Rijndri Load of rubbish!!

ThrillMessage There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

clanciai What strikes you first in this film is the very careful and extremely esthetic visual composition: every scene is like a beautiful painting, and Tarkovsky's knack for making his women exceptionally beautiful enhances the visual gratification. The actors are also all very good, Erland Josephson and Allan Edwall leading the extremely extraordinary speculations. A retired celebrity of letters and the theatre celebrates his birthday together with his friends and family in an isolated beautiful spacious old-fashioned house by the sea, when apparently the third world war breaks out. His wife immediately succumbs to hysterics, the young doctor Victor (Sven Wollter) gives them sedatives, the professor drinks brandy, while his friend Otto (Allan Edwall) comes with bizarre alternatives.I always had some difficulty with Tarkovsky's later abstract films for their extremely slow pace marked by a total absence of action, especially "Stalker" and "Nostalgia", but here something keeps happening all the time to keep you awake and interested: small details, the child's pranks, the mysterious kitchen maid in her beauty, Otto's indispensable bicycle, mirrors of course, breathtaking long shots, and above all the philosophical or parapsychological development going to bizarre extremes. How is this predicament to be dealt with? That's the issue of the labyrinth leading you on for constantly more exciting thought and practical experiments.This was the year of Ronald Reagan's strikes against Libya, the beginning of the Glasnost movement with Gorbachev, and the murder of the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, a mystery still unresolved. And in the end of the year after this film Andrei Tarkovsky died of cancer at 54, which he probably had attracted from toxic fumes as early as during the shooting of "Stalker".There is much of Bergman here, the team is all Bergman's, and one could describe the film as more Bergman than Bergman. There is also many reminiscences of Carl Th. Dreyer, but it's still definitely all Tarkovsky: you recognize his special peculiarities and details in almost every scene.The most peculiar detail of the film is perhaps the surrealistic war scenes of total confusion showing random people running about in bewilderment among the ruins of a car and a lot of rubbish. The street shown in this scene is the very place where Prime Minister Olof Palme was shot six months after the film had been completed, and the camera is placed on the very spot - a notable coincidence.So where does all this lead to? Pure metaphysics. It's definitely a masterpiece of art but very difficult to understand, but it presents a very intriguing thought experiment - the professor is willing to sacrifice everything if the war is averted, he does sacrifice everything including his own mind, and he seems to achieve the desired result.The film is dedicated to the director's son, and the son in the film clearly stands in for him and both introduces and ends the film - to Bach's most beautiful air from the Passion of St. Matthew - "Have mercy", "Erbarme dir..."

vogonify This turned out to be Andrei Tarkovsky's last film. Like it is almost always the case with his work, this too is about faith. Alexander, the protagonist worries about society and its lack of spirituality. The opening scene has him plant a tree with his young son. The last scene has the son, the only one not involved in the chaos everyone is, rest under it.Sacrifice is the closest Tarkovsky and Bergman came to making a film together. Sven Nykvist, the cinematographer, Erland Josephson as Alexander and Allen Edwall as Otto the postman were all longtime collaborators with the great Swedish director and Tarkovsky was apparently in awe of Bergman and his films. Through Nykvist and his magical control of light and the slow, meticulous, long shots set to Bach, Tarkovsky makes a work of extraordinary beauty. The story (or so) is about Alexander saving the world from a fatal war by making a string of personal sacrifices. We don't know how much of this is just his dream. Black and white shots are interspersed with shots of desaturated colour, the timeline is non-linear and it is possible that everything that happens is indeed a long dream. There is perhaps value in analysing the film as a study, but I am loath to do that. My experiences with such films have always been about curiosity. The questions this curiosity asks is mainly the "how did they do it" variety than the "what does he mean" kind. For instance, there is an early scene with Adelaide, Alexander's difficult wife and Maria, the housemaid who could also be a witch. Maria asks the lady if she can leave for the day. The scene is set in such a way that Adelaide paces left and right, while also getting closer to the camera with each turn. Maria is placed bang in the middle of the frame and her eyes follow Adelaide's pacing. At the end of it all, Adelaide ends up walking behind the line of the camera while Maria is staring at it. This is the sort of thing which elevates a film to a different plane. There is the story, the acting and the music yes, but this is something unequivocally cinema. The camera, the actors and their respective movements. In another scene, Alexander is shot as a reflection of a painting by Leonardo da Vinci (Adoration of the Three Kings). Apparently, Tarkovsky felt this would appear as if he was part of the painting and now he has come out of it. What a thought!

tomgillespie2002 Exiled from his native Russia, Andrei Tarkovsky shot his final film, The Sacrifice, on Faro Island, where Ingmar Bergman produced his body of work (and also lived). Tarkovsky also used Bergman's cinematographer, Sven Nykvist. He was also aware that this would be his ultimate film, as he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Unfortunately, whilst he survived till the release of the film, he died shortly afterwards, in the same year. The subject of his concluding piece is telling of his knowledge of his impending departure from the world, and it is fitting and profound, as you might expect from the Russian master of the poetic, and aesthetic.Alexander (played by Erland Josephson - a Bergman regular, who also worked on Tarkovsky's 1983 Nostalgia), has a birthday, where some family and close island friend, Otto (Allan Edwall), come to offer their congratulations. They here on a statically-interrupted television broadcast. that a nuclear strike is imminent. With this news the family break down emotionally, and Alexander pleads to God to alter this reality, and offers himself in sacrifice to the ones he loves. This offering is seen to its fundamental conclusion when he wakes (possibly from a dream), and all is as it was, the threat of World War III seemingly never a subject of genuine certainty. Towards the climax of this film, is a one-shot take lasting several minutes, whose logistics are incredible, but Tarkovsky still manages to infuse the scene with some kind of mystical power, that I believe permeates all of his films.As you would expect from a Tarkovsky film, the pace is slow (which gives the audience time to immerse themselves within the intricacies of philosophical thought, and the profound nature of the situation). But with this comes a flurry of beautiful imagery. The muted colours reflect the setting, with its cold, and subdued backdrop. And what is it that we do when we face death - a difficult moment to comprehend? We perhaps reflect on our achievements, and speak to our friends and family. And perhaps when we die, our spirit lives on in others, or new beings. Or maybe we simply continue in the minds and spirits of our offspring, passing on knowledge, character, and morality.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

chuck-526 The story takes place in an isolated location on the isle of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. Although the island has a long semi-independent history, it has been an "official" part of Sweden for more than three centuries.Many of my reactions to this film are the common ones: this film is "Bergmanesque", a little different from yet not discontinuous with Tarkovsky's others; the images are striking and almost overwhelmingly powerful; the film is long and slow ("stately" to say it positively), so much so some won't have the patience to even finish watching it.I think though the story is more complex and subtle than is often stated. Supposedly the topic is a slightly off-kilter person giving up what he loves in exchange for the salvation of others as a reaction to the specter of nuclear war. After all, his life circumstances look pretty attractive to us viewers: wealthy, respected, private, and comfortable. The ominousness of the opening dialog doesn't seem warranted.But I think it's more than that, or at least more ambiguous than that. The main character isn't just slightly off-kilter, but close to collapsing completely. His life has become unbearable. And his motives are as much about "punishment" (or even "revenge") as "sacrifice".Why do I think that? For starters, how is it that the only people that will come to Alexander's birthday party are his doctor and his postman? That guest list sounds to me like an act of desperation, an admission that he's hit rock bottom. Alexander's wife is so neurotic even her daughter and her lover chide her. His daughter can't grow up in such an isolated place; she never sees anyone else anywhere near her age. And as far as her obvious age-appropriate interest in boys, there's nothing more than a bad joke about the postman being her beau. She flips between acting like she's ten and acting like she's thirty, with nothing in between. Alexander sleeps on the couch in his office rather than in the marital bed , and everyone acts as though that happens all the time. When he bicycles to his servant's house (or at least dreams he does), along the way he sees the doctor's empty car with his wife's shawl; clearly he's aware that his wife is having an affair with his "best friend". His servant's immediate reaction is "something terrible must have happened at home", and it's apparent this isn't the first time she's seen Alexander's home situation become intolerable. And the doctor's plan to move to Australia is a truly momentous, one-in-a-million attempt to escape forever. The doctor's calm, detached, slightly ironic bearing belies the awfulness of the words he speaks about just how dysfunctional Alexander's household is.