Film: The Sacrifice
Fri Feb 23, 2018
4:00 PM
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Shot in Sweden by Ingmar Bergmans cinematographer Sven Nykvist, The Sacrifice is set in Tarkovsky country: a vast, airy home on a remote Baltic island whose shores evoke the edge of the world. A retired actor, Alexander (Erland Josephson), finds himself in retreat from the world on the occasion of his birthday celebration, elaborately orchestrated by his bourgeois family. The television and a cold wind bring news of nuclear warand still, the family survives. But it is the moment Alexander has waited for all his life. The issue I raise, Tarkovsky said, is one that to my mind is most crucial: the absence in our culture of room for a spiritual existence. Of related interest: Chris Marker's portrait of Tarkovsky, One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich, screens in our series Reverse Angle this season.