Victim (1986)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Victim |
| Original title | Offret |
| Country of production | Sweden , Great Britain , France |
| original language | Swedish |
| Publishing year | 1986 |
| length | 149 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Andrei Tarkovsky |
| script | Andrei Tarkovsky |
| production | Katinka Farago |
| music | Swedish and Japanese folk music, motifs by Johann Sebastian Bach |
| camera | Sven Nykvist |
| cut | Andrei Tarkowski Michal Leszczylowski |
| occupation | |
| |
Sacrifice (Original title: Offret ) is a feature film by the director Andrei Tarkowski from 1986, which was made as a co-production by Sweden , Great Britain and France . It premiered at the International Film Festival in Cannes on May 9, 1986., almost two weeks after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and barely eight months before the death of the director. The German premiere was on January 8, 1987.
action
Alexander is a former actor who lives with his family on a Scandinavian island. On his birthday he plants a tree on the seashore. His six-year-old son, Jungchen, who cannot speak after a throat operation, accompanies him. Alexander tells a story to his son. This is an old monk who plants a dead tree and then ritually waters it every day until the tree is full of flowers.
The postman Otto arrives on his bike and hands Alexander a few telegrams. He philosophizes about the dwarf in Nietzsche's Zarathustra . While the birthday guests arrive and go into the house, Alexander philosophizes about the state of civilization, especially about scientific progress and the inaction of people. The celebration drags on. While the two maids prepare the meal, Alexander receives an old card from Europe as a present from Otto. Otto has a strange hobby. Like other stamp collectors, he collects strange, inexplicable, but well-documented phenomena. Alexander's wife, Adelaide, a born Englishwoman, appears unhappy that Alexander has given up his theater career.
Suddenly the sky darkens, dishes rattle, glasses tip over, the ground shakes. Those present are rigid with shock and horror. Fragments of a speech can be heard from the television: “Order and organization!”… “Everyone should stay where they are, because there is no place in Europe that is safer than where we are right now.” The television comes from. The scenery is reminiscent of the outbreak of a nuclear world war. The guest Viktor, a doctor, calms the hysterical Adelaide with an injection. The boy is in his room and is sleeping. The maid Maria has disappeared, as has Otto.
Alexander wandered about in despair. Then he prays and makes a vow: He wants to sacrifice everything that is dear to him, his family with his son, his house and also he does not want to say a word more when God makes everything go back to the morning. Otto comes back and tells Alexander to go to Maria's house. He must sleep with her so that the world will be saved. Alexander is on his way. He and Maria do their duty in silence. When Alexander wakes up at home the next morning, everything seems to be as it was. It remains unclear whether Alexander just dreamed all the events. After breakfast, his wife and the guests go for a walk. Alexander stays at home, fulfills his vows and sets fire to his house. Paramedics later take him away in the presence of his family. Jungchen speaks for the first time: “In the beginning there was the word. Why, papa? "
background
The outdoor shots were taken on the Swedish island of Gotland . The house that Alexander set on fire in the film had to be rebuilt during filming and burned down a second time. A camera defect led to the loss of essential parts of this plan sequence during the first shoot. Tarkovsky insisted on not cutting the elementary scene together from the little material that had existed from the first fire. The scene was too important for him.
The opening and closing credits are musically accompanied by “Mercy” from the St. Matthew Passion (BWV 244, created 1727 or 1729) by Johann Sebastian Bach ( Wolfgang Gönnenwein / Julia Hamari). In the opening credits the camera lingers over the early unfinished work Leonardo da Vinci's Adoration of the Magi of the Orient (from 1481). The singing technique that can be heard from time to time in the film by a female voice is called Kulning .
The victim was the last film by Andrei Tarkowski, who died on December 29, 1986. He dedicated it to his son "with hope and trust". Leading actor Erland Josephson processed the shooting with Tarkowski in the radio play A Night in the Swedish Summer .
Reviews
The filmdienst designated victims as "[e] ine words and images formidable poetic vision that the materialism of the world in a bid to sacrifice one of spiritual search for meaning filled faces counter-world of faith. In images of great beauty and enigmatic symbolism, a combination of poetic film language and philosophical-religious discourse succeeds. "
Awards
At the 1986 Cannes International Film Festival , the film won the FIPRESCI Prize, the Ecumenical Jury Prize and the Grand Jury Prize. A special prize also went to cinematographer Sven Nykvist. In the same year, Tarkowski's film was awarded the main prize, the Golden Ear, at the Semana Internacional de Cine de Valladolid . At the British Academy Film Awards in 1988, sacrifice was named best foreign language film .
In 1995 the film was included in the Vatican 's film list, which comprises a total of 45 films that are particularly recommended from the perspective of the Holy See.
Web links
- Victims in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Location of the house on Google Maps, traces of the shooting can no longer be found there.
- Gino Moliterno: Zarathustra's gift in Tarkovsky's “The sacrifice” in Screening the Past , No. 12, March 2001. (English)
- Klaus Kreimeier: Victims on filmzentrale.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ See golkonda-verlag.de
- ↑ Sacrifice. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .