No Symbols? Really?

There may or may not be deliberate symbols at play in Mirror, but I think there are certainly metaphors used. The difference is subtle but important - symbols are usually objects and depend on context (a hotdog isn't a phallic symbol until an attractive person makess it so) whilst metaphors are ideas which are explained by the narrative.

Milk could be symbolic of motherhood in the right context but this could be unintentional in Mirror.

There are three great metaphors I can think of in Mirror right away. One is in the scene where the young boy visits the old lady, there is a knock at the door and she subsequently disappears - we see the condensation from her cup of tea slowly evaporate.

Another happens at the very end of the film. The grandmother walks next to the woods with the two young children - the camera moves through the trees and slowly pulls back, so we see gradually less and less of the three and a more fragmented view of them as we pull back.

At the start of the film, a sequence shows a young man losing his stutter under hypnosis - this famous metaphor stands for the director finding his own voice as an artist.

None of these three examples would work in another film that wasn't about memory and creative expression.

In 2001: A Space Odyssey there are many rich symbols at play - the spaceships are phallic, foetal or organic, akin to sperm, eggs or spinal columns. One stick is symbolic of a weapon as is the subsequent space-bomb, and the juxtaposition of these symbols is a justifiably famous visual metaphor. The monolith is symbolic of a door, of maths and physics, of a gravestone. The list goes on and on.

But I'm struggling to think of anything in any Tarkovsky's cinema which works along the same lines as these. it certainly appears, with hindsight, that Kubrick's reliance on symbols could be lazy, whilst Tarkovsky put more thought into developing ideas into clever metaphors - a sea which makes dreams real; the faith of a young man fashioning a bell restoring the lost faith of a gifted artist; coins, pictures, syringes and other example of human culture sliding past us without event; a Russian dachau seemingly recreated within the giant ruins of an Italian cathedral.

Having recently seen Nostalgia at the cinema, and last night watching Mirror on blu ray (and very beautiful is was, too) I should add that Tarvovsky consistently uses the elements (earth, air, fire and water) which can be interpreted as symbols but I don't think they symbolise anything other than nature.

There is an Andrei Rublev poster in Mirror, though, which is clearly an intentional symbol telling us whose house we are in. Or perhaps it's just a 'reference'. Tarkovsky is clearly a very intelligent person who may have understood the meaning of these terms better than I do!

I think if there were NO symbols in a movie, the screen would be blank. I'm pretty sure Tarkovsky was saying that he puts images in his films for people to read for themselves, as opposed to "symbols" for specific defined things. Seems like something a director would say after being constantly asked to explain all the the symbolism in his films by fans or critics. You certainly get a much deeper and personal experience when the audience interprets the "symbols" on the screen for themselves, instead of being spoon-fed certain tropes and cliches. Maybe that's what he meant by limiting.
Symbols aren't lazy though. Every image in a movie is a symbol for something in the real world that the viewer can relate to, so they understand what they are seeing, without having to explain everything that happens on screen. Of course, what symbols you use is what makes a movie dull or creative. Imagine seeing a close up of a clock. Clearly that indicates "time is passing" in the movie so the next thing we see on screen will obviously be at a later time... but really, how cliche can you get? Instead, Kubrick does a million year jump cut, from a caveman throwing a bone in the air to a space station, in 2001. Now THAT is how a genius shows "time is passing"!