• One of the most beautiful films I’ve ever seen
  • The narrative isn’t easy—it’s up there with mirror for being his most opaque
  • Uncontestably stunning camera movements and achievements in décor and mise-en-scene that interrupt quiet and stillness (usually with water running somewhere and a german shepard in the mix)
  • A rapturous portrait for the ending—truly one of cinema’s great images to close a film
  • First of two collaborations with longtime member of the bergman family of actors- Erland Jospehson
  • Open in mist and fog—lovely opening shot. The car moves out of frame and then back in and Tarkovsky doesn’t chase- he slowing tracks in
  • Continues camera moving imperceptibly closer via tracking shot
  • Gorgeous black and white flashbacks. It’s from the mirror. Audio of water trickling like every one of his films. Often you hear overlapping audio with muted contemporary dialogue over the flashback (which makes me think we’re talking about partial surrealism)
  • There’s an odd bit of unbelievable ego here with Tarkovsky’s work. In mirror he had a poster of solaris (if Spielberg did this he’d get crushed for it). In here two characters talk about Tarkovsky’s father’s poetry with great reverence
  • In almost every scene there is the use of mirrors and water/rain. Still frame breathtaking photography all over the place
  • Several “oners” or tracking shots. One is along a rustic Tuscan rock wall when introducing Josephson
  • Tarkovsky loves shooting in open hallways with doors open and the wall at the end there is a painting or lighted piece of art. I can see tarkovsky’s influence on peter greenaway with his framing, rigorously mirroring in his images and layered mise-en-scene
  • Countless images of rusticated Tuscany region
  • Josephson’s dilapidated house is a marvel of mise-en-scene
  • I was continually impressed with the technical skill involved with the hiding of the camera in all the mirror work
  • The domestic relationship in the film had some scenes of great acidly like that of a Bergman film
  • The pond/lagoon/tidepool thing set piece is a stunner. It’s like right out of stalker. This and the house of josephson are ridiculously well-done and the film just ramps up from there to the end. It’s a 2 hour film but the first 30-40 are the weakest
  • A meditation on love, regret, and memory
  • I laughed at loud at the Camby NYT review. He closes with “nothing happens” and while tearing the film apart in the review says “Mr. Tarkovsky, whose earlier films include ”Andrei Rublev,” ”Solaris” and ”Stalker,” may well be a film poet but he’s a film poet with a tiny vocabulary. The same, eventually- boring images keep recurring in film after film – shots of damp landscapes, marshes, hills in fog, and abandoned buildings with roofs that leak. The meaning of water in his films isn’t as interesting to me as the question of how his actors keep their feet reasonably dry.”
  • The mirror has meaning in the narrative- there’s a duality between the josephson character and Oleg Yankovskiy character
  • Heavy use of stairs in his set pieces, german shepard, the sort of ionized green from a stature and gray is very heavy in the décor, setting the stature ablaze—some Buddhist monk reference? We also have a place at the end of the sacrifice
  • Tracking shot lighter carrying shot prior to final image is wonderful as well. Very dramatic and stylistically loud. 9 minute tracking shot ending in a wonderful shot of the flame in hand
  • The final mise-en-scene shot is utterly gobsmacking
  • A giant Masterpiece