Mirror is a beautiful movie composed a flow of events, almost like a documentation of the director’s own conscious. In Mirror, memories, realities, and dreams are fused and indistinguishable—the dream of house collapsing seems to be real while the news clips of war seem to be unreal (e.g. the balloon scene, my favorite). And so even the characters. Mom and wife, the protagonist himself as a kid and his own kid, become the same person, possess the same characteristic and story. Life is almost like a loop. While Alexei talked to his son about his first love over the phone, he took his memory directly back to the wartime, as if he was experiencing his childhood again through his son’s mind and body—not to mention just before this scene, his son was browsing through Da Vinci’s illustrations, the same book Alexei was reading when he was with his mom in the countryside as a child. By the end of the movie, when Alexei was at his death bed, his mom (in the present time) took the child Alexei and his sister (in the past time) across the grassland, while his mom (in the past time) was lying on top of Alexei’s dad, crying for the question—“do you want a boy or a girl?” At this moment, time becomes eternal. The images of past, present and future become an infinite one, gradually passing out into the dark silence as the camera moves through the woods. This ending is incredible.

I wonder if I can interpret the title Mirror in such a way—we always say that dreams mirror life. But maybe in another way, the life we live in now also mirrors our conscious—the memories we possess, the dreams we fear, the relationship we used to and wish to have.

Besides the plots and meanings, the sound quality of the movie is also incredible. It fits so perfectly with the images projected as they move with the narrative. For example, the first fire scene, it begins with the sound and image of the bottle dropped from the table. Then we see the mirror with the twins back and hear sound of fire. Then the footstep of the boy comes, who takes our sight from the interior into the nature. And then the sound of raindrop rises, so rich and clear—almost visible—mixing with the sound of the fire. The image ends with three people standing in the green as the wild fire burns in the background. In a word, the capture of sound adds amazing quality to the images, makes them inseparable from each other, and enables audiences to experience the scenes as they are the narrator.

Mirror really exploits and expresses human conscious into its maximum visual and acoustic extent. And it really empowers me to believe such a feeling—an emotional being—that can transcend time. Like—

Houston suddenly felt like summer yesterday. In the early afternoon, I was taking my linguistic midterm by the window. At one moment, the heat of the sun reflected by the window warmed up my face—it suddenly took me back to ten years ago, as I was taking my last exam of my elementary school in late June, sitting next to the window. And I suddenly felt like I am that little girl again.