Wednesday, June 24, 2009

193) The Sacrifice (1986)


193) The Sacrifice (1986) Dir: Andrei Tarkovsky Date Released: November 1986 Date Seen: June 24th, 2009 Rating: 3.5/5

The combination of Tarkovsky's preoccupations with Bergman's yields a strange and ungainly mix of ideas and aesthetics that isn't as effective as it should be. Intriguing but only fleetingly beautiful. See my mention of it on my forthcoming piece on Tarkovsky's visual leitmotifs for The Onion's New York Decider.

2 comments:

  1. This reminds me of an account of the making of this movie I once read: remember that stunning, 10-minute shot of the house catching fire and burning? They burned down the house, all right, but it turned out that something ininside the camera didn't click and the shot wasn't *filmed*! So they had to gather some extra money, build a new house and burn it down all over again. Imagine the mix of Russian and Swedish profanity that had to explode on the set once Adrei T. and Sven N. noticed what has just happened!

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  2. That beats Koji Wakamatsu's UNITED RED ARMY, for which Wakamatsu was so determined to make the project, that he not only independently raised money for the project but also set part of the film in his house, a part where student revolutionaries hold up and are assaulted by police firehoses and then the hose catches fire. Wakamatsu's house did indeed catch fire the way the filmed it (so yeah, he intentionally set fire to his own home, even if it was, I believe, his country home).

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