Just a few thoughts on Tarkovsky’s Offret.

I’d have to see it again to complete the thoughts, but I’d

still like to pen a few ideas. I see the film, in certain respects, as a homage to, and reaction against,
Bergman’s films. The texture and settings are very Bergman-like as are also the themes:
existentialism, an aloof and distant God that does not care for mankind, man bringing man pain
and death, etc. All of this is highly enhanced by the fact that it is shot on a location where several
Bergman films were shot (and certain particular places that appear in those films are here
prominently displayed), and that it features two of Bergman’s favorite actors to work with.
However, the film’s conclusions on the main topics are entirely different to those of Bergman’s.
After all, the miracle is performed and humanity is saved; that is, there is a God, and he’s listening
and caring for us; we just need to know how to talk and communicate with him; an honest plead
and sacrifice must be performed; we need to give something in return for what we ask (all of this
notions are quite prominent in most of Tarkovsky’s films, particularly in Solyaris). And here I think
is where the “criticism” lies. Halfway through the film, Erland Josephson’s character begs
forgiveness to God for those that don’t believe in Him “because they haven’t suffered enough”. I
see this non-believers as being Bergman’s characters, and possibly Bergman himself, whose
suffering, in Tarkovsky’s view, wouldn’t be “honest”, but the result of the idleness of thought and
ennui typical of intellectual, emotionally illiterate higher middle class, a class most of Bergman’s
characters belong to. Therefore, their inability to find God would be the result of their inability to
feel an actual, deep suffering, and of their unwillingness to give their very selves to the task. In
Offret Josephson’s character appears at first as one of these frivolous intellectuals, and is in fact
quite similar to most of the actor’s characters in Bergman’s films, but towards the middle point of
the film, in the scene of his prayer to God, a change is operated in him, and he lifts to God an
honest plead driven by true suffering. He also states his willingness to sacrifice, as a sign of actual
surrendering into God’s hands, all that belongs to his station in life as one of this well-to-do,
frivolous intellectuals. And in this sense he is very Christ-like, since he accepts to sacrifice himself
to save mankind, and receives in return only the treatment given to an insane man. In the
beginning of the film, he claims that minor changes in a man’s life can have an enormous and
positive effect in society as a whole. But after he hears about the pending doom on mankind’s
immediate fate, he seems to understand that it is actually not a minor change but an enormous
sacrifice that will bring such an effect on the world. And perhaps he is shown as the only one, or
one of the very few, capable of understanding this, the last truly good man on earth..