Mirror (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

A subtly ravishing passage in the course of the halls of time and memory, this sublime reflection on twentieth-century Russian history by Andrei Tarkovsky (Stalker) is as much a poem composed in images, or a hypnagogic hallucination, as this is a work of cinema. In a richly textured collage of varying film stocks and newsreel footage, the recollections of a dying poet flash before our eyes, his dreams mingling with scenes of childhood, wartime, and marriage, all imbued with the mystical power of a trance. In large part dismissed by Soviet critics on its release on account of its elusive narrative structure, Mirror has since taken its place as some of the director’s most renowned and influential works, a stunning personal observation from an artist transmitting his innermost thoughts and feelings instantly from psyche to screen.

TWO-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• Andrei Tarkovsky: A Cinema Prayer, a 2019 documentary in regards to the director by his son Andrei A. Tarkovsky
• The Dream within the Mirror, a new documentary by Louise Milne and Seán Martin
• New interview with composer Eduard Artemyev
• Islands: Georgy Rerberg, a 2007 documentary in regards to the cinematographer
• Archival interviews with Tarkovsky and screenwriter Alexander Misharin
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by critic Carmen Gray and, for the Blu-ray, the 1968 film proposal and literary script by Tarkovsky and Misharin that they in the long run developed into Mirror