Part of Restoration Roundup
Famed Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky’s final masterpiece, THE SACRIFICE is a haunting vision of a world threatened with nuclear annihilation that inspired Andrew Sarris (Village Voice) to proclaim, “You may find yourself moved as you have never been moved before.”
As a wealthy Swedish family celebrates the birthday of their patriarch Alexander (Erland Josephson, CRIES AND WHISPERS), news of the outbreak of World War III reaches their remote Baltic island — and the happy mood turns to horror. The family descends into a state of psychological devastation, brilliantly evoked by Tarkovsky’s arresting palette of luminous grays washing over the bleak landscape around their home. (The film’s masterful cinematography is by Sven Nykvist, Ingmar Bergman’s longtime collaborator).
For Alexander, a philosopher troubled about man’s lack of spirituality, the prospect of certain extinction compels the ultimate sacrifice, and he enters into a Faustian bargain with God to save his loved ones from the fear which grips them. The director’s last film, made as he was dying of cancer, THE SACRIFICE is Tarkovsky’s personal statement, a profoundly moving, redemptive tragedy steeped in unforgettable imagery and heart-wrenching emotion.
Restored by the Swedish Film Institute.
"A stunningly beautiful film….” —New York Times (Nov 7, 1986) “It is brilliant and audacious, with one of the most extraordinary final sequences in modern cinema, and all in a manner which Hollywood in the succeeding decade would learn to call ‘high concept’. But it is more complex and ambiguous than it appeared at the time: its tragic meaning has darkened and clotted with time.” —Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian "Andrei Tarkovsky’s final film, among his closest to perfection, is a traversal of agonies, exploring the savage compromises and bargaining that make up life and death." —Vanessa McDonnell, Screen Slate "Andrei Tarkovsky’s last film is a grand, unworldly, even antiworldly religious vision… The blend of midlife crisis and existential terror is reminiscent of the films of Ingmar Bergman, but Tarkovsky makes it a world of his own. His images have a transcendental glow and a hieratic poise; alternating between contemplative distance and moral confrontation, they assert, in the most radical sense, the high cost of living—the unbearable price of earthly delights. " —Richard Brody, New Yorker “The first and penultimate shots — 10-minute takes that are, in very different ways, remarkable and complex achievements—manage to say more than most films do over their entire length.” —Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
