The Sacrifice 1986

Mondays lesson introduced Andrey Tarkovskiy another Russian Director who is known in the film world for his use of long takes (often using a whole film reel), going against 'regular' film rules, such as breaking continuity and having actors look directly at the camera.
The Sacrifice was an interesting watch, one which gave the audience a choice of ending, was Alexander mad, or did he really change the world by sleeping with his servant? Its up to us to decide.
What got me down about this film was how long Alexander would talk for, but then whats interesting about this is that during his long monolougs you tend to go off into your own head and imagine what he's talking about, whereas in the film itself, its just a long take of Alexander talking. After the film, David told us that quite often people will look back on the film and remember scenes that are not actually in the film, but have been made up, for instance, Alex tells a story about how he transforms his mothers garden, what is shown is just his face, but what is remembered is the imagery he describes. This is very interesting, was this Tarkovskiys intention? Or something that happened. And was it because the monolog was extremely good, or just because, in my case, I got a little bit bored and had to get lost in my own head rather than give my full attention to the film.
The style of the film itself was extremely intricate, mainly set in the house, built for the film to the nearest detail made the film lovely to watch, the trees, the fields, the use of art for me made the film quite delicate. And then to see the whole house be burnt to the ground, after getting to know it well was unsettling. It made us wonder if he really needed to do it, or if he really was just a mad man.
Reading about the film after watching it made me realise what hard work went into shooting the film, the burning house apparently failed the first take and the camera ran out of reel. Having to rebuild and reshoot that whole scene must have taken some hardship from the cast and crew.

After growing up with blockbuster films and last term getting to know whats 'normal' and 'right' in the film world this film has somewhat muddled me, but I look forward to seeing move of Tarkovskiys work and some like it and in future making my own projects and being able to 'break' certain con formative rules.