Mirror (1975) dir. Andrei Tarkovsky: Final Scene - Thoughts, Feelings, (& Analysis?)
Andrei Tarkovsky's Mirror is filled with the richest imagery that continue to haunt the consciousness after watching it. A film about a dying poet's recollection of his childhood, and its projection onto and through his son. Images from this film have been burned into my mind forever, such is the visual prowess of Mirror. But the scene that impacts me the most and thrills me to my core is the film's final scene.
Not long before in the film, Aleksei (the poet) expresses having a recurring dream where he is a child again. In it, however, he can't enter his house, inside where his mother is cutting vegetable. Aleksei expresses, "And I can't wait to see this dream where I'll be a child again and feel happy again". In the film, Aleksei has an estranged relationship with his mother. His mother seems to have a distaste about him. If you know how personal this film is to Tarkovsky, you know the film is about him way more than most directors' personal films' are about them. Dream, memory, and desire haunt the film from the beginning to the end. Despite Tarkovsky's mother encouraging and supporting him in art in his early life, he developed a rebellion against her parental authority. Which in this film, seems to be completely flipped, and now the distaste is coming from Aleksei's mother (although I don't know how their relationship continued into his later life until this film). There is a black and white narrative in this film which independently seems to be from Aleksei's mother. This eventually bleeds into Aleksei's perception of his wife, given the obvious oedipal theme of the film.
In the final scene of Mirror, Aleksei is in his deathbed, accepting of his fate. He lets go of a bird, symbolic, and has a dream where he is finally reunited with his mother (played by Tarkovsky's real mother), as a child again. And they walk off into the sunset. And Aleksei yells in the open field, he is full of life and childhood. His desire is completed with this dream.
The scene kicks off with Bach's Johannes-Passion conducted by Karl Richter, a striking masterpiece that enthralls the soul with such haunting prowess, making you, I, and Aleksei's young mother feel ultimately powerless. The complexity of this scene lies in the fact that we see a younger version of Aleksei's mother look at her older self with her children. The differring narrative and perspectives eventually blend into each other, creating an unimitable theatric.
Often, we see an older character in film reminiscing their younger self. But here, it's the opposite. The places are switched. But the emotions remain the same. The powerlessness against time and nature is deeply felt here. This one simple switch makes this scene so potent and haunting, accompanied by the ghastly Johannes-Passion, making it one of the best, most impactful sequences in cinema to ever be, and one that will continue to haunt me forever.
Truly, Mirror feels like a film I wasn't supposed to watch. It feels as if I've opened a door to the darkest depth's of Tarkovsky and looked at something my eyes were never to be bestowed upon. But it is without a doubt, a gift to all of humanity, and to all who desire deeply to be young again.
