Popular reviews

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  Review by Karst ★★★★★ 20

  What makes a life a life? The people who raised you? The places you went? The home you grew up in? The historical events that occurred? The relationships you had? The deaths you witnessed? The philosophies you learned? This film is saying these are all correct, focusing on the idea that life is based off memory. Which then poses the question, is life only based off memory? Is what you didn't remember not considered a part of your life? Told with a visual style that had me literally pausing the film to take it all in, Mirror introduced me to a life so distant from my own but through a lens that felt so familiar. It's silly to think I or anyone is going to figure out the purpose and meaning behind life, but if there's anyone that'll make you feel like you're a little bit closer to figuring it out, it's Andrei Tarkovsky.

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  Review by stevie ★★★½ 30

  Name a more iconic duo than Andrei Tarkovsky and me falling asleep. I'll wait.

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  Review by Darren Carver-Balsiger ★★★★★ 137

  Dear Mum,

  I never said "I love you" enough. I always meant to, but I never knew how to express my emotions. As a child I didn't understand, as an adult I don't have the humility to admit my many emotional failings. With dad being how he is, and me being me, I wonder if you ever heard it enough. But know this now, I love you. You are the reason for my every success.

  As a child I didn't like to hug you. I didn't like contact, I didn't like closeness. Family to me always seemed arbitrary. But having you as my mother meant so much to me. Every single time I had an epileptic seizure, you found me…

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  Review by dylan gelula ★★★★★ 5

  by definition nobody who has a letterboxd account is smart enough to have anything to say about this

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  Review by Eli Hayes ★★★★★ 74

  Tarkovsky is the
  greatest filmmaker
  of all-time. By far.
  No other filmmaker
  even comes close.

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  Review by laird ★★★★★ 2

  Broken mirror in the streets, levitating woman in the sheets

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  Review by Dirk Diggler ★★★★★ 9

  Mirror is a poetic, abstract and deeply beautiful film that offers glimpses of memories from a childhood and life of a dying man, and also happens to be one of the most mesmerizing cinematic experiences i've had. It's a non-linear, jumbled, quiet, deliberate and slow film that puts you into a meditative state of mind with it's complex structure, lingering camerawork, dream-like atmosphere, and audiovisual treats. While the whole film is otherworldly beautiful, the burning barn sequence is a contender for the most beautifully filmed sequence of all time. And I was on the verge of tears during the ending. Mirror can be a difficult watch, but it is undoubtedly a masterpiece of poetic and visual filmmaking, a human and resonating film that left me speechless.

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  Review by Eli Hayes ★★★★★ 12

  "Each moment of our dates, not many,
  We celebrated as an Epiphany.
  Alone in the whole world.
  More daring and lighter than a bird
  Down the stairs, like a dizzy apparition,
  You came to take me on your road,
  Through rain-soaked lilacs,
  To your own possession,
  To the looking glass world.

  As night descended
  I was blessed with grace,
  The altar gate opened up,
  And in the darkness shining
  And slowly reclining
  Was your body naked.
  On waking up I said:
  God bless you!
  Although I knew how daring and undue
  My blessing was: You were fast asleep,
  Your closed eyelids with the universal blue
  The lilac on the table so strained to sweep.
  Touched by the blue, your lids…

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  Review by Wesley R. Ball ★★★★★ 2

  In Soviet Russia, mind bends you.

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  Review by DirkH ★★★★★ 7

  Film #7 of Make me watch your favourite.

  Recommended by Adam Cook and Henrik Løberg.

  Whenever I wake up from a half remembered dream I always wish I could go back and explore just what my subconscious was trying to tell me, or come to terms with. With Tarkovsky's The Mirror, which felt like just that, a waking dream, I had the luxury of revisiting it. And that I did. After finishing it I immediately watched it again. It is a film deserving of multiple watches, it needs it to come to terms with its architecture, to distill any meaning from it.

  Before I watch this again, which I most definitely will, I will need to do more research as…

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  Review by russman ★★★½ 1

  Well that's one way to wash your hair

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  Review by Puffin ★★★★★ 20

  Tarkovsky is a bit different from other slow cinema artists that dominate other parts of the world. Like filmmakers such as Bela Tarr and Lav Diaz, Tarkovsky holds shots for long periods of time, perhaps with more camera movement than the others, yet when Tarr and Diaz move their shots, they match the mood out of necessity. Their films are slow, so their camera movements are slow as well, makes sense, and they do it spectacularly. Tarkovsky moves his camera slowly because there's so much detail in his colors, his lighting, every single detail is so pronounced, it takes time for us to absorb such minor objects into our world of the frame. He refuses to rush past the place…