The Sacrifice

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.

Like much of the filmmaker’s work (not to mention Bergman’s), The Sacrifice is haunted by the gap between human yearning and ultimate understanding, between the way things are and the way we long for them to be.

By the time “The Sacrifice” comes full circle it emerges itself as a symbolic gesture of great emotional impact. We may share Alexander’s sense of impotence, but Tarkovsky turns such feelings into a work of art.

This humourless, portentous, beautifully made and exquisitely acted movie won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes, though when the men in white coats came to take Josephson away, some sardonic observers thought they'd come for Tarkovsky. [12 Jan 2003, p.8]

As with Nostalghia, Tarkovsky’s previous work of exile, it’s possible to balk at the filmmaker’s pretensions and antiquated sexual politics and yet be overwhelmed by his mastery and originality, as well as the conviction of his sincerity.

In Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice, the distance from hope to despair is a short jump—a chasm crossed with the help of something so immediate as a television transmission.

For all its stunning, poetic imagery, it's almost impossible to sit through.