Зеркало / Mirror (1974 Andrei Tarkovsky)

Black and white (or, let's say, monochrome.) A boy is looking at his father - a sheet of something flies past - then mother washing her hair in a bucket. The father pours water on her hair. The camera slowly pulls back on the woman slowly standing up, all hair, there's no bucket, no table, no father. The walls are running with water, the ceiling is falling in. The mother is many years older...

Giorgi Rerberg is the cameraman who gives us frequently astonishing images and tracking movement in both monochrome and colour.

The nature of the film - intended as like poetry - does have its ramblings and verbosity, but when it's in that slow, mesmerising, Tarkovsky state it's absolutely hypnotic (the ending, for example). And as the mother and son play different characters in different time periods it can be quite confusing. Talking of which, the mother is played by Margarita Terekhova, and she's absolutely brilliant.

With Oleg Yankovskiy, Ignat Daniltsev.

Of the newsreel footage, the two guys ballooning is quite remarkable, and puts one in mind of Tarkovsky's own flying sequence in Andrei Rublev, a poster of which is seen hanging on a wall.

Music from JS Bach ('Johannes-Passion') and Purcell. Story referenced is Chekhov 'Ward Number Six'.

As usual with the old bastard, it keeps on working on you after it's finished...