I finally received my copy of The Sacrifice today. Being a huge Tarkovsky fan, this was easily my most anticipated release of the year so far and I couldn’t wait to compare this with the 2018 KL BD, which I haven’t watched since 2020.
After having somehow mentally conditioned myself over the years to disavow the 2018 Éclair restoration as being unbearably yellow, I must say it’s not that bad of a grade. On a properly set-up display, the grade looks fine and serves the film well. It’s not 100% naturalistic but it doesn’t corrupt that much detail either. There are way worse yellow grades from Ritrovata. I would’ve been totally fine had KL decided to put that master out in 4K SDR. The BD encode isn’t extraordinary but I’ve seen worse from them. It’s a solid release in the AV department and I’ll say right away *for people who only buy and watch BDs* they should probably keep the 2018 release and don’t bother with the new UHD combo pack as it doesn’t offer that much more than what the 2018 offers. (Everyone else don’t worry).
Why? The BD encode of the new master is inferior and sometimes quite noticeably so, particularly in a lengthy section of the film where colors have been heavily desaturated into monochrome. During these sections, the new BD is mushy and rather poorly defined with grain appearing buzzy whereas the 2018 BD remains more stable. During the rest of the film and particularly when OCN shots are involved, it’s apparent that the encoder used a low-pass filter and detail suffers noticeably. I don’t think this is that big an issue on the old BD as it appears a touch sharper and less “digital”. (But then again, I doubt that BD-only viewers in 2025 are that concerned about pixel-peeping and would probably be fine with it.
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Now finally to the new stuff, which is very exciting. The master was made in 2023 and, as already known, commissioned by the Swedish Film Institute from the original negative and a duplicate negative & a “magnetic tape” for sound. The SFI’s work is generally excellent as made evident across the Ingmar Bergman restorations and they undertook the effort in restoring the original look of the film as envisioned by Tarkovsky and his phenomenal DP, Sven Nykvist.
This is apparently from the first “proper” shot after the (Swedish) credits as colors appear less warm compared to the Éclair master. I think the main difference in colors can be boiled down to a shift in color temperature from a rather warm appearance to a clearer, more natural one without a dramatic alteration in the actual colors themselves. What I’m getting at is that the new master doesn’t drastically reinvent the film’s visuals but gently dialed back the warmth the French master evokes. It’s clear that what the SFI did is excellent and benefits the film. I wouldn’t want to go back to the other master any more now.
Image detail is excellent. The exteriors, which were likely shot on a slow stock, look especially spectacular with thin, fine grain and interiors are just as great with outstanding textures. Highlights are nicely graded. I can see where HDR might’ve given them a subtle touch of extra detail during exteriors but there’s nothing to worry about as the grade handles the highlights as gently as the rest. There’s no grain management whatsoever, which benefits the heavily stylized segment of the film I mentioned earlier in particular as a large part was most likely sourced from the duplicate negative SFI mentioned.
Kino’s encode is overall fine but struggles with the highlights. As grain is so fine in exteriors, it’s actually not as aggressively noticeable (unlike Nostalghia) but if you look closely there’s some blocking going on. As always, thanks to the master having been given to them in SDR the encode is largely intact but for some reason, their encoding preset throttled bitrates during the monochromatic segments of the film that were scanned from the duplicate negative roughly into BD territory (~20 MB/s range). As so often, these softwares treat rather static shots with large bright or dark areas and little dithering grain as opportunities to save on valuable bits. I’m glad it’s not as dramatic in motion as it sounds but I’d bet another authoring house would squeeze out more detail here.
But that’s not all. SFI’s sound restoration also treated us with a surprise as the new 2.0 mix, which is a dual mono track according to the back cover, is wonderful and improves on the 2018 mix from L.E. Diapason.
There are scenes in the film with very distinct, piercing and surprising sounds usually reserved to blockbusters instead of films with a more subdued soundscape and these are so loud, precise and sharp in the new mix that I was worried about my soundbar. Gentle LFE is also perceptible. I hope that those who’ve seen the film know which sounds I mean but in all previous BD versions of the film I’ve seen, these sounded rather subdued and muddled. Everything else from music to dialogue and ambient sounds is crystal clear to my ears and feels almost like newly recorded. I can’t wait to see the film in full and experience the entire new mix.
Extras are the ones from the BD but Kino unfortunately didn’t carry over the booklet with excerpts from Tarkovsky’s diary and a great essay by Robert Bird. The bonus documentary, “Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky”, which KL put on a DVD in 2018, is now part of the BD together with the film and is again presented in SD.
I hope everyone enjoys their copies and supports more Tarkovsky and foreign-language cinema in 4K. We need much more like this on the format.
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