Andrey Tarkovsky::Offret (1986)
Offret (Sacrifice)
1986
1986
Among all the films made by Tarkovsky, this film is one I approach with caution. In his striving to underline the human psyche, the director runs the risk of becoming too minimalist, and it is a fine line he has split in this film indeed. Sacrifice is easily Tarkovsky's weakest film. It's another matter if you're inclined to find beauty in sentimentalism, though. In any case, it's difficult to see where it stands in his canon; moreover, Sacrifice does not offer a wholesome cinematic experience.
I hope everybody finds this film sentimental enough: everyone, including the hero Alexander, and his wife, daughter, doctor, postman, and even the servant girls, are weighed down by the pall of a heavy, isolated countryside (if the rest of Sweden looks like this then it is an unfortunately dull place), and are sentimental to the core: it's as if the people clutch at each other's collars to save themselves from the fright of being lonely. The hero, who happened to be a celebrated actor (one who learnt the ropes playing Prince Myshkin, from Dostoevsky's famous work), who has since abandoned the stage finding it too revealing, making too much demands from his self, having to dissolve his ego in his that of his characters. [Perhaps the reference is too explicit here: Prince Myshkin is the main character in The Idiot]. This gross reference apart, there are some unnatural references to Nietzsche, which, I believe is quite required: we find many Nietzsche-an ideas in Tarkovsky's work. When we have the director express his view that da Vinci is sinister in his artistic creations, one is forced to agree; and immediately a fear grips us. More than that, one marvels at how he has divined a long felt, but as yet unexpressed feeling. Michelangelo is direct and acutely exact; there is no sinister design to his art, it is meant simply to stun us with his unsurpassed ability, and admire his ability. da Vinci uses his limited abilities more cerebrally, to evoke a mixed response out of the commonplace (to him, there was no more significance to a Madonna than had a countess. On the other hand, Michelangelo made his Madonna from working class men for want of delineated muscles). Leonardo would meditate on his creation, vegetate, more like an artist, making ever so subtle changes, returning to his work after many months, adding layers upon thin layer of paint, and finally, left most of his paintings unfinished through this organic process of constant revision. This is where the sinister in his art surfaces. The sinister lies precisely in an artist struggling to learn his art: it was self discovery, Leonardo was sinister. There was nothing straightforward about Leonardo. Michelangelo had complete mastery over his techniques, and he was fully aware that he was the best ever; he was defining the medium, he was expressing his mastery over the medium (whether it be stone or plaster); Leonardo was forever the student, a student who gleefully celebrated his discoveries through art (while he had many other endeavours as well).
The film has been treated with all the seriousness it deserves, but the fact is, it is a dated film. If you make a film about the war you don't run this risk; you only have to look at Jean-Luc Besson's Enemy at the Gates. Made nearly half a century after the war, it has a place among the best war movies. But this film is about something that never was, and something that is never to be. It is a question of a perpetual "Let's suppose..." In Stalker the treatment is very real and earnest; in Sacrifice Tarkovsky was perhaps a bit hurried, and got his priorities wrong. The former is perhaps his most powerful film, and the latter easily the weakest. The details required to acquaint us with a tragedy (a nuclear holocaust, we should suppose—but we're not told explicitly) are totally absent, because it was not the purpose of the film to expose the horrors of a communal tragedy: with more than a few bunch of people on the film, Tarkovsky is apt to get lost. There is way too little by way of plot, and it is a glaring fault. Worse still, the film anticipates the new Kurosawa at times—Kurosawa has tried in several of his new films to inject horror at the degeneracy of a technology-driven humanity, and his attempts were childish at best and moronic at worst (Kabuki with toothpaste). But we can never compare Lens with Sacrifice because we're dealing with a director-relic with another at the peak of his powers. Comparisons apart, we have to stand Tarkovsky on his own pedestal before asking the embarrassing questions, which, unfortunately, are many.
One feels the need to invent a circumstance, a context, where man, who has so much of new-fangled devices at his disposal, so-called comforts that detract from 'real life', would turn to nature, to woman as mother, with arms enfolded and on bent knee, as supplicant. Alternatively, one can find difficulty locating a genuine artist among the paraphernalia that surrounds him: yes, it is indeed difficult to locate an artist in this world crowded with stuff. So we have two similar, intermingled problems here: the plight of man and the confusion of the artist. However, the alienation is felt by the man only when he is aware of the artist, of the need that he must be an artist if he is to go back to nature. The protagonist is an easy candidate here: he was an accomplished actor before he quit the stage and turned to critical writing and dramatic journalism. Indeed, as always, Tarkovsky has exactly located his artist in the meddlesome reality of modern life.
The next problem is to surround the artist with people: good and bad, sane an insane, powerful and benign. Tarkovsky fills the canvas people who are ordinary in every respect and totally unimpressive, just like in life (in Nostalghia we had an exemplary poet, a considerable woman, and a resolute mystic). His wife was an actress but she's a household monster for convenience; she is a vain woman who enjoys an easy life. [Her theatrical outburst during the television broadcast announcing impending holocaust, though natural, is difficult to interpret]. She is a sexually frustrated woman who envies her young son for all the attention he gets from his father. One also has to account for the confinement she is being subjected to all these years, away from high society, a life she has sacrificed for her husband (who had "seduced her with his acting talent"). Thus one cannot easily judge her. she is alluded to being quite a difficult mistress for the maids, as well as a hard taskmistress for her weak husband. Under the sedation of muscle relaxant, she utters her prophetic (even conscious) ideas of love between a couple, and it makes judgement even more difficult. She sees her own love as a sacrifice, which obviously is no what the others think because she's the tigress and her husband is the lamb. When one cross-checks this circumstance with the events leading to Domenico's guilt, one sees a sinister resemblance. In Tuscan Italy, damp and squalid, Domenico wouldn't dream of setting fire to the concrete jungle that was his home; so he decides to flood it. Here, in the desolate, arid Swedish coast, what better spiritual cleansing than to burn down one's loved house?
Alexander finds refuge in deep attachment and love for his son. It is the only way out of a messy, loveless marriage where the equations have all gone horribly wrong. His listless daughter is of little consequence, and seemingly competes with her mother for the attentions of the family doctor. His wife, Adelaide, as we have seen, has assumed a high-handed authority of the house. In addition to her young son, she has another child in the house, Alexander, who is a cancer patient requiring constant attention. Her wishes to be pampered long since vanished, she has hardened into a tough and difficult mistress of the house. She obviously finds her situation distressing, for she had once enjoyed being the great actor's wife. She was now an invalid's caretaker, and with everything under her charge.
Otto defines himself quite easily and simply as a believer of miracles. Otto needs a miracle a day to keep himself going. And, when the dreaded hours refuse to pass by, Otto instigates Alexander to sleep with the servant girl Maria, his neighbour, who he attributes to being a witch ("She came from Iceland a few years ago..."). Ever thoughtful, he leaves his bicycle for Alexander's use. [Darker motives may be made of Otto's designs, but these are not relevant].
Maria, the alleged witch, is a simple girl who has a warm heart, and takes the time to care for everyone. She is at peace with her situation, and is not waiting for anything, nor is she aware of the possibility of the holocaust. All she needs is a little time for herself, perhaps to pray (shades of Anna from Cries and Whispers?). She loves Alexander as the silent sufferer beneath an imperious wife. She is only too ready to deliver Alexander from his soul's torment when sleeps with him. Apart from the sinister attributes given her by Otto, we find her a simple servant girl.
Impossible as it may sound, after sleeping with the servant girl, Alexander opens his eyes to a calm world: electric power has been restored, the telephone is working, everything seems to be back to normal. He suddenly remembers the offers he had made God in his infirmity the other night: his beloved home, his son, and his speech. He sets about fulfilling his vows one by one. Be burns the house (the preparation for this climactic shot is simply delicious), shuts up his lips (which is a big sacrifice because it's his retaliation to a world that speaks too many harsh words), and is subsequently taken to an asylum, so he is effectively cut off from his son (he had included his son among the things he sacrificed for the world). As all of this happens, he is followed by Maria in her bicycle, and his son ('Little Man') dutifully waters the barren Japanese tree beside the sea-shore which he had planted with his son. The tree, which is a memorial to the days father and son spent together, bears the first blossoms: the fruit of the boy's diligent labour. Deeply suggestive of the innate understanding of young children that transcends words, Little Man wonders why it was said in the Bible that the Word came first...
As one finishes watching, one instinctively wonders why the film is not powerful like his other works. Perhaps Tarkovsky was not as close to the subject as he wished to be. One immediately feels so: those were bad times, but the holocaust is merely a realization of what had only been hinted at in Nostalghia, where the madman immolated himself to show the world that nothing was dearer than compassion, understanding, and love; here the saved man burns his house to break completely from his past. This latter act is completely an act of faith: just like Abraham readies to sacrifice Isaac, believing in his God completely, Alexander destroys everything, trusting his God and His Will. This one parallel is central to the film.
There's a growing tendency in Tarkovsky's final films to show men as becoming islands of isolation; it is the same here in Sacrifice. His natural conclusion is that men get miserable when they are alone, and if they do not believe in God, then they have not been miserable enough. It sadly reflects his own condition, his defection to the west, and separation from his own family and beloved son. He has found it increasingly difficult (Andrey Tarkovsky considered himself a poet who used the film as his medium) to separate his own preoccupation from his film, and this concern is explicitly expressed in the haunting voices played in the background (as 'Chinese music' in Nostalghia, and as the witch's beckoning in Sacrifice). These voices grow on the viewer as well as the alienated protagonists, and play a central role in putting across the message. Even so, I believe Tarkovsky had scarce need of a holocaust to make a sentimental movie; the saving grace being that the holocaust removes the personal and replaces it with the universal. In my view it's both the same because the viewer is not given the privilege of viewing Alexander the social animal. It scarcely holds water. His elegy for humankind is a regurgitation of his guilt from the past when he mowed and trimmed and thus violated his mother's pristine but overgrown garden. It is a regurgitation of the guilt he has acquired from all the things he had done without his mother's consent, including his career and his marriage.
The burning of the house is a breathtaking episode. A few dull fellows sitting beside me chuckled when they saw what they thought was an old man exhibiting signs of madness, or the evident signs of old age. What they missed completely was the almost methodical arrangement of the pyre: and then he clumsily lights the tablecloth. The chuckle was heard again when he makes a last visit to his study on the first floor an empties the last dregs of cognac from the glass. But they were silenced by the majesty of huge flames licking a living, pregnant house with the thirst of a chained animal. As the flames steered a satisfied column of thick black smoke as appeasement to the gods, the aesthetic apex of the film had been reached. As Alexander seals his lips and the paramedics arrive to confine him, the sacrifice is complete.
The Japanese tree blossoms in the end, naturally, and does not wait for the three years, as Little Man might have thought. Sven Nyqwist accomplishes with remarkable integrity what a lesser cinematographer would have found himself zooming in to show us clearly. Sven merely waits, focusses on a three-pronged silhouette as it sways and dances in the wind, and after a while we know what it is. It's just as the child underneath had seen it—no better, no worse.
September 25, 2005
I hope everybody finds this film sentimental enough: everyone, including the hero Alexander, and his wife, daughter, doctor, postman, and even the servant girls, are weighed down by the pall of a heavy, isolated countryside (if the rest of Sweden looks like this then it is an unfortunately dull place), and are sentimental to the core: it's as if the people clutch at each other's collars to save themselves from the fright of being lonely. The hero, who happened to be a celebrated actor (one who learnt the ropes playing Prince Myshkin, from Dostoevsky's famous work), who has since abandoned the stage finding it too revealing, making too much demands from his self, having to dissolve his ego in his that of his characters. [Perhaps the reference is too explicit here: Prince Myshkin is the main character in The Idiot]. This gross reference apart, there are some unnatural references to Nietzsche, which, I believe is quite required: we find many Nietzsche-an ideas in Tarkovsky's work. When we have the director express his view that da Vinci is sinister in his artistic creations, one is forced to agree; and immediately a fear grips us. More than that, one marvels at how he has divined a long felt, but as yet unexpressed feeling. Michelangelo is direct and acutely exact; there is no sinister design to his art, it is meant simply to stun us with his unsurpassed ability, and admire his ability. da Vinci uses his limited abilities more cerebrally, to evoke a mixed response out of the commonplace (to him, there was no more significance to a Madonna than had a countess. On the other hand, Michelangelo made his Madonna from working class men for want of delineated muscles). Leonardo would meditate on his creation, vegetate, more like an artist, making ever so subtle changes, returning to his work after many months, adding layers upon thin layer of paint, and finally, left most of his paintings unfinished through this organic process of constant revision. This is where the sinister in his art surfaces. The sinister lies precisely in an artist struggling to learn his art: it was self discovery, Leonardo was sinister. There was nothing straightforward about Leonardo. Michelangelo had complete mastery over his techniques, and he was fully aware that he was the best ever; he was defining the medium, he was expressing his mastery over the medium (whether it be stone or plaster); Leonardo was forever the student, a student who gleefully celebrated his discoveries through art (while he had many other endeavours as well).
The film has been treated with all the seriousness it deserves, but the fact is, it is a dated film. If you make a film about the war you don't run this risk; you only have to look at Jean-Luc Besson's Enemy at the Gates. Made nearly half a century after the war, it has a place among the best war movies. But this film is about something that never was, and something that is never to be. It is a question of a perpetual "Let's suppose..." In Stalker the treatment is very real and earnest; in Sacrifice Tarkovsky was perhaps a bit hurried, and got his priorities wrong. The former is perhaps his most powerful film, and the latter easily the weakest. The details required to acquaint us with a tragedy (a nuclear holocaust, we should suppose—but we're not told explicitly) are totally absent, because it was not the purpose of the film to expose the horrors of a communal tragedy: with more than a few bunch of people on the film, Tarkovsky is apt to get lost. There is way too little by way of plot, and it is a glaring fault. Worse still, the film anticipates the new Kurosawa at times—Kurosawa has tried in several of his new films to inject horror at the degeneracy of a technology-driven humanity, and his attempts were childish at best and moronic at worst (Kabuki with toothpaste). But we can never compare Lens with Sacrifice because we're dealing with a director-relic with another at the peak of his powers. Comparisons apart, we have to stand Tarkovsky on his own pedestal before asking the embarrassing questions, which, unfortunately, are many.
One feels the need to invent a circumstance, a context, where man, who has so much of new-fangled devices at his disposal, so-called comforts that detract from 'real life', would turn to nature, to woman as mother, with arms enfolded and on bent knee, as supplicant. Alternatively, one can find difficulty locating a genuine artist among the paraphernalia that surrounds him: yes, it is indeed difficult to locate an artist in this world crowded with stuff. So we have two similar, intermingled problems here: the plight of man and the confusion of the artist. However, the alienation is felt by the man only when he is aware of the artist, of the need that he must be an artist if he is to go back to nature. The protagonist is an easy candidate here: he was an accomplished actor before he quit the stage and turned to critical writing and dramatic journalism. Indeed, as always, Tarkovsky has exactly located his artist in the meddlesome reality of modern life.
The next problem is to surround the artist with people: good and bad, sane an insane, powerful and benign. Tarkovsky fills the canvas people who are ordinary in every respect and totally unimpressive, just like in life (in Nostalghia we had an exemplary poet, a considerable woman, and a resolute mystic). His wife was an actress but she's a household monster for convenience; she is a vain woman who enjoys an easy life. [Her theatrical outburst during the television broadcast announcing impending holocaust, though natural, is difficult to interpret]. She is a sexually frustrated woman who envies her young son for all the attention he gets from his father. One also has to account for the confinement she is being subjected to all these years, away from high society, a life she has sacrificed for her husband (who had "seduced her with his acting talent"). Thus one cannot easily judge her. she is alluded to being quite a difficult mistress for the maids, as well as a hard taskmistress for her weak husband. Under the sedation of muscle relaxant, she utters her prophetic (even conscious) ideas of love between a couple, and it makes judgement even more difficult. She sees her own love as a sacrifice, which obviously is no what the others think because she's the tigress and her husband is the lamb. When one cross-checks this circumstance with the events leading to Domenico's guilt, one sees a sinister resemblance. In Tuscan Italy, damp and squalid, Domenico wouldn't dream of setting fire to the concrete jungle that was his home; so he decides to flood it. Here, in the desolate, arid Swedish coast, what better spiritual cleansing than to burn down one's loved house?
Alexander finds refuge in deep attachment and love for his son. It is the only way out of a messy, loveless marriage where the equations have all gone horribly wrong. His listless daughter is of little consequence, and seemingly competes with her mother for the attentions of the family doctor. His wife, Adelaide, as we have seen, has assumed a high-handed authority of the house. In addition to her young son, she has another child in the house, Alexander, who is a cancer patient requiring constant attention. Her wishes to be pampered long since vanished, she has hardened into a tough and difficult mistress of the house. She obviously finds her situation distressing, for she had once enjoyed being the great actor's wife. She was now an invalid's caretaker, and with everything under her charge.
Otto defines himself quite easily and simply as a believer of miracles. Otto needs a miracle a day to keep himself going. And, when the dreaded hours refuse to pass by, Otto instigates Alexander to sleep with the servant girl Maria, his neighbour, who he attributes to being a witch ("She came from Iceland a few years ago..."). Ever thoughtful, he leaves his bicycle for Alexander's use. [Darker motives may be made of Otto's designs, but these are not relevant].
Maria, the alleged witch, is a simple girl who has a warm heart, and takes the time to care for everyone. She is at peace with her situation, and is not waiting for anything, nor is she aware of the possibility of the holocaust. All she needs is a little time for herself, perhaps to pray (shades of Anna from Cries and Whispers?). She loves Alexander as the silent sufferer beneath an imperious wife. She is only too ready to deliver Alexander from his soul's torment when sleeps with him. Apart from the sinister attributes given her by Otto, we find her a simple servant girl.
Impossible as it may sound, after sleeping with the servant girl, Alexander opens his eyes to a calm world: electric power has been restored, the telephone is working, everything seems to be back to normal. He suddenly remembers the offers he had made God in his infirmity the other night: his beloved home, his son, and his speech. He sets about fulfilling his vows one by one. Be burns the house (the preparation for this climactic shot is simply delicious), shuts up his lips (which is a big sacrifice because it's his retaliation to a world that speaks too many harsh words), and is subsequently taken to an asylum, so he is effectively cut off from his son (he had included his son among the things he sacrificed for the world). As all of this happens, he is followed by Maria in her bicycle, and his son ('Little Man') dutifully waters the barren Japanese tree beside the sea-shore which he had planted with his son. The tree, which is a memorial to the days father and son spent together, bears the first blossoms: the fruit of the boy's diligent labour. Deeply suggestive of the innate understanding of young children that transcends words, Little Man wonders why it was said in the Bible that the Word came first...
As one finishes watching, one instinctively wonders why the film is not powerful like his other works. Perhaps Tarkovsky was not as close to the subject as he wished to be. One immediately feels so: those were bad times, but the holocaust is merely a realization of what had only been hinted at in Nostalghia, where the madman immolated himself to show the world that nothing was dearer than compassion, understanding, and love; here the saved man burns his house to break completely from his past. This latter act is completely an act of faith: just like Abraham readies to sacrifice Isaac, believing in his God completely, Alexander destroys everything, trusting his God and His Will. This one parallel is central to the film.
There's a growing tendency in Tarkovsky's final films to show men as becoming islands of isolation; it is the same here in Sacrifice. His natural conclusion is that men get miserable when they are alone, and if they do not believe in God, then they have not been miserable enough. It sadly reflects his own condition, his defection to the west, and separation from his own family and beloved son. He has found it increasingly difficult (Andrey Tarkovsky considered himself a poet who used the film as his medium) to separate his own preoccupation from his film, and this concern is explicitly expressed in the haunting voices played in the background (as 'Chinese music' in Nostalghia, and as the witch's beckoning in Sacrifice). These voices grow on the viewer as well as the alienated protagonists, and play a central role in putting across the message. Even so, I believe Tarkovsky had scarce need of a holocaust to make a sentimental movie; the saving grace being that the holocaust removes the personal and replaces it with the universal. In my view it's both the same because the viewer is not given the privilege of viewing Alexander the social animal. It scarcely holds water. His elegy for humankind is a regurgitation of his guilt from the past when he mowed and trimmed and thus violated his mother's pristine but overgrown garden. It is a regurgitation of the guilt he has acquired from all the things he had done without his mother's consent, including his career and his marriage.
The burning of the house is a breathtaking episode. A few dull fellows sitting beside me chuckled when they saw what they thought was an old man exhibiting signs of madness, or the evident signs of old age. What they missed completely was the almost methodical arrangement of the pyre: and then he clumsily lights the tablecloth. The chuckle was heard again when he makes a last visit to his study on the first floor an empties the last dregs of cognac from the glass. But they were silenced by the majesty of huge flames licking a living, pregnant house with the thirst of a chained animal. As the flames steered a satisfied column of thick black smoke as appeasement to the gods, the aesthetic apex of the film had been reached. As Alexander seals his lips and the paramedics arrive to confine him, the sacrifice is complete.
The Japanese tree blossoms in the end, naturally, and does not wait for the three years, as Little Man might have thought. Sven Nyqwist accomplishes with remarkable integrity what a lesser cinematographer would have found himself zooming in to show us clearly. Sven merely waits, focusses on a three-pronged silhouette as it sways and dances in the wind, and after a while we know what it is. It's just as the child underneath had seen it—no better, no worse.
September 25, 2005
Footnote:
I am not so sure I've been entirely faithful to Tarkovsky's final film, because I feel he was sort of rushed into filming it; he must have had a lot of hassles, such as those of preparing for and managing the defection. From the outset, the theme sounded highly artificial, and the act of sacrifice does not strike me with religious overtones. I live in a consumerist world where the idea that a gift is a sacrifice probably doesn't hold as long as I have the money to buy a likeness of it. What's more, I do not attach much importance to things, and that's the end of a gift as a sacrifice.
I have ended up writing far more than I had intended, and that too about a movie I feel the least attached to, philosophically as well as artistically. Emotionally the film is a dud, almost feminine in its evocation of pity and helplessness. It is probably the most sentimental of Tarkovsky's films, and for that simple reason, not easy to talk about it in artistic terms.
I am not so sure I've been entirely faithful to Tarkovsky's final film, because I feel he was sort of rushed into filming it; he must have had a lot of hassles, such as those of preparing for and managing the defection. From the outset, the theme sounded highly artificial, and the act of sacrifice does not strike me with religious overtones. I live in a consumerist world where the idea that a gift is a sacrifice probably doesn't hold as long as I have the money to buy a likeness of it. What's more, I do not attach much importance to things, and that's the end of a gift as a sacrifice.
I have ended up writing far more than I had intended, and that too about a movie I feel the least attached to, philosophically as well as artistically. Emotionally the film is a dud, almost feminine in its evocation of pity and helplessness. It is probably the most sentimental of Tarkovsky's films, and for that simple reason, not easy to talk about it in artistic terms.
To Raphael:
As you might have guessed, I am sort of puzzled as to what to say. If the film was not by Tarkovsky, I would have jumped up and down for joy. But alas! It is a film by Tarkovsky. And he made six other movies before it...
As you might have guessed, I am sort of puzzled as to what to say. If the film was not by Tarkovsky, I would have jumped up and down for joy. But alas! It is a film by Tarkovsky. And he made six other movies before it...
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