Bela Tarr's "Werckmeister Harmonies" - Intensely, deviantly poetic - Victor Khomenko

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Bela Tarr's "Werckmeister Harmonies" - Intensely, deviantly poetic

This is not an easy to watch film, and those of us who found the fifteen minutes of flying through the Tokyo tunnels (Tarkovsky's Solaris) boring will find even more to complain about here... as Bela Tarr surely takes his time and lets the heroes speak silently, by apparently doing what they do in normal life... and if it takes a guy ten minutes to cross that town square, then you can be absolutely sure it will be ten minutes of screen time. And amazingly there will be something during those long ten minutes that you will enjoy and remember... such is the power of Bela's cinematography.

Being an allegory, the story readily lends itself to multitude of interpretations, and one will be able to find a myriad of images, thoughts, philosophy under the austere surface, driven by incredibly vivid images (all shot in black and white), the slow deliberate pace, and mood so thick in its unpleasant reality you will be wishing it was over long before the credits begin to roll... and yet you will continue to watch and enjoy it, in an almost masochistic way.
One disturbing scene will follow the other, that parade finally culminating in the almost unbearable scene of a mob destroying the hospital with all its occupants... rarely one sees such a poignant presentation of a totally pointless and senseless violence - perhaps not since the Clockwork Orange... but if Kubrick's work was just too surreal to be taken literally, Tarr's rendition is much stronger because it is so much closer to reality, hence its striking effect.
That long scene alone is worth all the trouble of renting and watching this uneasy masterpiece.

This is the third Tarr's film that we had pleasure of seeing recently. The first one - The Prefab People - is a masterpiece in its own right, although on a much smaller, interior space scale. The second film - The Outsider - I could live without. I suppose some would find it a poignant study of an interesting character... and perhaps it was just my mood at the time, but it didn't go down well, even though some of its moments are still with me.

Perhaps it is a shame Bela Tarr has not done more films than he has done... the world would have been a richer place, but then... perhaps he would not had been able to maintain the level of intensity one sees in his works. The "Harmonies" apparently took four years... very few directors (other than Kubrick) take that long.

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Topic - Bela Tarr's "Werckmeister Harmonies" - Intensely, deviantly poetic - Victor Khomenko 06:45:24 08/18/06 (0)

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