of mirrors and electronic music...

last night, for the first time in about 10 years or so, watched tarkovsky's mirror. of course, there were hundreds of images, light, and movement that were stunning (a favorite was the scene with the bird pictured above); but there was one incredible moment of stasis where an extremely quiet sound - either a field recording or piece of electronic composition - is hovering in the background, and slowly becomes a focus - even though its presence is always "beneath". it was so beautiful and powerful that i forget now what the visual was. it sent me to the bookshelves wondering if tarkovsky wrote much about sound or music...

i found this in a longer, section on film, sound, and music in tarkovsky's 1987 "sculpting in time" published by knopf:

"electronic music seems to me to have enormously rich possibilities for cinema. artemiev and i used it in some scenes in mirror... we wanted the sound to be close to that of an earthly echo, filled with poetic suggestion - to rustling, to sighing. the notes had to convey the fact that reality is conditional, and at the same time accurately to reproduce states of mind, the sounds of a person's interior world. the moment we hear what it is, and realize that it's being constructed, electronic music dies... electronic music has exactly that capacity for being absorbed into the sound. it can be hidden behind bigger noises and remain indistinct; like the voice of nature... it can be like somebody breathing."