Following Clifton Burt’s recommendation to poke around The Auteurs I uncovered this dusty old Russian film, The Mirror. This is one of those films you sink into, totally get lost in, and days after watching still can’t find your way out. I suppose that sounds creepy. It does make you think at any moment an axe murderer is going to elegantly slay the entire cast. Perhaps it’s just Russian stoicism being filtered through my predictability screen.

The film has been deemed unwatchable, yet its finale has been hailed as the greatest in cinematic history. Each scene is artfully crafted and could be considered fine art if hung on ones wall. Five minutes in, I began grabbing snapshots left and right.

It took me an hour to realize that it is not a film at all. The Mirror is in fact a stream of consciousness-associated memory stockpile. The visual display of nonlinear, fragmented, disjointed human experiences. To say the storyline is understandable is pretty much a crime.

Despite all this noise, The Mirror is fully engrossing. What a surprise on a Tuesday night! Its is basically like ingesting Peyote through your eyes. Delicious.

The highly acclaimed final sequence, set to J.S. Bach as directed by Andrei Tarkovsky:

Don’t worry, you won’t understand a thing. In fact this might as well be the opening. Oh and if you speak Russian you’ll likely be more confused.