Giving before death: 'The Sacrifice' (1986)

With Tarkovsky's last film, I look at my fear of death and what to do with it.

The Sacrifice (Offret) (1986), dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, Sweden

Last year, Dan and I ate too much of an edible at the new Super Mario Bros. Movie with our friends and I got so scared that we had to leave. When we had both realized that we thought we were going to die, we laid in bed together with our cat and hugged. Dan fears dying maybe even more than I do and he broke my heart with sudden surges of fear that shook his whole body. We cried and I thought that I should call my mom. The only thing to stop me from believing that I would die was convincing myself that I had already died and that the afterlife was here. I had passed seamlessly from life to death; it surprised me how painless the trip was, more subtle than going into another room, more like moving to a new thought. And what a relief that I could still experience this life after it had ended, in bed with my two greatest loves, Dan and Radish, floating in sheets with a porthole window onto the neighborhood in love for all time.

It sounds silly because it was just weed and we had to leave the Mario movie of all things, but I haven’t recovered from this. I am much more afraid to die now than I ever have been. I think about it every day and its endless mystery stops me from finding hope in the experience of love after death. When Dan, Radish, and I touched the afterlife, we did it together—I have never felt closer to another person—and I fear that when I do die, for real, that I will die alone.

Last week I walked home from work through the neighborhood’s timid backstage, listening to one of the songs on Beyoncé’s new album, and I imagined some shadow surging out and stabbing me to death. I would die with “II Hands II Heaven” in my ears. Who else would know that feeling? No feeling is unique, but might this one be? Would I be truly, existentially alone?

When Adelaide (Susan Fleetwood) hears that a nuclear war will likely begin soon, she collapses in Victor’s (Sven Wollter) arms and wails because she will die alone. This is a sublime terror, face to face with God: this fear throws her out of the fabric of human spiritual life; structuring concepts like home, time, and others dissolve from meaning; and the purity of the unknowable, extinguishing, blasts a force that rips her from her skin. “I can’t bear it! I can’t bear it anymore…” She careens through the living room and Victor has to give her a sedative.

I don’t think about the end of the world as often as I think about dying in other ways, except when I watch films like The Sacrifice. Yesterday my coworker mentioned that Israel attacked the Iranian embassy in Syria and at once I imagined a missile striking the street outside, obliterating me, him, and all my friends while Dan watched on helplessly from Boston. The genocide in Gaza has made this worse: people are being obliterated like this. If everyone lives in the world differently, every death is the end of the world. How could I not cry like Adelaide? This fear has no end because it is a condition of living.

Her husband Alexander (Erland Josephson) gave up acting because he struggled to give himself over to a character:

For some reason, I started feeling embarrassed on stage. I was ashamed to impersonate someone else, to play another’s emotions. But worst of all, I was ashamed of being honest on stage… What I mean is that an actor’s identity dissolves in his roles. I didn’t want my ego dissolved. There was something in it that struck me as sinful, something feminine and weak.

“Ah, feminine!” says Adelaide. “So that’s what’s sinful.”

His family asleep, exhausted by the torment of death, Alexander promises to God that he will give up everything if He would spare them destruction. Later he whispers with his friend, the postman Otto (Allan Edwall), about the witch Maria (Guðrún Gísladóttir) who can save their lives if Alexander sleeps with her. He glides around the room in a shawl while Otto drinks a precious cognac. They settle on the floor; Otto’s oak lips and the old maid, two friends plotting escape and breathing their love in extinction. Feminine and sinful? Alexander goes to Maria’s house, tells her the story of his mother’s garden, and sobs. His weakness is precious and honest, his femininity aware, and his ego given up.

I think it’s time to give up this fear, too. I have invested too much in it. Every day that I mourn this life which hasn’t ended yet, I burn it out. I will have nothing left to mourn when the time comes.

But where do I give the fear? To God or to a witch, like Alexander? I can’t banish it.¹ Who can I give it to? Or do I hold it? Embrace it as a part of being? Work to stop thinking? Think some more? Pity me, my God! When Adelaide screams and trashes in Victor’s arms she calls his name. Who would be so afraid to die with another person if she didn’t think she was really dying alone? Can she give Victor the fear? He already has his own. Can he give it back to her?

Alexander burns down his house to fulfill his promise to God and an ambulance carts him away. His son, mute Little Man (Tommy Kjellqvist), waters a dead tree because his father told him that, with enough time and care, it would one day sprout leaves again. I fear losing above all: what sights, what feelings, what love will leave the world with me? When I go drinking with Georgia I think of the Irish song that says you can’t take your money with you to the grave, so spend it drinking with your friends. I can’t take anything with me. These sights? Give them away. Feelings? Give them away. Love? Give it away! Myself? Give him away! I hope I’m doing that now, in this blog.

I don’t miss my loved ones for what they kept to themselves, but for what they brought into the world. I give you this piece of myself as an offering so that when I die, hopefully many, many years from now, there is nothing left to give and much to be celebrated.

See other films from: 1980s | Sweden

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Cross Dissolve is my blog about film, how it makes me feel, and how I see it reappear in my life—how movies and living dissolve into one another. Please subscribe if you enjoyed today’s entry. Thank you for reading!

Love, Tyler

1. Nor, I think, do I want to, because every day that I fear for my life reminds me that I don’t want to lose it, despite the fear of its loss that is a part of its mystery.