One of Film’s Greatest Scenes Stars a Ring of Condensation
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 ก.ย. 2024
- A deep dive into a single scene from Andrei Tarkovsky's 1975 film Mirror (Зеркало / Zerkalo). Watch me spend 45 minutes dissecting the meaning of the ring of condensation left behind by a teacup. Alright, I also talk at length about the themes and techniques of the film, as well as memory, miscommunication, Russian history, ghosts, and the fear of death.
Andrei Tarkovsky was the renowned Russian director of acclaimed experimental and art house cinema, including classic films like Stalker (1979), Solaris (1972), Nostalghia (1983), The Sacrifice (1986) and Andrei Rublev (1966), but The Mirror may be the Soviet filmmaker's most underrated masterpiece.
Decoding the Bewildering Beauty of Tarkovsky's Mirror: • Decoding the Bewilderi...
Twitter: / whduryea
Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
3:37 - Scene Summary
9:20 - Miscommunication, Revisited
19:15 - Broken Continuity
22:39 - Déjà Vu & Historical Destiny
30:20 - Condensation, Evaporation
37:35 - Death Consciousness
42:32 - Outro
Video Sources:
• The Mirror | FULL MOVI...
• Fanny and Alexander Pr...
I think that this style of video of concentrating on one very specific aspect of a film works very well as it’s helps distinguish it from other video essays that try to encompass the whole film and and at the same time leaving a lot of aspects unexplored because of the length of time. I really hope you continue with this style.
Thank you! Extreme deep dives like this are actually more fun for me than doing more broad, general videos (like my first Mirror video) because those feel more like homework essays, and, like you said, there's so much nuance and complexity in most great films that it's hard to do anything but skim the surface in even a "long" video. Definitely plan to do more like this.
Not notified again, bell is on - algorithms 😢 Thanks so much for uploading- love your videos!
Oh no! That's so weird. TH-cam's algorithm is impossible to understand sometimes.
I so enjoy the pieces you pluck out and choose to explore in your own wonderfully articulated and engaging style. Always a pleasure to hear your thoughts, which in turn get me thinking more expansively. I hope your difficulties have eased, and depression has been tamed. We're entering a beautiful season - or at least, I think so - and I hope you're able to take some time to enjoy another fleeting moment in the last flush of beauty before a deathlike sleep in our hemisphere. That was a reach, trying to tie this all together! I look forward to your next post.
Thank you for the kind words! And you're right, fall is the most beautiful season by far. Definitely worth looking forward to.
Wonderful. Love these videos. Is paperback Despair in the background?
Close! It's Look at the Harlequins!
really beautiful video exploration of this scene that, now that I think about it, haunts a particular viewing I had of the movie. remember how powerful this tool of imagery and wordplay is that we've been granted (that goes out to everyone who is interested in the message), and special thanks to William who from out of his journey decided to drop this video blessing for us to pore through diligently and learnedly
Thanks man! It's such a great scene. Glad you enjoyed the video.
I’m so grateful to have your latest video to watch tonight, thank you for all you put into these. Hoping that the depression you’ve been experiencing doesn’t linger. Please know that your work is bringing joy to strangers like me.❤️
Thanks so much! It means a lot to me that you and others are enjoying these videos. Definitely gives me a reason to keep making them.
The disorienting collapse of time, or recursiveness, or past communicating with the present is accentuated by the fact that the actresses/characters appear in different times/places/generations in the film.
Obviously, Aleksei’s wife and mother are played by the same actress.
But the woman who comes to the (wrong) door is also Aleksei’s grandmother, Ignat’s (dead) great grandmother. She’s holding Aleksei’s hand in the last scene of the film as they’re walking around the grounds of his grandfather’s house, which is only a ruin of a foundation in that last scene in his dream or memory.
The spectral woman (who tells Ignat to read Pushkin) along with her tea-bearing servant are both in the doctor’s office near the end of the film when a man is dying in bed, and releasing a bird from his hand into the air. The same bird that lands on Alexei’s head earlier in the film, as if the bird is also a spirit unbound by time?
An image from the film that stuck with me was the springs of a clock, unwound, and drowned in the bottom of a glass vase filled with water.
Oh wow! I picked up on a few of these but totally missed the mysterious woman and her servant in the deathbed scene. Now I have to rewatch the film yet again.
@@WilliamDuryea I think the dying man is supposed to be Aleksei? And so maybe the woman with him at the doctor’s office is supposed to be his sister (given that he’s divorced from his wife)?
Look for Aleksei’s grandmother appearing in a mirror near the end of the in the dream scene where his mother is washing her hair, as if his grandmother is reflecting back at his mother from the mirror.