7. Zerkalo (Andrei Tarkovsky)
Zerkalo, or The Mirror, is the most incredible piece of film-making by one of the most gifted directors of all time, Andrei Tarkovsky. In its attempt to fuse the visual beauty of cinema with the lyrical transcendence of poetry, Zerkalo is one of the most breathtakingly complex but utterly rewarding films ever conceived. There isn't really a recognisable narrative here at all. Instead, Tarkovsky presents his vision as the dying thoughts of a poet, whose nostalgia is afflicted by non-chronological life memories, surreal dream-like imagery (including the film's most memorable sequence of a levitating girl) and snippets of found footage, inserted into the film in a postmodern collage-like manner that preceded the work of geniuses like Derek Jarman (particularly The Last Of England) and latter-day Jean-Luc Godard (especially Histoire(s) Du Cinéma) by years. Actors play multiple characters, with the viewer never certain who is on screen at what time. The coloration shifts wildly from full colour, to black and white, to sepia. At one moment, barely introduced pre-war characters frolic in a field; in the next, more characters (this time post-war) chat on a phone about events that the viewer was never privy to. The story flits between time zones, offering little comprehension. Yet the film flows wonderfully considering its refusal of traditional modes of story-telling, as it is the images and interjections of stunningly evocative poetry that drive the film onward. Few films are as genuinely brave as Zerkalo. It offers little in the way of narrative clarity and instead consistently foregrounds visual abstraction. However, its emotional and sensual power is testament to the fact that Tarkovsky, like the very best film-makers, is capable of generating sequences and characters that impact heavily on the viewer without the need for conventional filmic structures.