Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Cheryl A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

TheNabOwnzz As with most of Tarkovsky's movies, this one is a slow, psychological, colourful movie with a lot of relevant deep themes. While the cinematography is brilliant ( Most of the shots themselves can be seen as moving paintings ), the music is excellent as usual in a Tarkovsky film, it misses a crucial element in filmmaking. Storytelling.If not for the description here on IMDb i would have absolutely no idea what this movie is about. It's just a bunch of random scenes put together in which Tarkovsky expects the audience to see the point. While the cinematography and the brilliant use of colour and camera angles make it stand out as a piece of art, the art of storytelling, compelling characters & character development seems non existent. The same actress is used for the mother and the wife of the main character, and it was difficult to see which one she was in a particular scene due to Tarkovsky's lack of storytelling. Same goes for the protagonist's son and himself when he was younger, the same actor, which only makes it confusing. There is also a weird mix in photography from black and white to colour to ( I presume ) show which timeline it is, but that still wasnt very clear, so it seems like an irrelevant addition. The protagonist is never shown and can sometimes be heard mumbling nonsensical poetry, but there is no character development to speak of at all in the film. While there were some unforgettable scenes ( or, more like images ), a movie is never complete without characters or storytelling, which leaves my verdict about The Mirror (1975) very mixed.

aaamail This movies is like a life flashing before your eyes in the last moments before death. Nostalgia, longing, regrets, people, beauty, time and poetry are words that comes to your mind while watching.Very much like the liminal state between being awake and dreaming. The movie is woven like a cosmic gobelin scaling the globe, the human timeframe, needling through centuries and contrasting the personal life, with the life of a chaotic world, nature and machinery, near and far. I mostly remember this movie for the almost gnostic poetic montages about the archetypal human condition cutting through all of time and space. The sacred is in anything and Tarkovsky can actually show you that.

Kirpianuscus always, each film of Tarkovsky , for me, is a church. in few cases, a cathedral. and this gives to him the advantage to be more than a remarkable director or a wise teller. "The Mirror" is a brilliant example. fragments of life. in not precise order. absence of story. each scene - a picture from a lost place. mixture of lives. and suggestion. and, in a moment, the feeling to be fragments from your life. all is beautiful and bitter and strange and familiar. because it is the story of a century. and its confession. because it is just a basket with memories. defining purposes and needs and expectations and words. because all is touching. and far. because, long time after its end, I preserved from it only the image of the mother of Tarkovski. as the mother. because it is a walk on the water. using as steps the presence of Arseny Tarkovsky and his poetry. the image of Oleg Yankovsky. and the look of the boy in the mirror. a film for who the descriptions/ definitions do not works. so, see it. for a form of view with yourself.

vladislavmanoylo The Mirror is a poetry of images and motion. It's the kind of film that probably needs to be seen several times to understand, but its enjoyable even the first time thanks to the imagery and atmosphere it can create. Instead of a traditional plot, this movie speaks through symbols, again much like a poem. Rather than following any linear story, the scenes are taken from various places in time featuring a handful of characters, and other scenes taken from documentaries spliced in between.One of the most interesting elements is the camera. It moves like a ghost throughout the movie- gently gliding across extended single shot scenes, and sliding across characters and their reflections. Interestingly it maintains this effect when its shown from the first person, and other characters are addressing the character whose point of view were looking from. This is why I said the camera is like a ghost, because most of the movie is filmed like this it's as if this character behind the camera is always there, which is even made possible because the camera is capable of walking across dream-like sequences as readily as real ones.One of the earliest scenes in the movie is of this time, and summarizes why this movie is so engrossing. After the scene of a house burning down in the rain, there is one of a woman washing her hair, which is ordinary on the surface but a very eerie atmosphere is created because of her very slow movements and the hair covering her face. The tension is brought up dramatically from the surroundings: walls scarred by flames but dripping with moisture. A connection is made to the burned down house from earlier, and later scenes in the movie take place in buildings with similar walls. Links such as these between disparate scenes of the movie create this impression of a poem, where all these separate elements where put in place to create a single meaning, but what that is is largely up to the audience to discover.There are many more examples throughout, but that is just a glimpse of the atmosphere that makes this movie so interesting to watch even the first time.