The Sacrifice
Exclusive to Filmatique • 2h 26m
Andrei Tarkovsky • Sweden • 1986 • Tarkovsky's haunting final masterpiece.
NEW 4K RESTORATION! Famed Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky's final masterpiece, The Sacrifice is a haunting vision of a world threatened with nuclear annihilation that inspired Andrew Sarris (The Village Voice) to proclaim, "You may find yourself moved as you have never been moved before."
As a wealthy Swedish family celebrates the birthday of their patriarch Alexander (Erland Josephson, Cries and Whispers), news of the outbreak of World War III reaches their remote Baltic island — and the happy mood turns to horror. The family descends into a state of psychological devastation, brilliantly evoked by Tarkovsky's arresting palette of luminous greys washing over the bleak landscape around their home. (The film's masterful cinematography is by Sven Nykvist, Ingmar Bergman's longtime collaborator).
For Alexander, a philosopher troubled about man's lack of spirituality, the prospect of certain extinction compels the ultimate sacrifice, and he enters into a Faustian bargain with God to save his loved ones from the fear which grips them. The director's last film, made as he was dying of cancer, The Sacrifice is Tarkovsky's personal statement, a profoundly moving, redemptive tragedy steeped in unforgettable imagery and heart-wrenching emotion.
Up Next in Exclusive to Filmatique
-
Tommaso
Abel Ferrara • Italy • 2014
Tommaso is an American expat living in Rome. His days pass listlessly—taking Italian courses, working on a new script, attending an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Once a wild child, Tomma...
-
Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son
Ken Jacobs • United States • 1969 • One of Ken Jacobs' great experiments in photography and editing.
Ken Jacobs started experimenting with found footage, expanding a five-minute fragment of Billy Bitzer’s Tom, Tom, The Piper’s Son (1905) to feature length. In Jacobs’s words—“Ghosts! Cine-recor...
-
Wittgenstein
Derek Jarman • United Kingdom • 1993 • A modern, theatrical retelling of Wittgenstein.
Born in 1889 to wealthy family, Ludwig Wittgenstein was a prodigy, educated in Vienna and Manchester before settling into a career as a philosopher at Cambridge, where he taught alongside Bertrand Russell and ...
