A Brilliant Sacrifice

ANDREI TARKOVSKY'S The Sacrifice is without a doubt the most passionate cinematic account to date of the individual's struggle to keep heart and soul together in a world weighed under by the nuclear burden. It's prophecy, propaganda, and apocalyptic parable, shot through with a sense of moral indignation at once rabidly didactic and rationally hysterical.

Not since Slim Pickens rode a rocket to Russia in Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick's Cold War comedy classic, has a film stared so unabashedly down the throat of Armageddon. But whereas Dr. Strangelove's power stems from the way Kubrick's finger flirts with the Little Red Button, Tarkovsky presses the button down, then holds it, firmly, for two-and-a-half hours. The result is a film as difficult to assess as the Bomb itself, generating shockwaves of a political, moral, historical, and spiritual nature. The Sacrifice almost demands too much of the viewer, pushing him from breakdown to epiphany, via the Inferno, and releasing him on a world still crouching beneath a specter.

But The Sacrifice is admirable in that it goes for everything. Tarkovsky may have the distinction of being the loudest and most pitch-perfect primal screamer in the history of Cold War cinema. Other directors seem to be doing semaphore and dumbshow, by comparison. The Sacrifice, filmed with Swedish and British actors by Russia's premiere film auteur, comes off like everybody's end-of-the-world nightmare dubbed in raving Esperanto. It's not the kind of movie you'd put into a time capsule; it's the time capsule itself, with everything inside.

GOD. DEATH. Technology. Nietzsche. These are the issues that plague Alexander (Erland Josephson), a former actor and disaffected professor. He has retired to his Swedish summer home to celebrate his birthday, and as the film opens we see him planting a tree on the beach with his son, Little Man (Tommy Kjellqvist), attended by the local postman, Otto (Allan Edwall). The opening shot is awesome--10 minutes long, sustained and uncut, the camera moving with snail-like fury closer and closer toward the central characters. By the time we see their faces, we're desperate to, hungry to; Tarkovsky knows how to engage his audience: it's two-parts hypnotism, two-parts bread and water.

Soon we're introduced to Alexander's household: his neurotic wife (Susan Fleetwood); their pristine daughter (Fillipa Franzen); the cold-blooded family doctor (Sven Wollter); and the servant girls, Julia (Valerie Mairesse) and Maria (Gudrun Gisladottir). They're like refugees from A Dream Play, and the house exudes the acoustic sterility of an undisturbed stageset in a bombed-out theatre; the hardwood floors click too loudly, the furniture looks placed, the china is more for display than use. It's the House of Usher waiting for a match.

That night, Alexander awakens to a broadcast predicting the outbreak of World War III. His family sits catatonically about the TV; they do not speak through the duration of the message, nor do they speak when the picture blacks out. Alexander's wife breaks the silence to condemn the men of the household: "Why don't you do something!" she screams; the only words in the film delivered in English. Is this a conscious address by a Russian director to apathetic Americans?

Josephson is outstanding as Alexander, the Abraham, traipsing around in his Yin-Yang bathrobe, setting sacrificial pyres on the family frontporch. The supporting cast is also excellent, highlighted by Gisladottir as the surrogate Mother of God. But if the film belongs to anyone, it is Edwall's.

As the clown-angel, Otto, terrified by Leonardo Da Vinci and forever mussing his unkempt hair, Edwall gives the performance of a career. Too often in Bergman's films has he been relegated to the position of sideline eccentric; here, as the holy fool, he takes center stage. Edwall seems to take unending delight at sticking his rear at the camera; it's the least of his magic tricks in a role that has him walking through glass walls, pirouetting on a bicycle, and taking rabbit punches from passing evil angels. The only problem is that Edwall's Otto forever upstages the characters surrounding him. But if he's an angel, as Tarkovsky would have us believe, that's to be expected.

The Sacrifice won the Cannes Film Festival Special Jury Prize and has received enthusiastic reviews all around the world. Distribution of the picture has left something to be desired, however. In the Boston area the only theater currently showing it is the Janus in Cambridge, for a limited two-week run. The Sacrifice is certainly the type of movie that should be seen. And, if possible, seen again.