| Has some VERY effective moments |
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| written by RTonucci2 |
August 27, 2011 - 4:42 PM PDT |
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1 out of 1 members found this review helpful
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Some parts are maddeningly static, yet there are moments that have stuck with me even years later. If you're into art films and are adventurous, you might want to give it a try. I read good things about this film in a piece by David Sterritt, in case your tastes coincide with his. Here's a synopsis by Sterritt:
Apocalypse is in the air as the residents of a poor Hungarian town cope with their unhappy lives, engage in petty disputes, and await the arrival of an enigmatic prince who travels with a wandering circus and may have a redeeming message to reveal. Tarr wants to stir the imagination and awaken the conscience of his audience rather than divert us with easy entertainment, so be ready for another of his dense, meditative parables filmed in long, slow-moving shots. This is as challenging as movies come, alluding to everything from philosopher Thomas Hobbes to the history of Western music. But compared with Tarr's legendary "Sátantángo," which clocks in at seven hours, it's almost a quickie. |
| Tarring Bela |
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| written by talltale |
April 10, 2006 - 7:13 AM PDT |
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5 out of 6 members found this review helpful
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My first experience with the films of Bela Tarr, WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES, may be enough to make it my last. (I know, I know: you should always give a filmmaker a second chance. So I will. Sometime down the road.) I would guess that this Hungarian came of age, moviewise, during the 60s, as there is a definite "60s art film" sensibility at work: heavy symbolism; willful withholding of normal dialog; and long tracking shots, during which you can look and look and still not find all that much to see. In fact, you could look away from the screen for quite some time, perhaps get involved reading "War and Peace" (the condensed version, of course), come back the movie and not have missed much at all.
Initially, there is a hypnotic effect to the camera's movement, and the black and white cinematography is often rich and beautiful. But I found no ideas here--eastern Europe's proclivity to violence, the need of a populace to look for a Savior (and the concurrent willingness of the power-hungry to step up to the plate), how easily we can become an informer, child-rearing no-nos, the attraction of firearms and a new harmonic scale--that are handled in any truly profound or interesting manner. The initial scene is rather enchanting: the lead character, a hapless halfwit who doubles as our tour guide, arranges some of the denizens of a later night tavern into the short version of our solar system. From this beginning, you might expect something more. But no.
I realize that I am "dissing" a major light of modern cinema, and that I probably sound like some Rex Reed cretin-clone. So I'll try Tarr again. Who knows: I came late to Bresson, too. |
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