MIRROR FIRST REACTION

I can't tell off a first viewing how I feel about this as a whole, but it has multiple of my favorite moments from Tarkovsky's filmography I've seen so far. This was the new one I was most excited to watch cause I saw a screenshot of the part with the house burning down, after all.

I've long had a thing for nonlinear avany-garde and surrealist films cause I honestly... relate to most of them. They are my realism. My experience of reality doesn't cohere from moment to moment or look clear. It's all just a detached present and some vignettes.

I can't tell if the colors, and the textures this camera seem to ascribe to them, are elevating a film I otherwise wouldn't be into as much. Earthy, tactile, and hypogeal. So many scenes have an apperance I connect to my most real and unreal moments. When I'm awake in the early morning, in a field beside the small wooden hotel in the mountains of Czechia, and the sublime beauty of everything only reinforces how disconnected from it I feel.

The Wikipedia page says this is his most popular film in Russia. It's weird, but i feel like I understand that. The present day scenes felt contemporary to me too somehow. I could see someone without fancy knowledge of film, yet within the culture this is embedded in, being able to hold it in their hand.

something about the part with the women walking through the printing press building grabbed me, especially the factorylike parts. something about how specific the setting is makes it beautiful more than the actual content

damn why's that one lady such an asshole to maria don't tear into people like that without a good reason

not the andrei rublev poster 😭

im increasingly unable to tell when tarkovsky is collaging in actual historical footage as opposed to doing a good job making his own look that way

weird final note: i know this is supposed to be the memories of a dying poet, but the film lowkey feels like it's putting me more in the psyche of maria