The Sacrifice
THE SACRIFICE, drama, rated PG, in French and Swedish with subtitles, Center for Contemporary Arts, 4 chiles
The Sacrifice, the final film by Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky, returns this week to the Center for Contemporary Arts in a newly restored edition. The 1986 work finds Tarkovsky operating at his spiritual peak, although it’s a bit of a stretch to present it as a deathbed warning.
While Tarkovsky might have felt physically ill during the shoot, he wasn’t aware how serious his condition was. He didn’t go to a medical clinic for a checkup until he was nearly done co-editing the film. He then learned he had contracted lung cancer. The director died near the end of 1986, about a month after The Sacrifice’s release, leaving on the table plans for two never-finished works — an adaptation of
Hamlet and a film version of a 19th-century fantasy by German romanticist E.T.A. Hoffmann.
The Sacrifice closely resembles the metaphysical movies of Sweden’s Ingmar Bergman, which is hardly surprising. Not only does it star the frequent Bergman lead Erland Josephson, but the cinematographer, Sven Nykvist, shot most of Bergman’s features from the early 1950s onward, including The Virgin Spring and Persona. In fact, this is a picture produced by the Swedish Film Institute and shot on an island in the Baltic Sea, near Fårö, where Bergman lived and filmed most of his movies. One can easily imagine how Tarkovsky saw the film as an homage to Bergman. The kaleidoscopic flashbacks — the densely packed visuals blending many philosophical metaphors and literary references — often evoke Berman’s filmmaking style. That said, Tarkovsky, who left the Soviet Union in the late ’70s, chafed at the regimented approach of his Swedish crew. He wrote in his diary, “The Swedes are lazy and slow and only interested in observing rules and regulations. … This must be the only country where they treat the shooting of a film like work in an office.”
The Sacrifice, billed as “a realist parable,” chronicles a 24-hour stretch in the life of Alexander ( Josephson). He’s a former actor, now a longtime academic, having grown world-weary and cynical as old age approaches. We find him on his birthday, planting a tree with his young son, known as Little Man (Tommy Kjellqvist) and awaiting the arrival of family and friends to celebrate. What should be a party transforms into a nightmare, as planes swoop across the skies, preparing for the outbreak of World War III. As the television goes dead, Alexander makes a deal with God. He will live in solitude and destroy all of his earthly possessions, if God will extend mercy and allow his family to live. A night of strange revelations and fever dreams follow.
We learn of the infidelity of Alexander’s wife, Adelaide (Susan Fleetwood), whose paramour, a doctor, announces plans to relocate to Australia. We’re introduced to a mystic postman and to a house maid, actually an Icelandic witch, who boasts of sexual healing powers. Over the years, critics have commented on the many tormented autobiographical elements of the film. For instance, Tarkovsky’s wife, Larisa, apparently did have an affair with a physician, and had bouts of hysteria much like those of Adelaide.
Always a master of the long take, Tarkovsky builds the film from a series of five-, six-, and seven-minute scenes, usually shot at great distances from the actors. This can be a turnoff to some audiences. Instead of coming to identify with the characters, we observe them more dispassionately — almost as if they were specimens seen through a telescope. The film requires some patience to sit through, but as critic Roger Ebert noted at the time, “A certain joy shines through the difficulty. Tarkovsky has obviously cut loose from any thought of entertaining the audience and has determined, in his last testament, to say exactly what he wants, in exactly the style he wants.” — Jon Bowman