In attempting to capture the essence of his life and times, Tarkovsky
created a film unique in structure and vision. Seen through the mind's
eye of a dying man, memories of childhood, adolesence, family
breakdown and love coalesce and dissolve with the feverish intensity
of dreams whilst incursions of jarring newsreel footage serve as the
narrator's silent commentary on the events shaping his life. The
ceaselessly shifting chronology and characterisation may render the
film bewildering to the uninitiated. However, comprehensible or not,
its mournful beauty and scale of ambition are reasons enough to look in
Tarkovsky's Mirror.
