Poetics of the Crystal-Image: Dreams in <em>Mirror</em> and <em>Ashes of Time Redux</em>

Abstract

This paper delves into recurrent dreams and related recollections in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror and Wong Kar-wai’s Ashes of Time Redux. Gilles Deleuze has called Mirror a film of “turning crystal” because it reflects the two sides of the protagonist’s relationship with his mother and ex-wife by juxtaposing them in a mysterious labyrinth of past-present-future. The crystal imaging refracts four sides of two couples by showing the bonding of the parents along with the connection to his ex-wife and son. The same structure is apparent in Ashes of Time Redux where another set of two bilateral symmetries is initiated between Yaoshi Huang, Feng Ouyang, and Ouyang’s lover through the constant blending of their self-differentiation. First, the study addresses the ways the turning crystal characterization strongly points to latent Freudian symbols from the childhood dacha and the peach blossom lake in the recurrent dreams to explore a forbidden love buried in the Lacanian pre-Oedipal mirror stage. Secondly, the study proposes to observe the convergences and differences of these two films with respect to the “turning crystal” structure composed of four manifestations: an interior-and-exterior home route, circularity structure, doubleness in the characterization, and an incestuous triangle of Oedipal-vertical vs. sibling-lateral. Wong and Tarkovsky’s films succeed in producing visualizations of Deleuze’s time-synthesis by combining past recollection, present dream, and promising future. Their films are accessible to the flow of time that moves from the conscious interior to the exterior unconscious to display the deep impact of (dis)remembrance.