My Review of The Sacrifice (1986) directed by Andrei Tarkovsky

 It's the end of the world and I don't feel too good myself. I'm not talking about 2020, but I am talking about Andrei Tarkovsky's final film before he left this Earth. The Sacrifice (1986) is about a man named Alexander who has, like Ivan Ilyich, wasted his life and now realizes that world may be coming to an end soon as the Cold War has taken a turn for the worst and a nuclear holocaust may be imminent. He tells God (who he says he has long had a non-existent relationship with) that he's willing to give-up everything he loves--and his family--to stop this from coming. Luckily for him, he has two associates who can possibly help. This movie is a very meditative parable about life at the "beginning of the end" of the Cold War. 

The fact that this movie has a coherent plot distinguishes it from Tarkovsky's other feature film made in exile: Nostalghia (1983). This film also acts as a response or call-back to 2 earlier films of his: Andrei Rublev (1966) & Mirror (1977). While the use of rain/snow is the most recognizable motif of Tarkovsky, fire is a strong secondary one. The previously-mentioned films and The Sacrifice all use fire in a very pronounced and important way to symbolize a change or significant act. While this this film is more comprehensible than Nostalghia (though that film has a much stronger ending–possibly Tarkovsky's best), Tarkovsky wears his influences of Bergman and Kurosawa in very un-characteristically sloppy form here. It was quaint to watch this film of Europeans pining for an imagined past while living in an unbearable present. Maybe it's just me, but I prefer Tarkovsky's monologues/soliloquies in Russian rather than Swedish.

What trying times that this world (and myself) has been going through as of late! This movie puts it all in that kind of context that only Tarkovsky can offer. I compared this movie to The Death of Ivan Ilyich earlier, but I could also compare it to The Cherry Orchard by the fact that it is asking us what we would be willing to do to survive the end of the world. As I am still in mourning even as I write this, I can only imagine what sacrifice I would offer to stave-off disaster...