It is reported that Andrei Tarkovsky did not yet know he was dying of cancer as he finished his last film, The Sacrifice. Nevertheless, it is hard not to read intimations of the great Russian filmmaker’s pending mortality in this apocalyptic parable.

Tarkovsky’ protagonist, Alexander, is a journalist, former actor, and philosopher. Family and friends have gathered in a Swedish beach house to help celebrate his 60th birthday when a TV newscaster announces that global nuclear war has broken out. In 1986, many in the world thought this inevitable; here, the nuclear threat is used to explore issues of spirituality and redemption. In despair, Alexander promises God that he will give up all his worldly possessions and live in solitude if only his family can survive. Under the advice of his postman (an allegorical messenger angel), Alexander spends the night with a mysterious local woman who he believes may be a witch. In the morning, the world and his family is still there, and so Alexander attempts to fulfill his promise to God. Unanswered is whether the almighty actually intervened and turned back the clock, or if all of this — the nuclear devastation, the survival of his family, the postman and the witch — may simply be the delusions of a shattered mind.

Tarkovsky was a peer and friend of Ingmar Bergman and used many of Bergman’s favorite actors as well as his masterful cinematographer, Sven Nykvist. The film is filled with long shots and single takes which lend to the sense of spiritual isolation and ominous transformations.