Rating: 
Summary: Wait for another transfer!!
Review: I gave this 5 stars because the movie is a masterpiece. However, nostalghia.com, a devoted Tarkovsky site, has reported some serious flaws with the transfer:The transfer of Sacrifice is less than vibrant, and there is a serious flaw in color balance starting at Ch3/3:20 (not seen in the corresponding sequence in the later documentary). Notice also typo on cover: "Tarkosvky". I hope that Kino re-releases this, or another company, as it needs to appear in the way Tarkovsky intended!
Rating: 
Summary: Flawed masterpiece?
Review: I love Tarkovsky and looked forward to viewing "The Sacrifice" after having seen Andrei Rublev, Solaris, The Mirror, and The Violin and the Steamroller. After first viewing, I found the picture confusing and hard to grasp. But, unlike "The Mirror," on subsequent viewing I realized that the reason that it is confusing and hard to grasp is that Tarkovsky has created a self-indulgent film based upon the amalgam of two different scripts that he had written. I don't think that he himself was clear on what he wanted to say, and I don't think he was concerned if the viewer is clear either. Perhaps this is because he knew this was his final film? Once again, though, the graphic images in the film are stunning, and his use of light, shadow, and reflections is genius.
But what makes the DVD eminently worth purchasing is the documentary "Directed by Tarkovsky" which is added as a bonus feature. The documentary shows the making of "The Sacrifice" (which does shed a little light on what he was trying to say) and it's fascinating to watch Tarkovsky at work. The documentary also includes interviews with him and his musings on life, death, and filmmaking.
Rating:
Summary: Flawed masterpiece?
Review: I love Tarkovsky and looked forward to viewing "The Sacrifice" after having seen Andrei Rublev, Solaris, The Mirror, and The Violin and the Steamroller. After first viewing, I found the picture confusing and hard to grasp. But, unlike "The Mirror," on subsequent viewing I realized that the reason that it is confusing and hard to grasp is that Tarkovsky has created a self-indulgent film based upon the amalgam of two different scripts that he had written. I don't think that he himself was clear on what he wanted to say, and I don't think he was concerned if the viewer is clear either. Perhaps this is because he knew this was his final film? Once again, though, the graphic images in the film are stunning, and his use of light, shadow, and reflections is genius.
But what makes the DVD eminently worth purchasing is the documentary "Directed by Tarkovsky" which is added as a bonus feature. The documentary shows the making of "The Sacrifice" (which does shed a little light on what he was trying to say) and it's fascinating to watch Tarkovsky at work. The documentary also includes interviews with him and his musings on life, death, and filmmaking.
Rating:
Summary: Flawed masterpiece?
Review: I love Tarkovsky and looked forward to viewing "The Sacrifice" after having seen Andrei Rublev, Solaris, The Mirror, and The Violin and the Steamroller. After first viewing, I found the picture confusing and hard to grasp. But, unlike "The Mirror," on subsequent viewing I realized that the reason that it is confusing and hard to grasp is that Tarkovsky has created a self-indulgent film based upon the amalgam of two different scripts that he had written. I don't think that he himself was clear on what he wanted to say, and I don't think he was concerned if the viewer is clear either. Perhaps this is because he knew this was his final film? Once again, though, the graphic images in the film are stunning, and his use of light, shadow, and reflections is genius.
But what makes the DVD eminently worth purchasing is the documentary "Directed by Tarkovsky" which is added as a bonus feature. The documentary shows the making of "The Sacrifice" (which does shed a little light on what he was trying to say) and it's fascinating to watch Tarkovsky at work. The documentary also includes interviews with him and his musings on life, death, and filmmaking.
Rating: 
Summary: What's left out
Review: I own this one on VHS and DVD, plus - saw the movie on the big screen when it was released back in 1986. Not going to waste your time describing the main feature - the Sacrifice. All other reviewers already did it justice. What I found astonishing was the freebee only available on DVD - the Sculpting in Time. If this DVD was sold 5 times as expensive without the featured Sacrifice - I still would have bought it just because of the added documentary! Don't get me wrong - the Sacrifice is clearly a masterpiece, there is no doubt about that! The lenghty addition, though, shows Tarkovsky in action - working with the actors and the crew. What came as a complete shock to me was that almost all of the thoroughly dogmatized, analyzed and explained "jewels of genious directing" - as one of the Figaro critics had put it, were pure improvisations! You can actually see Tarkovsky making it up (with a Swedish translator) as he went. Excellent interviews - with him and his wife (shot separately). You will definitely enjoy the great maestro screaming some extreme Russian obscenities (untranslated, of course) when the ambulance driver takes poor Erland Josephson in the wrong direction; or when the second camera power goes out while the house was burning to ashes in the very last scene - can't shoot it twice! Tarkovsky did not agree to an alternative ending and was about to proclaim the movie a failure. In the end, as it turned out, the scene was shot for the second time - the way he wanted it. The house was re-built for him. Some breath-taking last scenes shot in the hospital, on his death bed.
Making it short - don't miss out on this one - if you are a real Tarkovsky fan, of course!
Rating:
Summary: Tarkovsky's last
Review: I'm not sure exactly what constitutes 'mindless fantasy' according to Mr O'Donoghue, unless he's referring to the witch business which to the protagonist held a very real spiritual purpose and is therefore not mindless, just somewhat unfathomable. As for rejection of analysis, an idea, however 'facile' is a kind of an analysis, you can't have it both ways. Certainly Tarkovsky did not reject fantasy out of hand, seeing it as something he could extract human problems and anxieties from. He felt ordinary life was full of the fantastic, and ordinary life is depicted here. He has betrayed nothing and any comparisan to Hollywood 'product' is unwarranted, at least to me. His lead character does journey to the source, it's a spiritual journey and therefore an analysis. 'Complexity', What's the complaint? Simplicity seems to be the goal, a search for truth through parable. What you take from it depends on your sympathy towards religion, I suppose.
Tarkovsky was irritated by the Bergman comparisans. Those who did so, he opinioned, know nothing about Bergman and don't know what existentialism is. I feel my cheeks smarting.
This is not a favourite of mine, it is like an omnibus of Tarkovsky's greatest hits. The levitation scene again. The attempts to light the candle. The prostrating of oneself before a family member.
An interview Tarkovsky made to Annie Epelboin in Paris in 1986 concerning 'The Sacrifice' and the stagnant empiricism of contemporary society is one of the great speeches I ever read and I urge interested parties to seek it out if they have not already done so.
Rating:
Summary: In the beginning was the word - the search for God
Review: If you are hooked on films made by former advertising film makers or have an attention span limited to a one minute commercial, read no further. And don't buy this film. But if you yearn for the occasional silence, excepting sounds of nature, the occasional squeak of a cupboard door easing closed, the rustle of wind through leaves, the peculiar crackle of fire, then The Sacrifice may be your film. There is some music as well, but not the sounds of sweeping violins, rather the dramatic and eerie and mournful sound of a Japanese flute. The film is dedicated to the film maker's son "with hope and confidence" yet deals with the end of the world as it is under nuclear attack. Beginning and ending with the young seven year old son of the protaganist planting then watering a lone tree, the film deals with the machinations of a family, its affairs, desires, disappointments and how it reacts to the catastrophic news of nuclear war. The lingering camera movements are to me rivetting as are the use of mirrors. It is a meditative thought provoking film which I found immensely moving.
Rating:
Summary: In the beginning was the word - the search for God
Review: If you are hooked on films made by former advertising film makers or have an attention span limited to a one minute commercial, read no further. And don't buy this film. But if you yearn for the occasional silence, excepting sounds of nature, the occasional squeak of a cupboard door easing closed, the rustle of wind through leaves, the peculiar crackle of fire, then The Sacrifice may be your film. There is some music as well, but not the sounds of sweeping violins, rather the dramatic and eerie and mournful sound of a Japanese flute. The film is dedicated to the film maker's son "with hope and confidence" yet deals with the end of the world as it is under nuclear attack. Beginning and ending with the young seven year old son of the protaganist planting then watering a lone tree, the film deals with the machinations of a family, its affairs, desires, disappointments and how it reacts to the catastrophic news of nuclear war. The lingering camera movements are to me rivetting as are the use of mirrors. It is a meditative thought provoking film which I found immensely moving.
Rating:
Summary: There's only so much brilliance one can take.
Review: It's ironic how Tarkovsky is often used as the supreme benchmark of tortured artistic European depth and integrity with which to castigate the shallowness of Hollywood formulae, because this, in many ways, resembles what lazily passes for a typical Tinseltown product - a rejection of analysis and complexity in favour of mindless fantasy, facile ideas and cardboard characterisations. Even what is admirable in the film - the evocation of domestic space - was achieved with considerably more economy and power in the American films of Ophuls, Ray and Sirk. What's left are some breathtaking, if eventually wearing, sequence shots. We applaud, oh yes, but duty is never really enough.
Rating:
Summary: Thought-provoking film; great-looking DVD!
Review: Kino on Video should be proud of their work releasing Tarkovsky's THE MIRROR and THE SACRIFICE on DVD. The DVD of THE SACRIFICE looks markedly superior to any version of the film available on home video. Doing a direct comparison with the old Image laserdisc, I was struck by how much better the DVD captured the film's subtle gradations of light and color, how it revealed details in the set design which I had never noticed before. For Tarkovsky this is all-important. In addition, the DVD includes a feature-length documentary on Tarkovsky which says a great deal about his working methods as a director and his thoughts on the cinema in general. If you have any interest in Tarkovsky or in film as an art form, the DVD is recommended. This is not to say that the film itself is perfect. I strongly believe that Tarkovsky's last two films, made in Europe (the other was the Italian co-production NOSTALGHIA), are distinctly inferior to his Russian films, especially his masterpieces ANDREI RUBLEV and THE MIRROR. The same stunning imagery is there, and there are a number of truly great moments; THE SACRIFICE has two celebrated l0-minute takes--the tree-planting and house-burning scenes--which push the cinema about as far as it can go. But there is also a certain preachiness and an implicit sense that the film is Great Art, so therefore you must sit quietly and pay attention to everything it has to tell you. Many of Alexander's speeches sound suspiciously like the more didactic moments in Tarkovsky's book-length essay SCULPTING IN TIME. Since it's Tarkovsky, I'm willing to listen--when I'm in the right mood--but not without a murmur of protest. His contemporary Sergei Paradjanov managed to be playful and profound at the same time, so I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. There is an underlying fundamental lack of vitality here compared to his Russian films. (Yes, I'm aware that Tarkovsky was dying of cancer when he made the film). However, under the right conditions I've found THE SACRIFICE to be a mesmerizing experience. I do urge you to see it.
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