The Sacrifice. (15.)
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. 1986
Starring Erland Josephson, Susan Fleetwood, Valeire Mairesse, Allan Edwall, Gudrun Gisladottir. 145 mins
It’s hard to imagine two more diverse directors than Woody Allen and Tarkovsky. They do though have one thing is common - a debilitating admiration for Ingmar Bergman. For his final film (cancer would claim him soon after it was completed) Tarkovsky, who had defected from the Soviet Union, pitched up in Sweden and prepared for the end of the world, stocked up on Bergman touches.
There’s a Bergman setting - an isolated country house in a bleak barren marshland; a Bergman cast and crew - cinematographer Sven Nykvist and favourite actor Josephson; a Bergman story about a former actor turned professor who finds God and (maybe) averts Nuclear holocaust through an extreme act of faith.
The first half in particular feels oddly stage bound, with characters moving across rooms in a way no human being would naturally do unless instructed to by a theatre director. It’s very stilted; here’s one of the cinema’s most singular and unrestrained talents suddenly strangely inhibited. Though he breaks free towards the end, when the hallucinatory visual finally come they feel like inferior copies of scenes in earlier films.
And though it is not exactly the arthouse equivalent of Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Two Tribes video, the nuclear war theme dates it. Or rather it limits it in ways unique to a filmmaker whose other works seem almost entirely detached from contemporary concerns.
And that concludes Curzon/ Atrificial Eye's Sculpting Time retrospective. The two non Russian films mean that its conclusion rather dribbles away, but overall I have to say that reacquianting myself with these films has been one of the year's great thrills. He was extraordinary and his films withstand constant rewatching. Here's to the next retrospective of his work.
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. 1986
Starring Erland Josephson, Susan Fleetwood, Valeire Mairesse, Allan Edwall, Gudrun Gisladottir. 145 mins
It’s hard to imagine two more diverse directors than Woody Allen and Tarkovsky. They do though have one thing is common - a debilitating admiration for Ingmar Bergman. For his final film (cancer would claim him soon after it was completed) Tarkovsky, who had defected from the Soviet Union, pitched up in Sweden and prepared for the end of the world, stocked up on Bergman touches.
There’s a Bergman setting - an isolated country house in a bleak barren marshland; a Bergman cast and crew - cinematographer Sven Nykvist and favourite actor Josephson; a Bergman story about a former actor turned professor who finds God and (maybe) averts Nuclear holocaust through an extreme act of faith.
The first half in particular feels oddly stage bound, with characters moving across rooms in a way no human being would naturally do unless instructed to by a theatre director. It’s very stilted; here’s one of the cinema’s most singular and unrestrained talents suddenly strangely inhibited. Though he breaks free towards the end, when the hallucinatory visual finally come they feel like inferior copies of scenes in earlier films.
And though it is not exactly the arthouse equivalent of Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Two Tribes video, the nuclear war theme dates it. Or rather it limits it in ways unique to a filmmaker whose other works seem almost entirely detached from contemporary concerns.
And that concludes Curzon/ Atrificial Eye's Sculpting Time retrospective. The two non Russian films mean that its conclusion rather dribbles away, but overall I have to say that reacquianting myself with these films has been one of the year's great thrills. He was extraordinary and his films withstand constant rewatching. Here's to the next retrospective of his work.
