The Sacrifice (1986; Offret) was one of Nathan Beard’s answers for ‘What movie would you want to watch when the world ends?’ when we held the VHS Tracking – Live event for Blue Room Theatre a year or so ago. I always had it in mind to watch because of that, alongside my ongoing journey into director Andrei Tarkovsky’s filmography, which for a long time I had not seen any of and had been a bit intimidated by their reputation. Delving into The Sacrifice on a late Saturday night after watching The Rapture, effectively a double feature about the end of the world and a protagonist’s conversation with God, Tarkovsky’s film had me engaged right from the first shot, a lengthy take that observes at a distance, the journalist/academic Alexander (Erland Josephson, best known to me from Ingmar Bergman movies) talking to his young son while he fixes a dead tree into the ground to water. As the shot continues, a talkative postman rides into frame (Allan Edwall) and the conversation continues while the shot tracks alongside them. This shot was so simple yet also felt complex and the movie became immediately involving. Set on an island (Gotland off Sweden), the film charts Alexander’s birthday celebrations where his wife, step-daughter and friend, a doctor, gather along with the servants. Aside from the presence of a car, a radio and a television, their dress and the interiors could almost be from another century yet everything is interrupted by the news of an incoming nuclear war, alongside the sounds of jets flying overhead. Isolated in their lovely house on the island, people go to extremes with the air of finality, and Alexander himself wonders what he could offer to God to make things right. I was quite gripped by certain sequences and images by cinematographer Sven Nykvist and the concluding sequence is amazing. There’s also a subtextual weight with the knowledge that this was Tarkovsky’s final film as he was dying of cancer and it stands as quite an intentional statement. Still kind of wrapping my head around. Much like the classical paintings or maps that the characters contemplate, this feels like a work you can come back to and sit with. Recommended.
VHS Tracking 