I just saw this amazing movie for the first time yesterday, and like his other films that I've seen (Stalker, Andrei Rublev & Solaris) they did not dissapoint.
I was wondering, in The Sacrifice, what some of you thought about the singing in the background? for instance, when Alexander was on his way to Maria and there was this distant singing comming from somewhere?.
All of the music in this film is amazing: the Bach of course, the shakuhachi playing (Watazumido Doso Roshi I think), and the distant cries of Swedish goatherds/shepherds or similar. They all have a powerful effect on the viewer, but (Bach aside) I'll be damned if I know why. Erbaume Dich always makes me cry anyway , but in the context of this film it seems amplified threefold.
shareFrom Wikipedia:
"..and eerie traditional chants from the Swedish forests (in the old days farm girls used to call home the livestock from their forest pastures in this way)."
If you look carefully in the background of one of the shots near the very end of the film (where Maria is riding the bicycle to catch up with the ambulance next to Little Man and the tree) you can actually see a farm woman amongst her cows doing this calling/singing.
"I can't live in a world of dressed up dogs! It makes me sick!"