The montage of poetic memory in Andrei Tarkovsky's Zerkalo

This thesis aims to examine the montage structure of poetic memory in Andrei Tarkovsky's film Zerkalo (Mirror). Tarkovsky, departing from traditional cinematic techniques, adopted a montage approach that emphasizes themes of memory, imagination, and thought. This study explores the relationship between the use of imagery in poetry, memory, and Tarkovsky's cinematic techniques. A qualitative research method has been employed. Through film analyses and literature reviews, Tarkovsky's life and cinematic language have been examined with a focus on the concept of poetic memory. Additionally, the personal and artistic relationship between Tarkovsky and his father is explored, particularly the impact of Arseni Tarkovsky's recitation of four poems in the film Mirror on its cinematic montage. The traces of the Oedipus complex in Tarkovsky's films, especially Mirror, are also examined. The imagery techniques of both local and foreign poets are evaluated through examples. The findings section discusses the similarities between the spatial discontinuity and dream logic technique used by Tarkovsky in Mirror and the montage structure of poetry, highlighting the parallels between cinematic and poetic montage. In Mirror, Tarkovsky disrupts logical sequences to create a poetic montage, providing viewers with a unique cinematic experience. Ultimately, the analyses in this thesis demonstrate how Tarkovsky expressed poetic memory through cinematic montage in Mirror. The use of poetic and memory imagery is successfully translated into the language of cinema in Mirror. These findings prove that poetic montage in cinema is possible and that Tarkovsky's approach introduces a new dimension to the art of cinema. This study aims to demonstrate that the film Mirror, often criticized as elitist and complex, actually possesses a coherent and logical foundation by evaluating memory metaphors, the functioning of memory, the montage structure of poetry, and Tarkovsky's cinematic structure together. The analysis concludes that the poetic construction of memory in Tarkovsky's cinema is effectively executed, indicating that new montage forms can be created in cinema.