Mirror (1975)

Janus Film | Release Date: August 17, 1983

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

82	METASCORE Universal acclaim based on 14 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

100

Mark Chalon Smith

While there is barely a story to tie it all together, The Mirror finds connections in the longings of Alexei. He longs to understand his past, his land, his family, his inspirations and fears, and that’s what the movie is able to convey in its abstract but persuasive way. Read full review

100

Michael Wilmington

Truly original and unique: genuine film poetry, full of spellbinding images and sequences. [20 Mar 1998, p.L]

100

Donald Clarke

Mirror is much copied, but as the recent run of Terrence Malick films demonstrates, eschewing time and plot for flotsam and psyche is much harder than Tarkovsky makes it look. Read full review

Anthony Lane

The smallest details (a stammering child, the wrinkle in the turned page of a book) stick like burrs, and we are left to wonder if any director has delved with more modesty and honesty into the heartbreak of the past. Read full review

Jonathan Crocker

Cinema rarely gets this close to poetry in motion.

Maximilian Von Thun

Tarkovsky possessed a sensibility for, and mastery over, the cinematic form that few directors – before or after – have been able to match; a mastery evident in almost every sublime frame of Mirror. Read full review

James F. Clarity

Mirror, a new film by Andrei Tarkovsky, the controversial and unorthodox Soviet director, is delighting, puzzling, disaping serious Muscovite movie enthusiasts. Read full review

EmpireStaff (Not Credited)

Regardless of its dense intellectual and autobiographical content, however, Mirror can still be appreciated as an attempt to capture the human soul and to show that, for all our diverse individual experiences, we still have much in common on an emotional and spiritual level. Read full review

The GuardianPeter Bradshaw

A startling piece of film-making, floating free of the conventional demands of period and narrative. Read full review

The Observer (UK)Philip French

It's a beautiful, elaborately textured film, by some way Tarkovsky's most difficult, and not to be approached without first consulting some exegetical text. [15 Aug 2004, p.9]

Staff (Not Credited)

Tarkovsky goes for the great white whale of politicised art a history of his country in this century seen in terms of the personal and succeeds. [18 Aug 2004, p.90]

TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)

An unconventional but rewarding film. Read full review

John Petrakis

The Mirror may not be the easiest place to start your Tarkovsky education, but its sublime images (including a memorable shot of a burning barn in the rain), are sure to whet your appetite for more. [26 May 2000, p.M]

Lawrence Van Gelder

Mr. Tarkovsky appears so absorbed in grappling with his own demons that universality suffers. [17 Aug 1983, p.C14]