p. 116.
  15. ^ Klaus Kreimeier: Annotated filmography . In: Andrei Tarkovsky . Hanser, Munich 1987 ( Film 39 series ), p. 131.