More Icons, Tarkovsky

 And from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Sacrifice, the lead character having received the book he is leafing through as a present: 

Maybe it would be better if for this short clip had cut before the other character complains about his day, but it is an interesting juxtaposition of the divine world into which he has been glimpsing, and now straight back to the all too human world of self-absorption and its neurosis! To add, that cut to the room does show the extraordinary eye, or visual and truth sense of Tarkovsky himself, “like a prayer” as the character has just said when watching the icons. The film though I don’t think is balanced correctly, and while possessed of slices of deep genius, is also at times is a pretty tedious slog, especially when too much attention is given to the worlds of those characters in it who have no inner movement towards mystery and holiness, but instead are happily, or of course ultimately unhappily, mired in that self-absorption.