Hacker Cinema
The Sacrifice
Offret
1986 · Film · 149 min
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
Alexander, a journalist, philosopher and retired actor, celebrates a birthday with friends and family when it is announced that nuclear war has begun.
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14 comments on Hacker News
I'd like to see some of those ADHD film students sit through The Sacrifice.
It's one of his most accessible movie, and usually resonates with tech people for obvious reasons. His best movies imo are Mirror, Ivan's Childhood, Andrei Rublev, Stalker and then Solaris, Nostalgia and Sacrifice.
Now Solaris book by Lem is far superior to Tarkovsky's rendition.
IMHO, if you’ll be watching your first Tarkovsky film start with Stalker, which is how my girlfriend (now wife of 27 years), introduced me to him many years ago. I was very much a Fellini person, and the Bergman-Tarkovsky school seemed cryptic (at best) at the time. When finished, ask yourself (1) if you would have gone into the room and (2) what the dreamlike sequences with Stalker’s son meant.
Second one should be Solaris, if you’re into SciFi or The Mirror if you’re not of if you’d like a challenge. I think The Mirror is the better movie, the woman (stand in for T’s mom) looking at the wheat field (T had these specifically planted for the film!) haunts me to this day.
I personally couldn’t relate to The Sacrifice, perhaps his most personal film. His earlier films (Ivan and Rublev) I could not watch at all.
To be a genius artist like him in the Soviet Union meant privileges unheard for art film directors in Europe (let alone US), eg see the wheat field thing above. It also meant you’re at the mercy of the “masses”. I had read an article once that included a comment for The Mirror from a regular filmgoer, saying after 30mins it caused such a headache! The funding was based on such feedback and the movie was labeled as elitist (it is) which greatly impacted his career. It’s infuriating to think T lost time due to such petty interference (OTOH, I could only finish the film on my third try, falling asleep in first two attempts! So she had a point)
maybe not all dreams. But some too blinding..
Tarkovsky's Sacrifice film was on eye-opener:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacrifice_(1986_film)
I'm a huge fan of Tarkovsky. Stalker and Mirror are two of my all-time favorite films, and The Sacrifice is great too, but Solaris was a huge letdown.
There are some movies you think about for years.. The Sacrifice and Stalker were like that, for me.
Tarkovsky's advice to young people is also something I think will ring true with the Hacker News crowd https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Vvdtaaprzw
After I watched Solaris I decided to space out the other Tarkovsky films over a period of years. They each hit me so hard that I wanted to always know there was one waiting for me that I could look forward to seeing, ideally as a restored print at the local rep cinema. Now I only have The Sacrifice left.
I also very much recommend Chris Marker's documentary on Tarkovsky, One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevitch [1][2]. Germane to this thread, he compares aspects of his films to Kurosawa in parts. Marker is also an incredible singular filmmaker, and the documentary is more of a love letter to Tarkovsky while he's on his deathbed. If you enjoy this, then oh do I envy you getting to go down the Marker rabbit hole and watching Sans Soleil and La Jetée for the first time.
[1] English with Turkish subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=35lETmPDypI
[2] French https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M56i90Q1-Y
I have mixed feelings about Tarkovsky. He is certainly profoundly important. His sensuality is unmatched. Whether it's the perfect use of sound (endless dripping water, the ringing of a fallen cup), the incredible imagery or the beautiful stories (I think about the bell story in Andrei Rublev a lot), Tarkovsky is the king of making you feel the movie.
That said, I don't worship at the altar of Tarkovsky. I don't love that his movies have this impenetrable length. I don't love that his movies inevitably have some long philosophical lecture by a male character while the women stay to the sides, often silent. I will sound like a petulant digital native, but I have been bored by a Tarkovsky.
Too often Tarkovsky is used as this unquestionably brilliant artist. To appreciate him is to be a true cinemaphile, while to hate him is to indicate your pedestrian tastes. I don't agree. There should be no shame in being bored by Stalker, in not getting Andrei Rublev, in finding The Sacrifice a little too navel gazing.
If I had to explain Tarkovsky to someone who doesn't watch art movies, I'd say that he's like the Velvet Underground. Unless you have a particular taste, you probably won't enjoy songs like Heroin or Venus in Furs. But you'll definitely enjoy the music made by people who did like Heroin or Venus in Furs. You don't have to enjoy Tarkovsky. But watch some of his movies, and you'll start to have flashes of recognition in movies like Arrival, La Cienaga, The New World, etc.
This brings back memories from the early 2000s. I was in high school and got very interested about Andrei Tarkovsky but it was very hard to get copies of his works anywhere. Finally I was able to order couple of VHS's to my local library from some library quite far away. Watching The Sacrifice after school alone in our house was more frightening than any scary movies I saw afterwards (not too many tbh...). Also I grew deep respect to Andrei Rublev. Still have a copy of his Holy Trinity on my wall.
I could not find them on Eastern European Movies but the movies directed by Andrei Tarkovsky left an impression at me. While some were made when he lived in exile and are therefore technically not Eastern European they still fit the genre. Besides the obvious Solaris and Stalker I can recommend Nostalghia and especially The Sacrifice.
On a more lighter note I really enjoyed the children movies and TV series that were made in Czechoslovakia in the 80s a lot as kid and so does my kid today. My favorite is The Visitors aka Adam '84. Classics are also Pan Tau, all the fairy tale movies from Hofman/Polák, Lucie, postrach ulice and Létající Čestmír. Generally everything out of studio Barrandov is worth to have a look at.
I recently watched Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice which also deals with the threat of nuclear destruction. The main character is having a birthday dinner when the news informs everybody about the nuclear threat. The simplicity in which this information is revealed and the transition from the mundane to abject fear connected really well to modern times.
It's interesting seeing film ideas repeat and be interpreted by multiple directors. It's almost like some ideas need to bounce from director to director before they find the right outlet. I Live In Fear begets Dr Strangelove begets The Sacrifice.
If you liked "Roadside Picnic" you should really watch Tarkovsky's "Stalker" (though the film is much more mystical and less science-fictional than the book).
If you like Lem, I would heartily recommend "Cyberiad".
Unfortunately, Tarkovsky's adaptation of Lem's "Solaris" was pretty awful, especially compared to the likes of "Stalker" and other great Tarkovsky films like "Mirror" and "The Sacrifice".
Curiously, despite Stapledon's enormous influence, to my knowledge none of his books have ever been made in to major motion pictures.
There are also blurays of OFFRET, ZERKALO, RUBLEV, IVAN, SOLYARIS. Wow, only just realized STALKER is the only one missing.
Oh, and the fantastic VOYAGE IN TIME! This one is often overlooked, but it's in fact directed by Tarkovsky and has some beautiful shots. It's a documentary of some of the processes in making NOSTALGHIA.
Tarkovsky is my favorite 20th century film director bar none. Here's are some reasons why and why you might also be interested in his films:
(1) He described his art as poetry applied to cinema or "sculpting in time," a fundamentally different conceptual idea of the cinematic art that he went to a great length to clarify (in a book of the same name, highly recommended).
(2) His use of color is incredible. Some films, especially stalker, are near black and white with incredibly vibrant and poignant uses of green. This is a bit like Bergman at his best, but even better.
(3) He was deeply religious in a "mystical" sense, with a lot of respect for past traditions, but not in a dogmatic sense and with appreciation for both Christian and pagan elements (see Andrei Rublev for both aspects)
(4) He knew other European traditions extremely well. Ivan's childhood is a meditation on the war with Germany, including shots of Duehrer's prints. Nostalgia involves his time in Italy traditions including Madonna cults and important artwork. Sacrifice has Shakespearean references, Rembrandt, Japanese samurai, and magical traditions. In general, his films are full of long shots of important pieces of Renaissance art with profound meaning.
(5) He spent a lot of time thinking about the integration of technology and the rest of life. Solaris is the futuristic spaceship version of this. Stalker is the apocalyptic version of this.
I think in a century Tarkovsky will rightly be credited as inventing a whole new type of cinema, his way of approaching it was fundamentally in tune with a "mystical" sense and integrated with other forms of visual art (i.e. the long gaze you have at a painting), and the punctuated, rhythmic reading of poetry.