VHS : Offret

Rating: - Thank God its over!
Don't get me wrong, I love Tarkovsky's films. He is master of imagery and lets your eye wander over the screen without cutting too soon, but I found this film boring. The basic plot involves a man's bargain with God to put the world back together after a nuclear explosion. Do we see the nuclear explosion? Don't be silly this is Tarkovsky...but I would have expected more than a few camera shakes to denote when the explosion occurs. Does the world change? Not particularly, which makes it harder to see why the protagonist would make such a bargain in the first place. The characters are unlikeable, intentionally I think, which leaves you wondering why they need to be saved in the first place. The fire at the end doesn't really equate with a life sacrifice because the main protagonist doesn't really lose anything of real consequence- he's not happy in his family life before the explosion so why would he grieve over the loss of his family?
This comes on two discs and for a moment I panicked to think the film lasted nearly four hours long. Luckily its a little over two hours but just feels fours long! Buy this DVD for the documentary- then go and watch Stalker, Solaris, Mirror and Nostaligia instead

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Rating: - Fantastic, but unsummarisable - see below...
Yet again, Tarkovsky gives us what he is best at: a deeply moving/worrying/almost spiritual plot, excellent scenery, and his famed long shots (some last up to 10 minutes, the most film that could be fitted to his cameras).

A short plot summary (purists, look away now): War breaks out in Russia, and the family which we are following reacts badly to the planes overhead and the general threatening feeling of atomic bombs. The head of the household prays that night that if only everything were to be put back to how it was the previous morning, he would give up everything. Everything... His house, his family, his small deaf/dumb child; everything.

He wakes up the next morning to find there has never been a war.

To seriously give away the plot ending, an interesting note is that when filming the last dramatic scene for the first time, not only did lots of things go wrong, but finally the camera jammed. This was a problem, since they actually burnt down the house! (No models...) So they rebuilt the house and did the shot again. That particular shot, the climax to the film, lasts around 7 minutes, and is pure genius.

I would recommend this film to anyone that likes any of Tarkovsky's other 6 films, and also to anyone that likes Kubrick's work. The tension mixed with the use of various "proper" music (eg Bach's St Matthew Passion) is breathtaking.