| Cinema Club | Cinema Club | Bookstore | Guidebook | Our partners |
Cinema
Series of films by Andrei Tarkovsky — The Sacrifice (1986)
16 April 2010
Alexander, an aging atheist actor/psychologist/writer with a younger actress wife, a teenage daughter, and a young son (who is referred to as "Little Man" and is mute until the last shots) experiences the opening throes of the end of the world by a nuclear holocaust. In despair the protagonist vows to God to sacrifice all he loves (what this would mean in reality is not made plain in his prayer, and provides the final surprise of the film) if only this good act of fate may be undone, and to this end he sleeps with a local woman whom he believes to be a witch.
When he wakes up the next morning everything seems "normal", but whether Alexander dreamt the whole episode is never made explicit. Nevertheless, Alexander sets forth to give up all he loves and possesses, burning his house and being driven off to an institution. Poignantly, the first words the little boy in the film utters, in the final shot, are: "In the beginning was the word...why is that, papa?"
USSR, 1986
Dіrected by: Andrei Tarkovsky
Starring: Erland Josephson, Susan Fleetwood, Valérie Mairesse, Allan Edwall, Gudrun Gisladottir, Sven Wollter, Filippa Franzen
Running time: 149 min.
Small cinema hall
Start at 19.00.
Free admission.