Synopsis
The film opens on the birthday of Alexander, an aging journalist, theater and literary critic, university lecturer on aesthetics, and former actor. He lives in a beautiful house with an actress wife (Adelaide), a teenage stepdaughter (Marta), and a "mute" young son (who is referred to as "Little Man"). Alexander and Little Man plant a tree, when Alexander's friend Otto, who also works part-time for the post office, delivers a birthday card to him. ("Many happy returns!") In the conversation, Alexander reveals that his relationship with God was "nonexistent". After Otto leaves, Adelaide and Victor, a medical doctor and a close family friend, arrive at the scene and offer to take Alexander and Little Man home on Victor's car. However, Alexander prefers to stay behind and "chats with" Little Man. In his "monologue", Alexander recounts how he and Adelaide found this beautiful house in the remote area by accident, and they fell in love with the house and surroundings at the first sight.
Back home, families and friends (Otto and Victor) gather in Alexander's beautiful house to celebrate his birthday. Their maid Maria leaves, while the nurse maid Julia stays to help with the dinner. People comment on Maria's odd appearances and behaviors. ("She scares me.") As the guests chat inside the house, where Otto reveals that he is a collector of "unexplainable but true incidences". Just when the dinner is almost ready, the rumbling noise of low flying jet fighters and a TV program announces the beginning of the Third World War, possibly a nuclear holocaust. In despair the protagonist vows to God to sacrifice all he loves ("I'll give Thee all I have, I'll give up my family, whom I love, I'll destroy my home and give up Little Man") if only this act of fate may be undone. Otto advises him to slip away and sleep with his maid Maria, whom Otto convinces him to be a witch, "in the best possible sense".
When he wakes up the next morning everything seems "normal", but whether Alexander dreamt the episode is never made explicit. Nevertheless, Alexander sets forth to give up all he loves and possesses. He tricks the family members and friends to a walk, sets the fire to his cherished house. As the group rushes back, alarmed by the fire, Alexander confesses that he sets the fire himself, running up and down furiously. Maria, who until then was not seen that morning, appears in the fire scene as Alexander tries to approach her but was restrained by others. Without an explanation, an ambulance appears in this very remote area and two paramedics chase Alexander, who "appears" to lose control of himself, and drive him off (perhaps to an institution). Maria bicycles away but stops halfway to observe Little Man watering the tree he and Alexander planted the day before. As Maria leaves the scene, the "mute" Little Man, lying at the foot of the tree, suddenly utters his only line in the entire film: "In the beginning was the Word. Why is that, Papa?" as Johann Sebastian Bach's Matthew Passion, which also opens the film, plays in the background.
This is the Synopsis according to the Cannes website:
"I wanted to show that one can resume life by restoring the union with oneself and by discovering a spiritual source. And to acquire this kind of moral autonomy, where ones ceases to consider solely the material values, where one escapes from being the subject article of experimentation between the hands of society- a way- among others- is having the capacity to offer oneself in sacrifice."
It does not confirm whether it is a quote by Tarkovsky or not.
Read more about this topic: The Sacrifice