Towards the end of this segment, that focuses on one event in Maria’s career at a publishing house, a character quotes Dante’s Inferno, but could very well be describing the experience of watching “Mirror” —

Midway upon the journey of our life. I found myself within a forest dark

The last segment ended with the phone conversation between Maria and her grown son. Maria had called him to say that a publishing coworker had died. This scene thrusts us into a day in the life of Maria’s career.

She is rushing to the publishing house even though she is off that day. She had a sudden panic that an error was in that day’s press run, a special edition of the magazine, no less.

He intuition panics half a dozen people in the building, but Maria sets off on her own to check out the potential error. She finally reaches her notes/galleys (looking at them right under a poster of Stalin) and checks for what she says is an incorrect word.

That word wasn’t there and the coworker — the same one who Maria had noted passed away — notices her laughing in the office, she asks what this episode was all about. Maria whispers it to her, keeping the secret from the audience (and from potential concerns of the Soviet censors.)

In all likelihood, something politically troublesome was on her mind — and given the state of nonstop terror during the Stalin regime, I assume she was not the only one driven to paranoid fears from time to time over nothing.

But this coworker took all of this as an opportunity to lay into Maria. She quotes Dostoyevsky to make the point that Maria is someone who expects to be served by others and thinks nothing of creating drama for everyone around her.

Tarkovsky’s sister noted in an interview that this did not describe her mother at all — if anything, it was a more accurate description of her brother. But of course, we do not know whether this episode was written by Tarkovsky or his collaborator, or if it wasn’t just dreamed up for dramatic purposes.

Regardless, Maria didn’t seem too upset about what transpired. She left the room to take a shower and even when the water shuts off halfway through, she has a good laugh about it.

By now it should be clear that “Mirror” is going to refract wherever it wishes from scene to scene. And as the printing house mini drama comes to a close, we cut to another shot of the blazing barn.