The Sacrifice

Offret
a film by Andrei Tarkovsky

Events unfold in the hours before a nuclear holocaust. Alexander is a retired actor who is celebrating his birthday with family and friends when a crackly TV announcement warns of an imminent nuclear catastrophe. Alexander makes a promise to God that he will sacrifice all he holds dear, if the disaster can be averted. The next day dawns and, as if in a dream, everything is restored to normality. But Alexander must keep his vow.

Set in Sweden, the story follows the travails of wealthy patriarch Alexander, a former actor and critic who lives in a remote house on the shores of the Baltic Sea. One year on his birthday, a sudden television announcement interrupts the celebration with news of a nuclear holocaust. His family and guests suffer through violent fits of hysteria and emotional turmoil in the ensuing hours, but the previously troubled Alexander finds a clarity of mind when he makes a pact with God, whom he had long ceased to recognise, offering himself as a sacrifice in order to redeem the fallen earth for his cherished son. "Every gift involves a sacrifice. If not, what kind of gift would it be?".

As Alexander goes from self-contented ease to crippling animal fear and existential anguish and finally to spiritual abandon, the troubled journey is illustrated with a haunting succession of images, tableaux, objects, dreams, and gestures, all sewn together in a seamlessly elliptical vision. The tormented characters are forced to come to terms with their own physical and spiritual existence, with redemption coming through faith, in this case, Alexander's faith in his love for his young son.

Supremely poetic, The Sacrifice is filled with astonishingly beautiful images, expertly shot by Ingmar Bergman's cinematographer Sven Nykvist. Tarkovsky's vision is a light that illuminates the simplest movements of life such as the offering of a gift, a walk along the bay, the reflection of a naked body in a mirror, and the film's underlying aesthetic and philosophical issues provide a feast for the senses and the mind. This, Tarkovsky's final film, is a visionary masterpiece which won the Grand Prix at Festival de Cannes 1986, the same year that Tarkovsky died of cancer in Paris at the age of fifty-four.