The Sacrifice (1986) Tarkovsky’s Acutely Intelligent Swansong (Review)

Released just six months before his death from cancer, Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice is commonly held to be an uncomfortably elegiac, melancholy note for the great director to bow out on, which considering the rest of his films were hardly Duck Soup is saying something. In tackling the central threat of the 1980s – global nuclear conflict – it is severe and challenging and incredibly accomplished from a technical perspective. It also shows worrying signs of self-parody around the edges.

The Sacrifice bookends nicely with Tarkovsky’s début, Ivan’s Childhood. The earlier film analyses the previous World War in terms not dissimilar to an apocalyptic science fiction film; The Sacrifice takes that forward into an actual, apocalyptic third world war. The bombers are first heard when they rattle the glasses of the hero’s house in the manner of Stalker’s final shot, and the visions of ash-choked post-nuclear holocaust cities resemble that film’s famous long shot of a rubbish-choked river bed, with an eerily beautiful silver tint replacing Stalker’s cadmium orange.

The visuals are remarkable throughout, thanks to Tarkovsky’s maturing confidence with long takes, and his assistance from Ingmar Bergman’s regular cinematographer Sven Nykvist. Nykvist’s interiors frequently appear to be shot without any artificial lighting or fills whatsoever, creating a hierarchy of blacks, greys and dark greens that contrast dramatically with the monochrome apocalyptic vistas. He copes well with Tarkovsky’s famous sweet tooth for long takes, too, especially in the opening scene.

So aesthetically it’s hard to pick faults with The Sacrifice. Narratively, the film is less secure. It’s less minimal than the likes of Mirror and Stalker but somehow that only increases the dissonance between the heavy archetypal, symbolic qualities of Tarkovsky’s characters and the actors who are charged with playing them. The cast – led by another Bergman veteran, Erland Josephson, as Alexander – give low-key, naturalistic performances. Compared to, say, the stoic archetypes of Stalker, it’s harder to believe Josephson’s character would hatch the puzzlingly irrational plan that he comes up with to avert nuclear catastrophe. He feels like a real person, not a symbol, which in most directors’ work would be an asset. In Tarkovsky’s, it’s a hurdle to get over.

In an early scene Alexander likens himself to Hamlet, paralysed by inaction. It’s a brave director who compares his characters to Shakespeare, and sure enough Tarkovsky’s film isn’t flattered by the link. Whatever demons drove Shakespeare to create characters like Hamlet or King Lear, he could silence them for just long enough to create an innocent Ophelia or Cordelia, or a Fool or two. In the opening scene of The Sacrifice, by contrast, the jolly passing postman Otto goes from gently mocking Alexander’s morbid temper to engaging in a lengthy discussion about whether man can truly understand the universe without becoming a demiurge. Without a fantastical or historical setting, this kind of material registers mostly as a flaw in the writing; a lengthy film in which everyone shares Andrei Tarkovsky’s philosophical outlook and style of speaking.

So The Sacrifice is one-note, but it’s a beautifully played note. It’s important to note that Tarkovsky’s high seriousness is not the same as pretentiousness; he genuinely understands what he’s talking about, and if the dialogue is far from natural it’s also far from boring. He brings a lot of his learning to bear in The Sacrifice, including an opening nod to his great unmade project The Idiot, and there is one scene where the philosophical underpinnings become the drama in a thrilling way. Otto is telling Alexander a purportedly true ghost story, and the men are so fascinated by the impossibility – a dead man appearing in his mother’s photographs – that it falls to Alexander’s wife to point out it rests on an implausibility – a mother forgetting about photos of her dead son. In moments like this, and the film’s famous ending, the objections fall away. All you can think of is how much we need someone of this acute intelligence in cinema today.

Thanks for reading our review of The Sacrifice

For more Movie talk, check out our podcast CINEMA ECLECTICA