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THE
SACRIFICE
8/10
Offret
/ Sacrificato : Swe/Fr 1986 : Andrei Tarkovsky : 149 mins
Tarkovsky’s
last film, but by no means intended as the last testament it’s now become
- he planned to mount a production of The Flying Dutchman in London
in 1986, only for death to intervene. But The Sacrifice does operate
under the rapidly encroaching shadow of death, and also under the more
benevolent shadow of Ingmar Bergman - most of the cast and crew, including
cinematographer Sven Nykvist, are borrowed from the Swedish master. So,
we have a gloomy, long film about the End of the World - or perhaps we
don’t...
Sixtyish
philosopher Alexander (Erland Josephson) lives in a beautiful house on
an island off Sweden’s Baltic coast, with English wife Adelaide (Susan
Fleetwood), teenage daughter Julia (Valerie Maitesse) and young son, known
only as Gossen, or “Little Man” (Tommy Kjellvqist). It’s Alexander’s birthday,
and he’s visited by eccentric bicycling postman Otto (Allan Erdawll) and
smug doctor Viktor (Sven Wollter), who is “carrying on” with Adelaide.
Out of the blue, a nuclear war is announced on TV - the telephones and
electricity are cut off, and the air is filled with the deafening roar
of passing jets. All looks bleak - but then Alexander fervently prays,
asking God to avert the impending apocalypse, in return offering to turn
his back on his home and family, and take a vow of silence. Next morning,
he wakes to find that, somehow, the threat of annihilation has been lifted
- and now it’s up to him to keep his side of the bargain...
The
Sacrifice is like a compendium of all the ideas (faith, role of artist,
power of nature, virtue of childhood) and images (love as levitation,
a boy standing by a tree) from his previous six films. As usual, there’s
a baffling rush of philosophical debate, stitched together with some of
the most astonishing shots in all cinema. Watching this long film is an
intermittently dazzling experience, but also somewhat unsatisfying. Just
how much of what we’re watching is real, and how much is Alexander’s
hallucination - we’re given clues along the way, such a bicycle being
parked in a certain way, only to reappear in a slightly different place
later on - is open to question. In Tarkovsky’s films, dreams are nothing
if not cinematic. But piecing together the director’s “intention” seems
to be missing the point.
Worrying
about the narrative of The Sacrifice, or indeed any of this director’s
films, is a waste of time. Here, he creates a remarkable sense of atmosphere
- this must be one of the dampest of all movies, played out to the constant
steady rumble of some unseen, distant foghorn, and many of the painterly
compositions recall the dazzlingly sparse Baltic landscapes of Caspar
David Friedrich. Indoors, Tarkovsky subtly manipulates light among darkness,
his characters walking around on a polished dark-wood floor in such a
remarkable house it seems sinful to burn it down, as Alexander does at
the end of the film.
Tarkovsky’s
rigorous control of image produces some astonishing tracking shots, moving
back and forth across the the island terrain, while his equally assiduous
control of sound mingles far-off wailings, Japanese woodwinds, Swedish
folk tunes. This attention to sonic detail makes the performance of Susan
Fleetwood - brother of Fleetwood Mac’s Mick - all the more baffling. She’s
clearly speaking English all the way through, but most of her lines are
dubbed into Swedish. Except for a brief period when, hearing of the War,
she succumbs to tedious hysterics - she then speaks in clear English,
screaming her concerns about the fate of ‘Little Man’.
This
Little Man is perhaps the most unsatisfactory element of the whole film.
At the start, he’s just had a throat operation and cannot speak. He helps
his father “plant” a dead old tree among some rocks, re-enacting a parable
in which an oft-watered lump of wood eventually blossomed - and at the
end Little Man is shown doing just that, now having regained the power
of speech. The film ends with Tarkovsky’s dedication to his own son -
‘with hope and confidence’ - but this seems manipulatively banal in the
light of what he’s shown us in the preceding two-hours-plus. But, despite
these qualifications, The Sacrifice could never have been made
by anybody else - this is Tarkovsky’s world, and many viewers will choose
not to enter. It’t their loss.
31st
January, 2001
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by
Neil Young
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