Tillich and Tarkovsky
Daniel Sullivan
Journal of Humanistic Psychology October 5, 2011 DOI: 10.1177/0022167811423787 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Citations | 1 |
| Key points | Argues that Tarkovsky's Mirror is organized by an "emotional structure" in which its first three parts separately explore Tillich's anxieties of emptiness, guilt, and fate, with death symbols underscoring these themes, and its fourth part meditates on the sources of Tillich's "absolute faith" as the courage to exist despite anxiety. |
Abstract
Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror is a “stream-of-consciousness” film that eschews traditional narrative structure. The author interprets the film as having an “emotional structure,” insofar as it sequentially explores different manifestations of the experience of anxiety. Using the typology of anxiety developed by Paul Tillich in The Courage to Be, the author demonstrates how the first three parts of Mirror separately explore the anxiety of emptiness, of guilt, and of fate. Throughout these early parts of the film, symbols of death underscore themes of anxiety. The author interprets the fourth part of Mirror as a sustained meditation on the sources of what Tillich called absolute faith, the source of the courage to exist in spite of imminent anxiety.