The Sacrifice

One of the most beautiful posters of all time for me, but one that results in a modern audience captivated by its imagery before going into the film. In my case I spent much of the runtime anticipating the visual grandiosity of the house in flames only to feel as though it spoiled part of the film given how long it takes to get up to there. Even more crazy to consider the first time that the house was burned down, the film reel jammed causing it to be reconstructed from the ground up to complete filming. The 4K restoration I saw was excellent, though I’m convinced seeing it in 35mm would be even cooler. Somehow less substantive and thematically cohesive than Stalker and Solaris (which perhaps is the least ambiguous of the little Tarkovsky I’ve seen - it’s opacity and incoherence is masked by its boldness in tackling each character’s dilemmas), even if it consists of what feels like the most dialogue in a Tarkovsky film. Given it’s my first watch I can’t say I was fully “there” to grasp every minute bit of detail, catch every contextual clue in the dialogue and completely understand the difficult psychologies of each individual character, but I do still think Tarkovsky’s films work best in a packed theater with the biggest screen you can find, the free Mosfilm YouTube uploads and the archive.org catalogue just won’t do them justice. Perhaps what stood out the most to me was even while working with Bergman’s cinematographer in his final film, Tarkovsky’s camerawork consists of jarring colour grading, long, still takes, and the occasionally slow pan following the characters. Every moment, every second very much feels like the director’s final attempt at a production. Tarkovsky is an artist in exile, his travels led him through much of Europe, his passion for unadulterated, uncensored filmmaking often neglecting and abandoning his family and friends for productions shot in Italy and Scandinavia at this late stage in his career. His work has always been ambiguous, but much like the protagonist Alexander, a man who abandons his art, his work, his home and his family, The Sacrifice is not only confusing, but it seems its writer is confused. Its lofty attempt at tackling ideas of spirituality, orthodox Christianity, paganism, identity, philosophy, history, civilisation, faith, nuclear war, and society is only scratching the surface of what it ponders but doesn’t begin to comprehend. It’s no longer a case of the unknowable or an unexplainable phenomenon that’s accepted for Tarkovsky’s characters - the puzzled stares of his previous films are replaced with some extremely over-the-top mental breakdowns. The extraordinary and the abnormal that was once an expected, somewhat embraced, aspect of the human experience, is replaced by a concerned meditation on mortality, fear, and uncertainty. Probably one of the few films that get away with entertaining the “it was all a dream” cliché as a plausible yet somehow satisfying interpretation. The Sacrifice asks a lot of its viewer, and I can’t help but feel if I was Tarkovsky I would’ve made it a bit differently, narratively speaking, however it’s a significant and essential film that anybody with a strong interest in the format should see, for better or worse. If only for how well framed, painting-like his films are. Tarkovsky is undeniably one of the greats in my eyes not because I consider his films perfect but because of how effortlessly influential his films are. The parallels seem glaring and obvious throughout cinema, comparisons (unintentional and deliberate alike) click into place, when considering what came before and after. Ultimately, Tarkovsky succeeds at making hours feel like a lifetime. He sculpts a conclusion for one last time. The boy begins to ask “in the beginning there was the Word”, and in the end the film leaves you with the Little Man.