In a journal entry from 1982, the legendary Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky described his struggle to believe:
The most important thing and the hardest is to have faith. Because if you do have faith, then everything comes true. Only it’s impossibly hard to believe sincerely. There is nothing more difficult to achieve than a passionate, sincere, quiet faith.
It is hard to be a Christian, and for so various reasons. The social pressures of a once-Christian society have all long since loosened. The collective memory of a once formidable moral bulwark has faded. The distractions of the digital age have proved more deranging than the previous excrescences of modernity. The sound of the Word blends into the din of one’s own self-talk, and carefully curated avatars become our own visions glorious as our true selves decompose in the attic and God is banished to Heaven. The holiest among us secretly wish they could face a dilemma like Maximilian Kolbe’s or Franz Jägerstätter’s—anything to force ultimate faithfulness amid the inescapable calls of secular sirens.
Tarkovsky belongs to a small collection of philosopher-theologians who have chosen the medium of film to explore the most important mysteries of reality through word and image. He is most famous for his 1966 masterpiece Andrei Rublev, a depiction of the medieval icon painter whose journey reflects the modern dilemma of how to create anything in a disenchanted world. And although Tarkovsky pronounced faith “impossible,” he did not quite mean it, as his films demonstrate. He wrote in another journal entry from 1981,
I went to St. Peter’s Square. I saw and heard the Pope’s appearance in front of the people—the crowd filled the entire square with flags, banners and placards. It’s odd that although I was surrounded by large numbers of curious people, such as foreigners and tourists, there was a unity about them which impressed me deeply. There was something natural, organic in it all. It was obvious that all these people had come here of their own free will.
On occasion, faith wins within us and among us. And when it does, it is revealed to solve a much more difficult problem than we might have imagined. As Pascal wrote,
Man’s greatness and wretchedness are so evident that the true religion must necessarily teach us that there is in man some great principle of greatness and some great principle of wretchedness.
How can man be so good and yet act so bad at the same time?
I was thinking of my own agonies and ecstasies of faith as I sat down recently to watch Tarkovksy’s last film, The Sacrifice, which is included along with Andre Rublev as one of the 45 films on the 1995 Vatican Film List. (Incidentally, I have co-authored a guidebook about the Vatican Film List, due out later this fall. I did not, however, write the chapter on The Sacrifice.)
All of Tarkovksy’s films reinforce Pascal’s point about Christianity and humanity many times over, and The Sacrifice is a particularly haunting terminus to his oeuvre. The main character, Alexander, is a former actor who has become a famous critic and teacher. He has a beautiful wife who cuckolds him, but he enjoys the pleasure of the young son she has born him in his dotage. Spiritually, Alexander is lost. Perhaps offering a contrast to the mysterious unity Tarkovsky witnessed in St. Peter’s Square, Alexander declares, “I studied philosophy, history of religion, aesthetics. And ended up putting myself in chains. Of my own free will.”
The opening credits to The Sacrifice roll to the sound of Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion as the camera focuses on details from Leonardo DaVinci’s unfinished 1481 painting, The Adoration of the Magi. In the long opening scene of the film—a ten-minute single take—Alexander and his young son “Little Man” plant a Japanese tree as he tells the story of an Orthodox monk who planted and watered a tree every day for three years until it blossomed. Alexander then says to Little Man, who is mute from a recent throat operation, that there is value for the life of the world in an individual’s engagement in some daily, unchanging ritual. It is the order, more than the substance of the activity, that he speculates may bring some good.
Suddenly the part-time postman, a clownish Nietzschean named Otto, arrives on a bicycle, asking Alexander about his relationship with God. Alexander replies, “Non-existent, I’m afraid,” to which Otto quips, “It could be worse.”
The line, “it could be worse,” has troubled my thoughts greatly since I watched the film. The words make me uneasy because although Otto is a buffoon, his observation rings true. If my relationship with God did not exist, I would be walking the tightrope of nothingness trying to avoid falling into absolute meaning, and I might soon find it a precarious place. But instead, I already belong, I know the stakes, and I mostly choose to ignore them. I give God thanks in my sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving in the Mass, but then I turn right around and yell at the children for whom I swore to God I would live in absolute gratitude if He gave me them. I tell Jesus I trust him and require his mercy as I pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, and the next minute I trust only my own impressions as I mercilessly dismiss as idiots everyone else in “traffic,” as if I myself am not slowing down someone else. My gift, like Leonardo’s painting, is disturbing, because something beautiful has been begun, only to sit unfinished. It would almost be better not to have been (re-)born.
But God is gracious, and he permits disasters—including the ultimate disaster, death—to help us realize the paradox of our greatness and wretchedness before the end. And in the routine of sin, confession, absolution, grounded in our proximity to the fullness of life with Christ in the Eucharist, the small foretaste of reality may grow to become a more substantial feast: Our daily bread. More than a few Christians have therefore faced a sudden demise instinctively uttering the Our Father. Woefully unfinished creations reach perfection in an instant.
The Sacrifice proposes a late-Cold War worst case scenario: Alexander, his wife Adelaide and stepdaughter Marta, Little Man, domestic servants, and friends are torn away from Alexander’s birthday party on a jolly Swedish summer day when airplanes suddenly zip over their heads and warheads begin to detonate. It’s the end of the world, an occasion to examine a range of reactions to impending doom. Adelaide becomes hysterical and has to be sedated by Victor, her lover and a doctor, who remains stoic. Otto philosophizes, and Alexander finds a pistol and retreats, saying the Lord’s Prayer followed by spontaneous prayers of the heart, “Lord, deliver us in this terrible time.” He asks God to protect believers, unbelievers, and those who have never thought about God, “only because they haven’t been truly miserable.”
Alexander then vows to the God he has long ignored that he will sacrifice the love of his family and his beautiful home if only God will spare the world its present destruction. Suddenly Otto appears, telling Alexander to go find the housemaid Maria, a witch, and make love to her. Amazingly, Alexander does just what Otto says, and wakes up the next morning with the world back the way it was. He proceeds to put Japanese flute music on his hi-fi, don a kimono with a yin-yang design on the back, and trick his family into going for a walk so that he can burn down the house. In fact, Tarkovksy had to build and burn down two houses to get the shot—one of the most shocking scenes in all of cinematic history—because the film jammed in the camera on the first take.
As the building burns and the family members look on in horror, Alexander runs around raving until an inexplicably present ambulance drives him away, with the sound of the roaring flames giving way to the return of St. Matthew’s Passion. Little Man speaks for the first and only time in the film as he lies beneath the freshly-planted tree he has just watered: “In the beginning was the Word. Why is that, Papa?”
The meaning of Alexander’s sacrifice is mysterious by design. If it is a straightforward conversion story of a man whose sacrifice is acceptable to God for the sake of others, how does Alexander’s adultery with a “witch” fit in? If it is a statement about the persistence (and efficacy) of paganism, a theme Tarkovsky explores in other films, including Andre Rublev, then why the exclamation point of John 1 at the very end? As in many of the greatest specimens of cinema, of which The Sacrifice is clearly one, Truth is presented as a more valuable commodity by its elusiveness. Revelation is proposed better by the complexity of the image than by the clarity of the syllogism.
To me, The Sacrifice pulls the mind of the believer back to the difficulty of faith for the sake of a steely resolve to pursue it just the same. We make our sacrifices wisely and foolishly, at times in acts of truly selfless charity and at other times as tokens of self-soothing. We might ask on the one hand, if God wanted us to burn down our houses for him, why would he bother to send his Son to sacrifice himself for us? But on the other hand, why haven’t I plucked out my eye or cut off my limb if I really desire the Kingdom of Heaven?
Christianity is hard; but the Word comes back again and again, comforting us in our distress, giving us confidence to stay the course on the narrow path, restoring us to favor when we reject our inheritance, and giving us real peace—if only in fleeting moments—of the “passionate, sincere, quiet faith” that Tarkovsky longed for.
Why is that, Papa? Only He knows.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Thank you. We are always free to believe in God by His grace with a faith relationship.
“What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies; who is to condemn? Is it Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, ‘For thy sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Not even bogus Synods.
Romans 8:31-39 🤓
Interesting- esp. in the truthful narrative about the struggles in faith .
St.Faustina with indirect Russian ( Poland related ) connections too underwent trials in the realm to reveal the marvels in a life of prayer and fidelity,faith and love ; the icon of Divine Mercy through her said to be the only one done at the request of the Lord Himself …showing the Blood and water to cleanse and heal ..and one can wonder if the KOC can undertake a mission to make same available in war torn areas.
Unsure if the devotion to the Precious Blood is lacking in Eastern / Orthodox Churches where as in our times of much evil and blood shed , Lord has chosen to draw attention to same again through a rather recent Nigerian apparition too ..
The 24 Hour Passion meditations too draw attention to have desire to unite onenself and others with The Lord on The Cross ..seeing may be the blood of iniquities and evils being replaced with The Precious Blood and New Life ..invoking Precious Blood into movie places too may not be a bad idea , since demons said to be attracted to places of evil and filth including in homes …
https://www.catholicexorcism.org/post/exorcist-diary-175-demons-from-television
Most Precious Blood of Jesus Christ , save us and the whole world .
Blessings !
If I can draw a parallel, I would mention Gianni Vattimo, the most renowned Italian philosopher-theologian known abroad, especially in the United States and Latin America, who recently passed away. He introduced and edited the Italian edition of Hans Georg Gadamer’s masterpiece, “Truth and Method.” In a collaborative work with Richard Rorty, it is stated: “Just as Western literature would be inconceivable without the Homeric poems, without Shakespeare, without Dante, so our culture as a whole would make no sense if we were to cut away Christianity from it.”
The issue of faith remains, as Tarkovsky put it out: “Only it’s impossibly hard to believe sincerely.”
In this regard, Vattimo not only states in the title of one of his books but throughout the development of his thinking a similar thought: he “believes in believing.”
The meaning can certainly be twofold. In everyday language, it may seem that when someone claims to believe in something, they are simply expressing their opinion on the matter.
What follows the first-person verb is a string of opinions waiting to be sifted through by philosophy? Or is it a profession of theological faith? And this is the crucial point.