FIVE STARS FOR THE FILM, THREE FOR THIS DVD
THE SACRIFICE is a true work of art. It is probably the most beautiful film by the cinematic poet Andrey Tarkovsky. It is also the most accessible among his works: unlike his films prior to this one, the plot of THE SACRIFICE itself is quite simple and easy to catch. A retired actor- journalist-author (some kind of an intellectual superman) hero living in a beautiful sea-shore house suddenly faces the end of the world: a nuclear war. What can he do to stop it? He prays to God, he who never believed in God before, and offers himself to be the sacrifice for saving the world as he knows, a world which for the first time, he realises how much he loves it.
The plot is simple, but its implication is complex. One who believes in God and the absolute love he represents can see this as a story of miracle. An atheist can see this as all being a hallucination of a repressed old man. Tarkovsky makes the film in a way that you can interpret it in whatever way you want. But in...
Thought-provoking film; great-looking DVD!
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...
A Definite Upgrade But Still Lacking
Kino's blu-ray release of "The Sacrifice" is unquestionably a better release than all previous DVD versions. Unfortunately, it is also plagued by several forms of unnecessary manipulation by Kino. There are visible edge-enhancement halos everywhere, especially in outdoor scenes. The picture has also been egregiously bathed in excessive DNR, to where the image rarely looks filmic, but rather soft and digital. I'm ecstatic that Tarkovsky films are making their way stateside in HD, but you can't help but feel that the transfer would have been handled better by a distributor like Criterion, who knows how to restore films without such destructive tinkering.
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