“I studied philosophy, history of religion, aesthetics. And ended up putting myself in chains. Of my own free will.”

‘The Sacrifice’, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky in 1986, is a Swedish apocalyptic movie and the last by the Russian director.  Erland Josephson plays Alexander, a journalist and intellectual who lives in a remote part of Sweden with his wife Adelaide, played by Susan Fleetwood, and his children. Whilst celebrating his birthday with friends, a dinner party is disturbed by the sound of jet fighters passing close overhead. Later, a news broadcast reports on a global catastrophe, presumably a nuclear conflict. This news sends the party goers on a spiral of depression, hysteria and madness. I found the film to be one of the more accessible of Tarkovsky’s films with a defined story and a manageable length, but this isn’t to say it’s the best. It lacks a little of the immersive richness of ‘Andrei Rublev’ and ‘Stalker’, but still nods towards the director’s obsessions with myth, nature, superstition and religion. The film is bookended by two long, unbroken shots: the opening shows the father and young son planting a tree as the camera slowly pans back and forth across the scene. The film ends (aside from one further scene returning to the tree) showing the family home dramatically ablaze as the characters race to and fro across the plain. These scenes seem to sum up the film, defining the narrative trajectory as being from birth (the planting of the tree) to death (the destruction of the wooden house) and from placidity and calm to chaos and horror. Contrasted with the famous candle carrying moment from ‘Nostalghia’, this final moment of Tarkovsky’s last film is frighteningly dramatic and apocalyptic.

Would I recommend it? Yes – I think it’s not a bad place to start with Tarkovsky as it contains all his themes within a more manageable movie. Watch in a double bill with a Bergman, perhaps  ‘Through a Glass Darkly’. This is also the last Tarkovsky I had left to watch.