The film
opens on the birthday of Alexander (Erland Josephson),
an actor who gave up the stage to work as a journalist, critic, and lecturer on
aesthetics. He lives in a beautiful house with his actress wife Adelaide (Susan Fleetwood),
stepdaughter Marta (Filippa Franzén), and young son, "Little Man",
who is temporarily mute due to a throat operation. Alexander and Little Man
plant a tree by the seaside, when Alexander's friend Otto, a part-time postman,
delivers a birthday card to him. When Otto asks,
Alexander mentions that his relationship with God is "nonexistent".
After Otto leaves, Adelaide and Victor, a medical doctor and a close family
friend who performed Little Man's operation, arrive at the scene and offer to
take Alexander and Little Man home in Victor's car. However, Alexander prefers
to stay behind and talk to his son. In his monologue, Alexander first recounts
how he and Adelaide found this lovely house near the sea by accident, and how
they fell in love with the house and surroundings, but then enters a bitter
tirade against the state of modern man. As Tarkovsky wrote, Alexander is weary
of "the pressures of change, the discord in his family, and his
instinctive sense of the threat posed by the relentless march of
technology"; in fact, he has "grown to hate the emptiness of human
speech".
The family, as well as Victor and
Otto, gather at Alexander's house for the celebration. Their maid Maria leaves,
while nurse-maid Julia stays to help with the dinner. People comment on Maria's
odd appearances and behavior. The guests chat inside the house, where Otto
reveals that he is a student of paranormal phenomena, a collector of
"inexplicable but true incidences." Just when the dinner is almost
ready, the rumbling noise of low-flying jet fighters interrupts them, and soon
after, as Alexander enters, a news program announces the beginning of what
appears to be all-out war, and possibly nuclear
holocaust. In despair, he vows to God to sacrifice all he loves, even
Little Man, if this may be undone. Otto advises him to slip away and lie with
Maria, who Otto convinces him is a witch, "in the best possible sense".
Alexander takes his gun, leaves a note in his room, escapes the house, and
rides his bike to where she is staying. She is bewildered when he makes his
advances, but when he puts his gun to his temple ("Don't kill us,
Maria"), at which point the jet-fighters' rumblings return, she soothes
him and they consummate while floating above her bed, though Alexander's
reaction is ambiguous.
When he awakes the next morning, in
his own bed, everything seems normal. Nevertheless, Alexander sets forth to give
up all he loves and possesses. He tricks the family members and friends into
going for a walk, and sets fire to their house when they are away. As the group
rushes back, alarmed by the fire, Alexander confesses that he set the fire
himself, and furiously runs around. Maria, who until then was not seen that
morning, appears in the fire scene; Alexander tries to approach her, but is
restrained by others. Without explanation, an ambulance appears in the area,
and two paramedics chase Alexander, who appears to have lost control of
himself, and drive off with him. Maria begins to bicycle away, but stops
halfway to observe Little Man watering the tree he and Alexander planted the
day before.[n 1] As
Maria leaves the scene, the "mute" Little Man, lying at the foot of
the tree, speaks his only line, which quotes the opening Gospel of John:
"In the beginning was the Word. Why is that, Papa?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacrifice
