T Wade Zinn (twzinn)

Unparalleled even in Sacrifice is the mystic path that Tarkovsky, as Russian Orthodox believer, presents in two scenes of poetic power and intensity that I have not yet found replicated in world cinema. Here you see Tarkovsky finding spiritual center, experiencing fractured identity, and embracing his path - in Sacrifice I found more Tarkovsky the magician, in a kind of nostalgic revolt, whereas here I see him more in the Now, strangely enough given the title . . .

This game we call the human life, as incest - there is something primal in the symbology of this work, and yet the obsessive-compulsive madness of Quayesque rigor renders it wooden and insipid, repetitive - it is in this repetition that the actors in this human drama find their shells and live them out, not without rupture and the odd necrophilic moment when life as love must needs implode on itself in grey ecstacy. Chilling and inspired. It tasted like chalk.