Mirror
Tarkovsky mixes flash-backs, historical footage and original poetry to illustrate the reminiscences of a dying man about his childhood during World War II, adolescence, and a painful divorce in his family. The story interweaves reflections about Russian history and society
The film box office disappointment against its microbudget of $825K, earning $124K globally (-85% loss). While initial box office returns were modest, the film has gained appreciation for its bold vision within the biography genre.
Plot Structure
Story beats plotted across runtime
Narrative Arc
Emotional journey through the story's key moments
Story Circle
Blueprint 15-beat structure
Characters
Cast & narrative archetypes
Maria / Natalia
Alexei (narrator)
Father / Narrator as Adult
Alexei (12 years old)
Ignat
Lisa
Main Cast & Characters
Maria / Natalia
Played by Margarita Terekhova
The narrator's mother in her youth and the narrator's wife in the present; both roles played by the same actress, suggesting cyclical patterns in relationships
Alexei (narrator)
Played by Innokenty Smoktunovsky
The dying poet whose voice narrates the film, reflecting on his childhood, relationships, and memories
Father / Narrator as Adult
Played by Oleg Yankovsky
The absent father figure and the adult version of the narrator, representing disconnection and artistic burden
Alexei (12 years old)
Played by Filipp Yankovsky
The narrator as a child in the 1930s-40s, observing his mother and processing the absence of his father
Ignat
Played by Ignat Daniltsev
The narrator's son in the present timeline, mirroring the young Alexei and continuing generational patterns
Lisa
Played by Larisa Tarkovskaya
The printing house colleague who visits Maria, representing connection and shared struggle in wartime
Structural Analysis
The Status Quo at 1 minutes (1% through the runtime) establishes A stuttering young man is hypnotized on television, learning to speak freely. This prologue establishes the film's concern with blocked expression, memory, and the therapeutic unlocking of the past.. Significantly, this early placement immediately immerses viewers in the story world.
The inciting incident occurs at 13 minutes when A barn catches fire in the distance as the mysterious doctor departs. The conflagration marks the intrusion of destruction into the pastoral idyll—the first rupture in memory, suggesting the father's abandonment and the family's fracturing.. At 12% through the film, this Disruption aligns precisely with traditional story structure. This beat shifts the emotional landscape, launching the protagonist into the central conflict.
The First Threshold at 27 minutes marks the transition into Act II, occurring at 25% of the runtime. This indicates the protagonist's commitment to Maria rushes through rain to the printing house, convinced she's allowed a fatal error to slip through. Her desperate run marks the film's full immersion into subjective memory-space—we cross from present-day reflection into the visceral terror of the past, where a typo could mean death., moving from reaction to action.
At 54 minutes, the Midpoint arrives at 50% of the runtime—precisely centered, creating perfect narrative symmetry. Notably, this crucial beat Documentary footage of Soviet soldiers crossing Lake Sivash during WWII—an agonizing, almost unbearable sequence of men trudging through mud toward death. The personal becomes historical; Alexei's private suffering merges with collective trauma. This false defeat reveals that individual memory cannot be separated from national catastrophe., fundamentally raising what's at risk. The emotional intensity shifts, dividing the narrative into clear before-and-after phases.
The Collapse moment at 80 minutes (75% through) represents the emotional nadir. Here, Alexei, dying and bedridden, recalls a childhood moment when his mother washed her hair and the ceiling began to crumble and flood. Water pours through the disintegrating house—the whiff of death made literal as the structures of memory and self begin to collapse around him., illustrates the protagonist at their lowest point. This beat's placement in the final quarter sets up the climactic reversal.
The Second Threshold at 86 minutes initiates the final act resolution at 80% of the runtime. Alexei speaks his final words to his mother: "I simply want to be happy." This surrender—abandoning the need to understand or control memory—marks the threshold into acceptance. The synthesis of a lifetime begins., demonstrating the transformation achieved throughout the journey.
Emotional Journey
Mirror's emotional architecture traces a deliberate progression across 15 carefully calibrated beats.
Narrative Framework
This structural analysis employs a 15-point narrative structure framework that maps key story moments. By mapping Mirror against these established plot points, we can identify how Andrei Tarkovsky utilizes or subverts traditional narrative conventions. The plot point approach reveals not only adherence to structural principles but also creative choices that distinguish Mirror within the biography genre.
Comparative Analysis
Additional biography films include After Thomas, Taking Woodstock and The Fire Inside.
Plot Points by Act
Act I
SetupStatus Quo
A stuttering young man is hypnotized on television, learning to speak freely. This prologue establishes the film's concern with blocked expression, memory, and the therapeutic unlocking of the past.
Theme
The hypnotist tells the boy: "I can speak." This declaration of recovered voice embodies the film's theme—Tarkovsky attempting to articulate memories that have long been suppressed, finding language for the ineffable past.
Worldbuilding
The young Maria sits on a fence outside her country dacha, smoking, when a stranger-doctor approaches and they share an enigmatic conversation. Wind sweeps through the buckwheat field. This establishes the film's dreamlike texture, rural setting, and the mother figure who haunts Alexei's memories.
Disruption
A barn catches fire in the distance as the mysterious doctor departs. The conflagration marks the intrusion of destruction into the pastoral idyll—the first rupture in memory, suggesting the father's abandonment and the family's fracturing.
Resistance
Alexei's phone conversation with his elderly mother in the present intercuts with memories of childhood. His mother's voice guides us through temporal layers as we see the young Maria at the printing house, terrified she's made a catastrophic typographical error. The specter of Stalinist terror and paranoia permeates these scenes.
Act II
ConfrontationFirst Threshold
Maria rushes through rain to the printing house, convinced she's allowed a fatal error to slip through. Her desperate run marks the film's full immersion into subjective memory-space—we cross from present-day reflection into the visceral terror of the past, where a typo could mean death.
Mirror World
Natalia, Alexei's ex-wife, appears in the present timeline, played by the same actress as Maria. This doubling crystallizes the film's central mirror: Alexei sees his mother in his wife, his own failed marriage echoing his parents' separation. The sins of the father pass to the son.
Premise
The film's associative logic unfolds: Spanish Civil War newsreel footage, the wartime evacuation, young Alexei with the red-haired military instructor, his mother selling earrings to a neighbor. Memory bleeds into history bleeds into dream. Tarkovsky delivers the "promise of the premise"—a symphony of fragmented consciousness.
Midpoint
Documentary footage of Soviet soldiers crossing Lake Sivash during WWII—an agonizing, almost unbearable sequence of men trudging through mud toward death. The personal becomes historical; Alexei's private suffering merges with collective trauma. This false defeat reveals that individual memory cannot be separated from national catastrophe.
Opposition
Tensions mount between Natalia and Alexei over their son Ignat. The boy experiences his own mysterious encounter with a strange woman who asks him to read Pushkin's letter about Russian destiny. Past and present collapse further: we see Maria humiliated trying to sell earrings, Alexei ill in bed. Guilt and estrangement intensify.
Collapse
Alexei, dying and bedridden, recalls a childhood moment when his mother washed her hair and the ceiling began to crumble and flood. Water pours through the disintegrating house—the whiff of death made literal as the structures of memory and self begin to collapse around him.
Crisis
Alexei lies in darkness. His hand releases a small bird—the soul preparing to depart. His mother's face, young and old simultaneously, watches over him. The boundary between living and dying, between being the child and having children, dissolves in this dark night of consciousness.
Act III
ResolutionSecond Threshold
Alexei speaks his final words to his mother: "I simply want to be happy." This surrender—abandoning the need to understand or control memory—marks the threshold into acceptance. The synthesis of a lifetime begins.
Synthesis
All timestreams converge in the final sequence. Young Maria walks through fields with her children. The elderly Maria appears beside them. The pregnant young Maria sits with her husband. Three generations exist simultaneously in the eternal present of the meadow—past, present, and future unified at last.
Transformation
The camera pulls back to reveal the dacha, the field, the family across all times walking together toward the dark edge of the forest. Where the Status Quo showed one woman alone on a fence, the Transformation shows the continuity of generations—memory not as loss but as eternal presence. Alexei has made peace with time.