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The Sacrifice (1986)
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Reviews Counted: 26
Fresh: 21
Rotten:5
Average Rating: 7.3/10
Runtime: 4 hrs 6 mins
Genre: Foreign Films
Synopsis: Set in Sweden, Andrei Tarkovsky's last film follows the travails of wealthy patriarch Alexander (Erland Josephson), a former actor and critic who lives in a remote home on the edge of the Baltic... Set in Sweden, Andrei Tarkovsky's last film follows the travails of wealthy patriarch Alexander (Erland Josephson), a former actor and critic who lives in a remote home on the edge of the Baltic Sea. One year on his birthday, a sudden television announcement interrupts the celebration with news of a nuclear holocaust. His family and guests suffer through violent fits of hysteria and emotional turmoil in the ensuing days, but the previously troubled Alexander finds a clearness of mind when he makes a pact with God--offering himself as a sacrifice in order to redeem the fallen earth for his cherished son. Supremely poetic, THE SACRIFICE is filled with achingly beautiful images, expertly shot by Ingmar Bergman's trusted cinematographer Sven Nykvist. As Alexander goes from self-contented ease to crippling animal fear and existential anguish and finally to spiritual abandon, the troubled journey is illustrated with a haunting succession of images, tableaus, objects, dreams, and gestures--all sewn together in a seamlessly elliptical vision. As in all of Tarkovsky's haunting and mystical films, the characters are forced to come to terms with their own physical and spiritual existence, with redemption coming through faith--in this case, Alexander's faith in his love for his young son. [More]
Starring: Erland Josephson, Susan Fleetwood, Valerie Mairesse
Starring: Erland Josephson, Susan Fleetwood, Valerie Mairesse
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky, Sven Nykvist
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky, Sven Nykvist
Composer: Watazumido Shuso
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Reviews for The Sacrifice
Tarkovsky punctuates this so-called "plot" with many, many stunningly poetic images, mostly filmed in long takes with delicate tracking shots.
Tarkovsky's last film, a spiritual meditation about the end of the world and a new beginning, bears resemblance to Ingmar Bergman's work, not least beacuse of its themes and lead actor and cinematographer.
It's long, stately and po-faced (all reasons why Tarkovsky seems faintly unfashionable these days), but if it's extended, beautifully composed tracking shots you want, he's your man.
Invaluable pointers on narrative patience, spiritual yearning and technical finesse.
Brilliant and audacious, with one of the most extraordinary final sequences in modern cinema.
A fitting epitaph for a great artist. Every frame could be hung on a wall, the script is supremely thoughtful and the performances are universally excellent.
A difficult film - slow-paced, unashamedly theatrical and heavily laden with philosophy – yet a profoundly satifying one: a rewarding display of filmmaking mastery that forms a mystical and enigmatic coda to a legendary career.
For all its Swedish trimmings, the long, syrup-slow takes are unmistakably Tarkovsky’s, and it’s these that provide this arthouse disaster movie with its mesmerising power.
Tarkovsky’s film will be forever confined to a dark cul-de-sac in the arthouse ghetto because of its sheer monotony.
For those willing to acccept the tenets of Tarkovsky’s cinema of spiritual quest, his esoteric notions of Christian iconography and his obscure approach to cinematic meaning, the film can seem nothing less than miraculous.
To awaken the spiritual hunger for something beyond materialistic, desacrilized modern existence was the burden of Tarkovsky, cinematic poet laureate of the Russian soul.
The Sacrifice is a stunningly beautiful film that holds your attention even while you feel slightly stunned, in a less welcome way, by what is actually going on.
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