TIFF25 REVIEW: Sacrifice [20XX]

Rating: NR | Runtime: 103 minutes
Director(s): Romain Gavras
Writer(s): Will Arbery & Romain Gavras

This is not a normal occurrence.

The only thing better than finding a real hero to save the world is a narcissist. The former is still human and can have a change of heart. They can get scared or perhaps die heroically participating in another life-or-death scenario before the original task assigned to them. A narcissist, though? They would never in a million years consider anything close to heroism. They’ll merely fantasize about it because the potential spoils and celebrity that come with fulfilling such an obligation are something they would crave. If that delusion spirals out of control, however, they might trick themselves into doing it anyway.

This is the difference between conviction and vanity. Joan (Anya Taylor-Joy) has lived her entire life believing in her calling as steward of the “fire.” She has been indoctrinated by her family’s cult to hear the voice of a cataclysmic volcano describe its need to be satisfied by the cleansing power of death. Mike Tyler (Chris Evans), on the other hand, doesn’t even have faith in himself. A famous actor whose superficial confidence gets shattered by the loss of his father, he suddenly doesn’t know who he is let alone what he wants. So, to suddenly be given the chance to possess real purpose—no matter how insane—can’t help but be appealing.

These are the two forces pushing director Romain Gavras and co-writer Will Arbery’s Sacrifice towards its literal leap of faith. Set inside a Greek island’s marble mine at a charity event of one-percenters patting each other on the backs for profiting off their so-called altruistic desire to save the planet from mankind’s destructive might (led by a man who believes himself a God who’s discovered a way to cure global warming by pillaging the ocean floor instead as though that won’t have its own uniquely horrible impact), a radical fringe group led by Joan decides to take hostages and martyr three fated souls to Mother Nature’s wrath.

It’s youthful vigor versus experienced apathy. Impoverished yet dedicated soldiers who live only for the preservation of Earth versus the morbidly wealthy elite who care only about greed. Action versus performance—something even Mike recognizes despite his complicity to the side of evil. Unfortunately, seeing isn’t enough if your response to their ego trip is to simply conduct your own. All his theatrical outburst earns is a reprieve from witnessing Joan’s brethren’s arrival while hiding in the bathroom to wallow in his own obsolescence. And by not experiencing that violence, he has no way of knowing the applause upon his return signals his demise.

Evans is perfectly cast as the vain rube who unwittingly walks himself to the edge of true clarity. Mike is a self-made joke whose insecurities squandered whatever good will he found through his career and rendered him a meme to be laughed at and ignored. The vapidness of his existence and the filter from which he sees the world (helped by his agent, played by Sam Richardson) is about clout and branding. So much so that the idea of becoming a hero isn’t the initial draw to going along with his place in Joan’s plan. No, he just sees it as a chance for exposure. One more attempt to launch a new and improved Mike Tyler.

Because that’s all any of us are. Stories. Our pasts dictate our present, but we are ultimately the ones preserving and/or fabricating the former so that the latter proves as comfortable and successful as possible. Joan is no exception. She’s taken the warped gospel as taught by her father (John Malkovich’s Magnus) and built her entire personality around it as all zealots do. Choosing the Hero, just as her siblings must choose the King and the True Love, becomes her identity. The difference is that Mike knows his story is false so his vulnerability and fear can chip away at its permanence. Joan has never considered hers to be anything but true.

Their parallel journeys are therefore as much about a mission to prevent the apocalypse as using each other as a mirror to find truth within themselves. Sacrifice is an over-the-top satire full of laugh-out-loud sight gags (“Make Earth Cool Again”) and dialogue, but there’s also a lot of truth behind the humor. I think Gavras has one-upped reigning cinematic satirist Ruben Östlund with this task because he has his finger on the pulse of the counterculture whereas The Square and Triangle of Sadness seem to simply skewer the establishment with establishment art. Everything Gavras makes feels dangerous by comparison.

That fact is paramount here because its mythological endgame possesses zero wiggle room. If Joan has her way, three people (or more) will be dead to save everyone else. Her God complex is therefore almost as large as Vincent Cassel’s Braken—the billionaire who believes nature exists for mankind to dominate. She’s so devout to this scripture that she’s willing to kill herself to see it through. And that’s the part that most impacts Mike. Joan’s integrity is something he can only imagine. Something he can only conjure by psyching himself up for a role. That’s how he treats this whole ordeal. “Learn their language,” he says. Understand your audience.

I know I’m describing the movie’s weightier ambitions when its comedic tone will be its selling point, but that’s why Gavras and Arbery’s script is so good. They can shoehorn in a Malkovich cameo full of absurdity that in turn renders even more of what’s already known absurd and still have it become the linchpin of the whole film. Because it’s not Joan’s zealotry that inspires Mike. Nor her words of encouragement towards him. It’s her realization that her entire life might be based upon a lie and her ability to shake that doubt to stay the course anyway. Maybe it will all be for naught, but she’s come this far. Why lose faith now?