Watching Andrei Tarkovsky films is like going through a time warp in an enclosed dreamlike space. His films are meditative trips where time is endless and space is being manipulated right before our eyes. That is the truest way I can view Tarkovsky's last film, "The Sacrifice," one of his heaviest films that is dedicated to his son. It doesn't start being so dark and difficult but, by the end, you might be gasping for air just like I did when I saw "Stalker."
The film has an Ingmar Bergman quality during its opening long-take scene of a former older actor named Alexander (Erland Josephson, a Bergman regular) who has planted a tree with his mute son. His son (Tommy Kjellqvist), referred to as Little Man, recently had a throat operation and frequently mumbles. After talking to a mailman about existentialism in this seemingly isolated beach home area, Alexander sits by the remote woods waxing on about the state of mankind, how power corrupts all, how nature has been destroyed and sin has prevailed and, thus, the resulting emerging technology (these "words, words, words" are more prescient now than in 1986). His philosophies have emerged about life and death, though it is doubtful that it has any relation to him being a famous journalist who teaches aesthetics. It is this beach home in the middle of nowhere with a landscape more beautiful than beatific that has him cornered.
It is Alexander's birthday and the bulk of the film takes place inside his beach home. His wife, Adelaide (Susan Fleetwood), arrives with Little Man's doctor, Victor (Sven Wollter), and they curiously look like a couple (Adelaide makes it clear that she married the wrong man). Also in attendance are Alexander's stepdaughter Marta, Otto the mailman (Allan Edwall, who had appeared in some Bergman films) and two maids, one who is referred to as a mysterious witch named Maria (Guðrún Gísladóttir). They all watch the news on TV about an impending World War III and this drives Adelaide to endlessly scream and well in tears (Victor comes to her aid). Alexander starts praying to God and the sound of thunder has given way to sounds of jets flying overhead. Existentialist thoughts about the world have now been submerged by spirituality. Alexander feels that if he gives up material possessions, like his beach house, that then maybe God will stop this nuclear war and its devastation.
"The Sacrifice" is a deeply spiritual experience where one man desperately pleads with God, something Alexander probably never expected to do. He never expected to make love to the alleged witch, the one maid who saves him from potential suicide. After this one trek to her home, Alexander seems to wake up as if he had a bad dream. Nobody seems in fear anymore of war but Alexander has already changed. Tarkovsky occasionally places us in the calamitous effects of war, as in black-and-white images of people running in the city streets that resembles World War II footage of broken down cities. Sometimes, as in one very curious moment that is visually shown as colorless, Alexander is shown looking at a model of his beach house in the mud while the "witch" looks on - is it real or is Alexander thinking that his life is bereft of meaning including a material possession like a beach house? (The model was made by his son but, somehow, it is too perfect). Before the shattering sounds of jets are heard, we see a startling image of Maria walking on the grounds with a deep mist in the background.
"The Sacrifice" was Tarkovsky's last hurrah before he died of cancer. It is a surreal film that floats in and out of your consciousness and I do not think that most of it is meant to be taken literally. It is a final and emotionally grounded testament to a man who had profound thoughts on humanity and hoped spirituality would prevail. His view is that a man's family can and should feel at peace in a place that appears peaceful. If only.
