Post by Capo on Jan 15, 2007 23:03:00 GMT
Offret
The Sacrifice
Andrei Tarkovsky 1985 Sweden
When the apocalypse nears, a former journalist celebrating his 60th birthday prays to God that he will give up everything in order to make things go back to how they were.
A fabulous opening shot: bright and sunny as two people converse their way from far in the distance to the foreground of the frame. Thereafter, the cinematography becomes increasingly darker, drowned almost entirely in grey and muddy browns, until the mesmerising final moments in which a cottage burns down in long-take and the film's small, close-knit community rush back and forth in panic as our protagonist descends into madness. The dialogue and performances are remote and sometimes even alien; it is a reflective and oblique film fuelled by melancholy which finds an effective location in the barren Swedish coast. Erland Josephson in the lead gives a performance to rival anything he did for Bergman, and that director's primary cinematographer, Sven Nykvist, films immaculately. Visually it might be Tarkovsky's finest film, but there is no doubt a sag in emotional intensity somewhere in the middle of the film.
The Sacrifice
Andrei Tarkovsky 1985 Sweden
When the apocalypse nears, a former journalist celebrating his 60th birthday prays to God that he will give up everything in order to make things go back to how they were.
A fabulous opening shot: bright and sunny as two people converse their way from far in the distance to the foreground of the frame. Thereafter, the cinematography becomes increasingly darker, drowned almost entirely in grey and muddy browns, until the mesmerising final moments in which a cottage burns down in long-take and the film's small, close-knit community rush back and forth in panic as our protagonist descends into madness. The dialogue and performances are remote and sometimes even alien; it is a reflective and oblique film fuelled by melancholy which finds an effective location in the barren Swedish coast. Erland Josephson in the lead gives a performance to rival anything he did for Bergman, and that director's primary cinematographer, Sven Nykvist, films immaculately. Visually it might be Tarkovsky's finest film, but there is no doubt a sag in emotional intensity somewhere in the middle of the film.