Tarkovsky

Today is the day one of my beloved directors was born. Those words are quoted in the preface of his book: Sculpting in Time. They are the ones movie watchers sent to him on his film "Mirror". They captured my young heart. Happy birthday, the man whose art echoes through time and space: Andrei Tarkovsky.
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A woman wrote from Gorky: 'Thank you for Mirror. My
childhood was like that. . . . Only how did you know about it?
'There was that wind, and the thunderstorm . . . "Galka, put the
cat out," cried my Grandmother. .. . It was dark in the room . . .
And the paraffin lamp went out, too, and the feeling of waiting for
my mother to come back filled my entire soul . . . And how
beautifully your film shows the awakening of a child's consciousness, of this thought! . . . And Lord, how true . . . we really don't know our mothers' faces. And how simple . . . You know, in that dark cinema, looking at a piece of canvas lit up by your talent, I felt for the first time in my life that I was not alone...'
I spent so many years being told that nobody wanted or understood my films, that a response like that warmed my very soul; it gave meaning to what I was doing and strengthened my conviction that I was right and that there was nothing accidental about the path I had chosen.
Or again: 'This is from an old man, already retired, and interested
in cinema even though my professional field had nothing to do with art (I'm a radio engineer).
'I am stunned by your film. Your gift for penetrating into the
emotional world of adult and child; for making one feel the beauty of the world around one; showing the true, instead of the false, values of that world; making every object play a part; making every detail of the picture into a symbol; building up to a philosophical statement through an extraordinary economy of means; filling every frame with poetry and music... All these qualities are typical of your style of exposition, and yours alone...'
A working woman from Novosibirsk wrote: 'I've seen your film
four times in the last week. And I didn't go simply to sec it, but in
order to spend just a few hours living a real life with real artists and real people. . . . Everything that torments me, everything I don't have and that I long for, that makes me indignant, or sick, or
suffocates me, everything that gives me a feeling of light and
warmth, and by which I live, and everything that destroys me—it's
all there in your film, I see it as if in a mirror. For the first time ever a film has become something real for me, and that's why I go to see it, I want to get right inside it, so that I can really be alive.'