The Sacrifice

The Sacrifice (Offret, 1986) is Andrei Tarkovsky's final film, and you can watch online on iFILM. Alexander, a retired actor and critic, is marking his birthday with family at a remote house on the Swedish coast when the radio announces that nuclear war has begun.

That night his whole world comes apart. A man who never believed makes a desperate vow to God: he will give up his home, his speech, his son, everything he loves, if only the disaster can be undone and morning arrive as though nothing happened. Around him are his actress wife, a mute boy known as Little Man, a doctor, and a strange servant rumored to be a witch. There is almost no plot in the usual sense. There are long, unbroken takes, silence, and conversations about faith and the price of saving the world. The closing fire, filmed in a single continuous shot, became one of cinema's legends.

Tarkovsky shot the film in Sweden while already dying, working with Sven Nykvist, Ingmar Bergman's longtime cinematographer, with Erland Josephson in the lead. It took the Grand Prix of the Jury at Cannes. This is slow, demanding cinema for viewers willing to sit with meditation rather than story, on belief and one man's responsibility for everything. Stream The Sacrifice (1986) online on iFILM.