In March 1982, Tarkovsky wrote in his journal that he considered this ending "weak", as the happy ending was unchallenged. but when Solonitsyn died from cancer in 1982, the director rewrote the screenplay into what became The Sacrifice and also filmed Nostalghia with Oleg Yankovsky as the lead.
Tarkovsky considered The Sacrifice different from his earlier films because, while his recent films had been "impressionistic in structure", in this case he not only "aimed...to develop [its] episodes in the light of my own experience and of the rules of dramatic structure", but also to "[build] the picture into a poetic whole in which all the episodes were harmoniously linked", and because of this, it "took on the form of a poetic parable". Although he would not have a major part in a Bergman film until 1968's Hour of the Wolf, he would become the most frequent male actor in the director's films from that point forward; Max von Sydow's final Bergman collaboration was 1971's The Touch, and Gunnar Björnstrand only had a few appearances after Shame before his death in 1986.|group="n" and whom Tarkovsky had directed in Nostalghia. Cinematographer Sven Nykvist, a friend of Josephson and frequent collaborator with Bergman, was asked to join the production. Despite a contemporaneous offer to shoot Sydney Pollack's Out of Africa, Nykvist later said it was "not a difficult choice", and like Josephson, he became a co-producer when he invested his fees back into the film. Production designer Anna Asp, who worked on Bergman's Autumn Sonata and After the Rehearsal and had won an Academy Award for Fanny and Alexander, also joined the project, as well as Daniel Bergman, one of Ingmar's children, who worked as a camera assistant. Many critics commented on The Sacrifice in the context of Bergman's work.
Filming
While often erroneously claimed to have been shot on Fårö, The Sacrifice was actually filmed at Närsholmen on the nearby island of Gotland; the Swedish military denied Tarkovsky access to Fårö.
Alexander's house, built for the production, was to be burned for the climactic scene, in which Alexander burns it and his possessions. The shot was very difficult to achieve, and the first failed attempt was, according to Tarkovsky, the only problem during shooting. Despite Nykvist's protest, only one camera was used, and while shooting the burning house, the camera jammed and the footage was thus ruined.
Music
The film opens and closes with the aria "Erbarme dich, mein Gott" ("Have mercy, my God") from Johann Sebastian Bach's St Matthew Passion. The soundtrack also features shakuhachi recordings by Watazumi Doso.
Post-production
Tarkovsky and Nykvist performed significant amounts of color reduction on select scenes. According to Nykvist, almost 60% of the color was removed from them.