Northwest Film Forum

Andrei Tarkovsky made his final film far from his own home, on the Swedish island where his peer Ingmar Bergman lived. Indeed, Tarkovsky cast his leading man, Erland Josephson, from Bergman’s films. Anchored by his signature distance long shots and poignant silences, the film opens on a man’s birthday, as he plants a tree with his son. Soon, the peaceful quiet is interrupted by rumblings of war, and Tarkovsky’s protagonist must decide how to lead his family through the crisis. 

Roger Ebert ranked Tarkovsky alongside Bergman, Kurosawa, Ray and Bresson as the five filmmakers who "concerned themselves primarily with ultimate issues of human morality." 

“His images have a transcendental glow and a hieratic poise; alternating between contemplative distance and moral confrontation, they assert, in the most radical sense, the high cost of living—the unbearable price of earthly delights.” —Richard Brody, the New Yorker