Main Cast: Erland Josephson, Susan Fleetwood, Allan Edwall, Gudrún Gísladóttir, Valérie Mairesse
Release Year: 1986
Country: SE/FR
Run Time: 145 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
Plot
The Sacrifice, director Andrei Tarkovsky's final film, begins in Bergmanesque fashion on a small, remote island, where friends and family gather for drama critic Alexander's (Erland Josephson) birthday celebration. The revelry is interrupted by a radio announcement: World War III has begun, and Mankind is only hours away from utter annihilation. Each of the guests reacts differently to the news: the most dramatic response is Alexander's, who promises God that he'll give up everything he holds dear--including his beloved 6-year-old son -- if war is averted. Allan Edwall, a local mailman with purported mystical powers, offers to intervene with the Creator on Josephson's behalf. The Sacrifice is so dependent upon its visuals and overall mood that any attempt at a detailed synopsis would be woefully inadequate. The willingness of Tarkovsky's protagonist to forego all his possessions may well have sprung from the cancer-ridden director's awareness that he, too, would soon be giving up everything to face his Maker. The Sacrifice won four awards at the Cannes Film Festival, including the Grand Prix. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Andrei Tarkovsky's final film is an appositely apocalyptic work that serves as a fitting capstone to a brilliant and much too short career. Incorporating many of the thematic and formal concerns of the Soviet master's career, the film has a twilit, haunted quality, no doubt imparted by its ominous nuclear holocaust scenario and Tarkovsky's death from cancer just months after its completion. This parable of belief and redemption seems located on the edge of the world. The children of an esteemed, retired actor gather at the family's far-flung country house to celebrate his birthday. The eerie tranquillity is shattered by the roar of passing jets and news from the continent that a nuclear war has broken out. As always with Tarkovsky, the plot is hardly the point. The eschatological story occasions the kind of grave philosophical and spiritual inquiry that has defined Tarkovsky's movies. Shot by Ingmar Bergman's longtime cinematographer Sven Nykvist, The Sacrifice contains some of the most powerful images in Tarkovsky's monumental oeuvre. Perhaps it's most transcendent moment is the penultimate scene, an epic, six-minute-long take that stands as one of the wonders of cinema. A powerful statement of humility in the face of the unknown, The Sacrifice is an exquisite parting word from one of the great artists of the 20th century. ~ Elbert Ventura, All Movie Guide
Filippa Franzen - Marta; Tommy Kjellqvist - Little Man; Sven Wollter - Victor
Credit
Anna Asp - Art Director, Inger Pehrsson - Costume Designer, Andrei Tarkovsky - Director, Michal Leszczylowski - Editor, Andrei Tarkovsky - Editor, Watazumido Shuoo - Composer (Music Score), Florence Fouquier - Makeup, Kjell Gustavsson - Makeup, Sven Nykvist - Cinematographer, Katinka Farago - Producer, Anna-Lena Wibom - Producer, Lars Hoglund - Special Effects, Lars Palmqvist - Special Effects, Svenska Stuntgruppen - Special Effects, Johan Toren - Special Effects, Rick Roberts - Special Effects, Andrei Tarkovsky - Screenwriter, Johann Sebastian Bach - Featured Music
Alexander, an aging atheistactor/psychologist/writer (Erland Josephson) with a younger actresswife, a teenage daughter, and a young son (who is referred to as "Little Man" and is mute until the last shots) experiences the opening throes of the end of the world by a nuclear holocaust. In despair the protagonist vows to God to sacrifice all he loves (what this would mean in reality is not made plain in his prayer, and provides the final surprise of the film) if only this good act of fate may be undone, and to this end he sleeps with a local woman whom he believes to be a witch. When he wakes up the next morning everything seems "normal", but whether Alexander dreamt the whole episode is never made explicit. Nevertheless, Alexander sets forth to give up all he loves and possesses, burning his house and being driven off to an institution. One interpretation of the plot is that Alexander chooses to be insane, so that the earlier scenes of war could be his delusions instead of reality. He thus gives up his own sanity in order to spare the world from nuclear destruction. Poignantly, the first words the little boy in the film utters, in the final shot, are: "In the beginning was the word...why is that, papa?"
The camera work is slow and contains all the hallmarks of Tarkovsky and Nykvist. The film's soundtrack includes three distinct pieces: the passionate aria Erbarme dich from Johann Sebastian Bach's Mattheus Passion, soothing Japanese flute music, and eerie traditional chants from the Swedish forests (in the old days farm girls used to call home the livestock from their forest pastures in this way). The film also contains several long closeups of Leonardo da Vinci's Adoration of the Magi.
The film uses long takes more than Tarkovsky's previous films. The opening, post-credits shot (a tracking shot of Alexander, Little Man, and Otto talking and walking) lasts nine minutes and twenty-six seconds, and is the longest take in all of Tarkovsky's work. Shots lasting between six and eight minutes are commonplace in the film, and there are only 115 shots in the entire film.
Most of the film takes place inside or around a house that was specially built for the production. The climactic scene at the end of the film is a long tracking shot in which Alexander burns his house and his possessions. It was done in a single, six minute, fifty second take, often misstated as Tarkovsky's longest shot. The shot was very difficult to achieve. Initially, there was only one camera used, despite Sven Nykvist's protest. While shooting the burning house, the camera jammed, ruining the footage. (This disaster is documented in documentary entitled Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky and the documentary One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich.) The scene had to be reshot, requiring a quick and very costly reconstruction of the house in two weeks. This time two cameras were set up on tracks, running parallel to each other. The footage in the final version of the film is the second take, which lasts for several minutes and ends abruptly because the camera had run through an entire reel in capturing the single shot. The cast and crew broke down in tears after the take was completed.
