THE SACRIFICE (1986) FILM ANALYSIS

THE SACRIFICE (1986) By Andrei Tarkovsky

The film feels very flowing and naturalistic. The film feels more like a stage play than a film. I feel the sacrifice is about how people see the world. Tarkovsky has cut loose from any thought of entertaining the audience. The film starts with an old man named Alexander planting a tree on his birthday with a small boy, telling stories and talking a little bit. This particular take is a very long take to open up the film. There are a lot of long shots in this film. There is a line in the opening segment which caught my attention is “We live, we have our ups and downs, we hope we wait for something and then we lose hope, we move closer to death and are born again to remember nothing.” So here Tarkovsky is not just talking about the impending devastation but also about life, birth, death, rebirth, and how life just happens. It is a film with very little happening like there are empty rooms with very few items and in a lot of scenes the characters are standing in front of the screen and there’s nothing much going on in the background.

The film is a very challenging one because it is a slow film and it doesn't rush headlong toward its conclusion, so it is not easy to watch. Here, Tarkovsky forces you to be engaged in discussing humanity’s failure, Man’s shortcomings, and all of that. I think the key part of the film is trying to think about where humanity is gone, where it is going to go, and what we can do to save it. 

Alexander was an actor who gave up the stage to work as a journalist, critic, and lecturer in aesthetics. While celebrating his birthday with his friends and family, he received some news about World War 3, which has erupted and the end of the world is near. Everybody was stunned into silence, the warning winds down and we could hear the suspected warplanes flying above the house. 

Now according to Alexander, he thinks that he has some spiritual relationship with God. After knowing the news, in a panic Alexander bargains to God saying that he will sacrifice everything he loves the most in order to protect his family and the world. He had a fear, a fear of death which is a terrible feeling, and because of this fear, Alexander set his house on fire. This is a very long scene in which everything is captured. From the house being burnt to the family coming back to see Alexander, From the family seeing the burning house to understand what exactly happened there. The act of burning down the house, made Alexander think that God will be convinced and will save this world.

But here’s a twist, the world is not destroyed because this was just a nightmare that Alexander had. Alexander tries to resolve the issue that the world might be ending and he really tries to save everything through burning the house, but was the sacrifice really worth it? Because the house could have been burned by a nuclear disaster as well. Remember in the scene when Otto gifted Alexander a painting, he said “Every gift involves a sacrifice and if not what kind of gift would it be? But if this gift by Alexander to God can be destroyed, either way, is it even a real sacrifice? Maybe he was more desperate than faithful.

In the end, I think it's all about finding the rays of hope. It's about hoping throughout the night that we get to wake up tomorrow and when we wake up tomorrow everything will be okay like it was before. 

Thank You!