The Sacrifice, master filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky`s final film, feels like the summation of everything he had previously accomplished. It was meant to be his final masterpiece, and I think in a lot of ways it is his dying words to humanity, telling us what he thinks has become of humanity as well as warning us as to what is destined to come if we stay on our present course. Slowly and deliberately paced, the first shot after the credits is over nine minutes long, and much of The Sacrifice retains this slow pace – yet right away, you are drawn in, and you know this isn`t just any film.
Everything Tarkovsky does in The Sacrifice is for a reason, and the slow pace is no exception. It is used in brilliant effect to allow us to become completely immersed in the world; and then, when the end of the world arrives, we feel as shocked and terrified as the characters who we have slowly come to know. In one of the best scenes of any Tarkovsky film I`ve seen, the main character cries out to God, asking for deliverance from doom and the ``animal fear`` which infests him and his family. There are a couple other incredible sequences such as this strewn throughout the film, including the final sequence of frightening sensation and tears, but all of them are in their own ways emotionally devastating, and a testament to the power of Tarkovsky.
The film is not flashy, it`s not expensive, it doesn`t have an epic score or huge camera cranes; it`s very simple and minimalistic – almost bare bones in that there is no unneeded fat - yet he is able to take what he has and exploit it to maximum effect. You can really tell that Tarkovsky took painstaking time to set up every striking shot, right down to the colour of a wall. The film looks incredible. Even his use of music (or lack thereof) and the genius way he employed sound to terrify the viewer must be commended. The end result is a beautiful yet frightening film about love, sacrifice and ultimately humanity as a whole.
There are sequences that go on for up to fifteen minutes of people simply talking about spirituality, mortality and the human race – sometimes they feature someone talking to themselves about such things – but all these conversations are brilliant little fragments of Tarkovsky`s mind that he decided to leave with us. The Sacrifice, an incredibly beautiful, haunting, restrained, and transcendent film with complex and engaging subtext and themes as well as emotionally shattering sequences, all of which are threaded together to form a tapestry that can be considered one of his finest works.
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