The Sacrifice [VHS] [1986]

A short plot summary (purists, look away now): War breaks out in Russia, and the family which we are following reacts badly to the planes overhead and the general threatening feeling of atomic bombs. The head of the household prays that night that if only everything were to be put back to how it was the previous morning, he would give up everything. Everything... His house, his family, his small deaf/dumb child; everything.

He wakes up the next morning to find there has never been a war.

To seriously give away the plot ending, an interesting note is that when filming the last dramatic scene for the first time, not only did lots of things go wrong, but finally the camera jammed. This was a problem, since they actually burnt down the house! (No models...) So they rebuilt the house and did the shot again. That particular shot, the climax to the film, lasts around 7 minutes, and is pure genius.

I would recommend this film to anyone that likes any of Tarkovsky's other 6 films, and also to anyone that likes Kubrick's work. The tension mixed with the use of various "proper" music (eg Bach's St Matthew Passion) is breathtaking.

THE SACRIFICE is a great film. It touches on the most fundamental questions of being a human in our post-modern world. And it does it with extraordinary grace and a sublime, haunting, beauty.

To miss the point of this film, as some reviewers have, or to call it sophomoric, as others do, is to admit one's own inability to consider that life itself may hold a greater, dare I say, spiritual, meaning and that we are more than an accidental fluke in a cold, uncaring universe.

This film dares to use its considerable art to challenge us like a zen koan and a prayer. It is a meditation on what it means to be fully human and mortal and moral. It asks us to wonder at the unknown and it weeps that we are prisoners of our humanity -- and that we hold the fate of our planet in our hands.

All this sounds kind of pretentious, I know, but this magnificent yet simple film works on a higher level than most movies. It's not easily categorized. But on a big screen, I was hypnotized by the extraordinary cinematography and equally transported by the subtle ideas. It was a transcendent movie going experience that I didn't expect and one that has remained vivid as the years pass.

Swedish Actor Erland Josephson plays Alexander, a journalist who has moved from the big city. He lives in his dream house with his family. Victor, a friend of the family and a doctor, and Otto the local mailman, and a very Nietzschean character, are there to celebrate Alexanders birthday. One of the maids, Julia, is also present. During the evening, terrible news of the outbreak of the third world war reach them.

The Sacrifice is really about self sacrifice in the interest of the community, and is therefore a film about Christian ideals as are his former film, Nostalghia.
Central in the film, and the original story (the apocalyptic scenario was added later) was a more pagan idea, which he called "the Witch".