Béla Tarr told them to leave.
Or; there are more naked old men in the hospital.
It’s a film…
You mean they decided to watch a film? ;)
“It’s a film…”
So from now on we are ignoring flaws of the films and pretty big ones for that matter because, uh, they are films?
One of the most beautifully moving scenes in the film (and cinema in general) and your getting picky about the filminess of it Jesus Christ man! I couldn’t see Mikhail Vig playing the music either and how come the people didn’t realise there was a camera man following them about?! rolls eyes
Yeah, I thought it was pretty damn amazing the first time round but this time it just sounded cheesy to me. It’s a great film in any case.
What’s cheesy about it? Tarr’s staging techniques probably don’t allow him to offer a clear response to any possible question, but what matters most is the harmony of movement and sound. This seems to me a clear case of over-analyzing a scene at the expense of no longer enjoying it for what it is.
Populating the frame with 10x more depressed peoples in favor of emotionally provoking the audience. Seems like one of those manipulative tricks Hollywood usually applies to me. It makes emotional sense but not logical one. Not that I always demand “logic” but here this just seemed like a trick to me.
I don’t think I’m overanalyzing much. This is s every bit as obvious as the “Rosebud” thing of Citizen Kane.
Does creating emotional scenes mean to manipulate an audience? Should cinema appeal to the intellect rather than arise feelings? Not sure about that.
“It’s important that people feel a film rather than understand it.” (Robert Bresson)
“Does creating emotional scenes mean to manipulate an audience?”
Hell no.
But you know, there’s a reason that people use the term “overtly melodramatic” for describing films/sequences sometimes – I’m sure people in these parts dismiss many movies because of this issue all the time – and I think the second part of the hospital raid scene qualifies as that.
Sorry, I was just looking for … I don’t know what is the correct word … theories for what happened here, like those people made for Citizen Kane and lots of them were pretty interesting.
Again I think this is a great film. It is a film and a half, I think. The first film is its first sequence. Everything that comes after it is the “half” part, mirroring half of what the first sequence depicted and leaving the other “hopeful” half to the viewer suggesting that he should complete it himself. Werckmeister is one of the few films that understands revolution leaders are nothing without the people whom they “control.” They aren’t necessarily superheroes/supervillains who single handedly drive their followers toward victory or doom. Convincing beautiful words and significant motives (with cherry on top) are not enough for doing that. They are just some people who emerge only and only during a state of social unrest. It’s the mass conscious who control the mass. People lead themselves, sometimes to hell and sometimes to glory. Simple point, eh? 95% of films don’t know that. This was only the political part. Obviously the film is phenomenal in many other ways as well.
All right, that sounds reasonable. One could obviously make up the wildest theories in regards to what else happened in the hospital, but whatever is not suggested in the film doesn’t exist, it would thus be unscholarly invention rather than criticism. The priorities of this scene can apparently be found in cinematic staging, and since it would have been impossible to capture the reactions of all men, Tarr decided to set explanations aside in order to maintain an uninterrupted shot. I think that a violation of his style would have been a more serious flaw, and can therefore easily overlook this narrative omission which is of no particular importance in order to grasp the film as a whole. I don’t quite agree with the notion of a film and a half, but that’s something each viewer can decide for him/herself.
Oh wait, so you think some unexplained events had happened to the others as well which was not shown to us and apart from those few in that room, their retreat was not necessary related to the naked old man? Now that’s something that fits with the surreal atmosphere of the film and is totally in the line with what came before or after the hospital raid, and it doesn’t seem cheesy at all now. Actually it looks even more mysterious. I think I get it now. Thanks, really!
My first thread in these forums and I got something out of it. This usually doesn’t happen with the other websites
damn, grammatical errors again. [sad]
Since it was the group of mob leaders that came across the old man, I assumed that everyone was following their lead by leaving. Also, I agree that Bresson (at least in his late period) probably would have shook his head at the “manipulative” score usage; but that doesn’t detract from the fact that Vig Mihály wrote an absolutely beautiful score. Regardless, the first scene and this scene are probably my two favorite long take scenes. Absolutely brilliant staging.
Instead of saying, “Because they didn’t see him the film is wrong” the proper way of approaching such a thing is, “Because they didn’t see him it must not have been a purely visual cause that precipitated the effect”. I felt that the film was extremely mystical, that there was much occurring beyond the realms of ‘real world behavior’. As such, nothing in that scene violated anything that did not seem to me to have already been ‘violated’, and thus it made sense within the boundaries of what had already been established as not defying the laws of the film’s universe – which is to say that if the film had not yet established this possibility then this particular occurrence in the film would have established the possibility, because that’s how fiction works: whatever is true in the film is true in the film, period. References to other things or even other parts of the film itself are irrelevant except insofar as understanding the film’s cohesiveness or lackthereof (and a lack of cohesiveness is often a very positive and interesting element).
One could (and someone probably should) write a book about walking in Tarr’s films.
What causes the to all stop what they’re doing and walk out of the hospital en mass? Harmonics. "Everywhere is an inpeneratable darkness . . . we only experience general motion . . . and at first we don’t notice the events we are witnessing . . . "
Instead of saying, “Because they didn’t see him the film is wrong” the proper way of approaching such a thing is, “Because they didn’t see him it must not have been a purely visual cause that precipitated the effect”. I felt that the film was extremely mystical, that there was much occurring beyond the realms of ‘real world behavior’. As such, nothing in that scene violated anything that did not seem to me to have already been ‘violated’, and thus it made sense within the boundaries of what had already been established as not defying the laws of the film’s universe – which is to say that if the film had not yet established this possibility then this particular occurrence in the film would have established the possibility, because that’s how fiction works: whatever is true in the film is true in the film, period. References to other things or even other parts of the film itself are irrelevant except insofar as understanding the film’s cohesiveness or lackthereof (and a lack of cohesiveness is often a very positive and interesting element).
Yes, I agree. At first I thought it was only the old man who caused them to stop. Now I believe other unexplained forces were at work as well.
The G
mild spoilers Why did ten millions of angry-humans/depressed-zombies come out of the hospital simultaneously while actually only a handful of them were in the room where they could have seen the influential naked old man? In the shot below the people on the left have just encountered “the man” two seconds ago and are so fucking depressed and shit and are leaving out. Great, but where are the dudes on the right coming from? Surely they couldn’t have seen these events through the walls. Am I missing something here or there’s really something wrong with this? (which is pretty much the film’s climax and its final 30 minutes are based on this and the fact that those people are not there anymore)