Alexander is a journalist and former actor. On the eve of his birthday, the third world war breaks out. In his despair, Alexander turns to prayer, offering God everything he loves, if only the war will stop…
One of the most important artists of the second half of the twentieth century, Tarkovsky was one of the few unqualified masters in the history of film. While he certainly wasn’t the only great director of his generation of Soviet filmmakers, he was, like Eisenstein was to an earlier generation, its most renowned and most influential.
The son of artists- actress Maria Ivanovna and poet Arseni Tarkovski— he studied both Arabic and geology before turning to film. He enrolled at VGIK in 1959, directed the acclaimed short The Steamroller and the Violin in 1960 and won the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival for his first feature, Ivan’s Childhood, in 1962. By the time he completed his second feature, Andrei Rublev, he was regarded by many as “a poet of the cinema” – and by the Soviet censors as dangerously esoteric. Unreleased in the Soviet Union until 1971 (and then only in a truncated version), Andrei Rublev was seen first at international festivals and widely… read more
Doesn't get as much love as some of his other films, but the more I see it the more it speaks to me... One of my favorite films!
THE SACRIFICE, a great Tarkovsky film, one of it's major themes is Nietzsche's answer to nihilism: the Eternal Return. I don't know why more people don't make this connection. Maybe because Tarkovsky is considered a religious artist and that seems to contradict Nietzsche. This film is 2 1/2 hrs long but it's plot is comparetively more linear than THE MIRROR. You don't want to forget this film.
This is where the movie becomes a high art. Tarkovsky gives us: method, chaos, and the method again. Plays with rationality, faith, and interference by the music on a meta-level, which indicates which part of the film we see (Bach at the beginning and at the end), just perfect and sublime. The story, dialogues and images simply move into the viewer. Awesome use of color, long, realistic shots ... succeed, at least for a time, to change the viewer.
Simply stunning. The greatest Bergman film Bergman never made. The last two scenes are so completely beautiful and awe-inspiring in entirely different ways. I was totally blown away.
On the occasion of what would have been Andrei Tarkovsky’s 80th birthday, Adrian Curry looks back on the best posters for his films.
Primarily remembered for his work with Bergman and Tarkovsky, Josephson was also a director himself as well as a novelist and playwright.
The Sacrifice, like all of Tarkovsky’s films I’ve seen until now, begins in the middle of action. It drops us off with characters in the middle of a series of events without much background… read review
the final work from the legendary director, it is more accessible than the mirror, stalker, solyaris & nostalghia. offret is about philosophy, the empty soul, and human emotion against the fate… read review
The Sacrifice underlines the spiritual struggle one goes through when faced with death, or rather the fear of death. Erland Josephson’s character Alexander, feels he must do something to save his family… read review
Many will no doubt find this cinematic blasphemy, but I found legendary director Andrei Tarkovsky’s final film to be horribly uneven. A visual marvel – every frame is a work of art, exquisitely composed… read review