THE SACRIFICE
dir. Andrei Tarkovsky
Sweden
145 minutes
English Subtitles
Made in Sweden in Tarkovsky’s Vnal year (he died after the Vlm’s
completion of cancer at age 54), The Sacri@ce is a measured, compassionate
view of humanity at the edge of apocalypse. In a remote
house in the north, a family gathers and soon learns of an impending,
terrible war. Photographed by Bergman’s cinematographer Sven
Nykvist in ethereal northern light, and opening and closing with two
of cinema’s most breathtaking single-take sequence shots, The Sacri
@ce is a masterful, elegant, elegiac Vlm of great formal rigour and intensity.
Tarkovsky supervised its editing from his hospital bed; he died
in December 1986. Profoundly pessimistic and yet profoundly hopeful,
The Sacri@ce is a staggering achievement.