The Sacrifice

This one just didn't come off.This is like trying to do free-verse in film.There is a sense of unearned transcendence with turgid egocentricity at it's core.Ok the man doesn't do narrative.Ok he despises plot.How else otherwise are we going to believe in vision than through the dynamic intermeshing of people,events and character.We know he's a poet,we know he's a visionary but just because he steps in the footsteps of a genius(Bergman) on the great man's island using some of his actor's and cameramen doesn't mean to say you've done a masterpiece.I didn't believe in anybody in this film.The emotions were all pseudo-intellectual,wobbly "words,words,words".A postman mentions Neitsche to the retired actor on his birthday and we get a lot of cod philosophising.The family home looks like the left-over from a Checkov play but without the humour ,realism,dialogue and depth.So a house gets burned down as part of this actor's sacrifice to God to ward off nuclear holocaust. Part of the trouble for me was a poor,underwritten script so there was no tension,interplay nor truthfulness.I have enjoyed two of his films,Solaris and Andrei Rublev.That was because the director successfully integrated his vision in the material realization of his story in each case.Here we get wild,woolly,windy,vapid nonsense:there is no emotional reality,we have not been induced into the right state of mind to receive the subject.