Ryan D. Anderson

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"There are no entertaining moments in 'Mirror' (1975). In fact I am categorically against entertainment in cinema: it is as degrading for the author as it is for the audience." --- Andrei Tarkovsky Full Excerpt: "'Mirror' (1975) is an autobiographical film. The things that happen are real things that happened to people close to me. That is true of all the episodes in the film. But why do people complain that they cannot understand it? The facts are so simple, they can be taken by every one as similar to the experience of their own lives. But here we come up against something that is peculiar to cinema: the further a viewer is from the content of a film, the closer he is; what people are looking for in cinema is a continuation of their lives, not a repetition. There are no entertaining moments in the film. In fact I am categorically against entertainment in cinema: it is as degrading for the author as it is for the audience. The purpose of 'Mirror', its inspiration, is that of a homily: look, learn, use the life shown here as an example. There are so many films now, and they are all so different, that very soon it will be impossible to plan for distribution to cinemas. That will be the beginning of a new phase in the development of film, which is after all the youngest art form, it is only about seventy years old. Films will start to be handed out as cassettes, people will take them home, every viewer will find himself face to face with the film he particularly likes. And what of cinema, the mass medium, you may ask ? Mass is not a criterion of quality. The same could be said about the number of people involved in the making of a film. Numbers are not the point. A small team working together is preferable to a large collective. Another question: What is going to happen to Mirror? We don't know yet. For the moment the film is only being shown in three cinemas, and they started with two. They are trying it out first, because the organs responsible for distribution are afraid it might be a failure. When they heard that people sat on and wouldn't leave, one of the highly placed distribution officials observed that normal people leave the cinema." [A talk by Tarkovsky in the Building Institute, 1975 about his film 'Mirror' (1975)]

A movie that's in your top 25 list but unlikely to be in anyone else's?