Freud's theory that, "it may indeed be questioned whether we have any memories at all from our childhood: memories relating to our childhood may be all that we possess," ties directly to Andrei Tarkovsky's transfixing film The Mirror (1975) which interweaves personal narration, historical newsreel footage, and past memories with present moments. This cinematic welding assembles the life and memories of a man, with some of the seemingly unrelated sequences (like the news clips or his mother leaving the house) still braided into his narrative.
The scenes that take place on the man's childhood farm are the most bewitching, due to the use of light and the over exposure which washes everything in amber. Tarkovsky's shots of wind and rustling leaves vaguely recall a similar motif used in Michael Antonioni's L'avventura, Blow Up, or L'Eclisse; yet, in these shots that sweep the homestead, we linger with a space and time that this man can no longer fill. The silver birches and the grass, sweeping back, parallel the eerie shots of the man's mother washing her hair in a basin (her skin so translucent she appears to us like a specter) or walking through the dimly lit wooden rooms in a white dress.
It is Tarkovsky's ability to intertwine many different facets of memory (without the superfluous cuts and editing of recent films like Good Bye Lenin!) that create a more complete portrait of a past than a traditional narrative film is able to achieve. This film operates the way our minds do - one shot of a barn burning in rain leads to a present day image of the protagonist observing his son standing in the rain next to a burning branch. So, too, do our minds retrieve or relate moments to our childhood (paintings, footage, and conversations) without any explanation or transition, sweeping us, like the grass and the birches, to occupy each shot and scene, windblown and full of wonder.
Image courtesy of womdersinthedark.wordpress.com, which is a nice blog in its own right
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