I have to admit that when I read over the remaining titles on the 1001 list, there are a few that I’m dreading. But I always hope that films that I’m not looking forward to will surprise me, as was the case with 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978; #150). Anything by Soviet director Andrea Tarkovsky throws up just such a red flag. Of his films that I’ve seen, many of them i.e. Andrea Rublev (1966), Solaris (1972), and Stalker (1979) which are considered masterpieces, I haven’t enjoyed a single one. Yes I’m probably a viewer too young and too thoroughly westernized to enjoy these semi-ethereal Russian works, but that’s just how it is. His movies are achingly slow, and as such I wasn’t exactly excited about his The Mirror (1974).
In this case my ominous sense of dread seems to have been dead on. Again Tarkovsky delivered a snails-paced meditation on God know what that simply missed the mark for me. The 1001 text notes in the write-up on The Mirror that avant-garde American director Stan Brakhage (of Dog Star Man infamy) was one of Tarkovsky’s greatest stateside supporters – in what must be one of the most blatant examples ever of one hack praising the hackery of another. Both of these filmmakers made pictures that no one could possibly understand, and I would bet that they generated equal pleasure for that experience. The Mirror is supposedly a multigenerational examination of the experience of being raised without a father, an experience Tarkovsky knew well. It’s been highly praised for its personal nature by Brakhage and by others for years, but I found it little more than distant and apathetic. It is supposed to be clear that the protagonist, who’s POV we experience without ever seeing his adult face, is Tarkovsky himself, grown and now guilty of the same sin of abandonment. He doesn’t seem particularly apologetic for his actions, and doesn’t appear particularly to care for anything at all. He complains to his mother over the phone about having a soar throat, using it for his excuse not to visit as he idles away in his dilapidated apartment. This lodging in particular pushes the film from “personal” to self-indulgent, as an Andrea Rublev poster is hung on the wall. How insecure can director be when he has to use art work promoting one of his films as a set piece for another? This is more that George Lucas hiding “THX 1138” in all of his movies. This is pure narcissism.
And how about naming a film that is supposed to be a self-reflection “The Mirror?” Did he copy this script off of a bathroom wall at the obvious metaphor bar? To be fair, the film really is full of reflection shots and sets full of mirrors, but placing them there doesn’t really enhance the film’s meaning. Compliment these factors with bad editing and the added confusion of having one actress play both the mother of the past and the wife of the present and you get a disjointed Oedipus complex movie.
There are however some brief bright moments, more credited to Tarkovsky’s vision than his filmmaking abilities. He incorporates the use of stock footage, most of it concerning major moments of 20th century Russian history, setting them to the compositions of Bach and Purcell. These instances are brief but powerful, and speak volumes more than anything Tarkovsky committed to his own celluloid. They seem to imply, in the context of his almost incoherent work, that Russians are affected, generation to generation, by the history of the land in which they make their lives. On these notes the film hits the right chord, but unfortunately they are all but lost in the midst of Tarkovsky’s filmic ramblings. Brakhage said of Tarkovsky’s work that it was dreamlike, “illuminat[ing] the boarders of the unconscious.” He did get one thing right. Unconscious is what most viewers will be about ten minutes into this one.
Grade: 1 Hat Off
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