Yes, the movie is an odd one. However, it is the only one I have actually sat through. I think it is the intro sceene. Holy Buckets of joy, the best intro to a film ever. Anyhow, before I ramble too much. I was a bit taken aback by the literally crazy sceen in the hospital, but that does not matter to me personally. I love the intro. I love the whale, I love the fantastic diatribe about european music theory being flawed (fantastic and true)
I used to think HUKKLE was such a fantastic film, but Tarr beat it out of the water.
wow. this was of no help, and i’m sure typo-riddled.
Personally, Tarr’s sheer, slow-it-down-and force-you-pay-attention style works very well here.
It brings a great, touching beauty to scenes where the young man helps the professor to bed. You just watch and watch, and see every little loving gesture and the effort of what he does, much as if you were there doing it yourself. It’s as if the universe has stopped for this one moment, of one man’s goodness towards another.
The opening bar scene is like a precursor to the whale. Here the drunks are being asked to replicate not just a world but an entire solar system, of which they have no knowledge. They dance amusingly, with a sense of agreeing to this mad request even if they don’t know why. Yet it is still like a form of admission for them. By participating they are perhaps learning, and perhaps on some level they know.
The whale later becomes the physical manifestation of that which they don’t know, but for which they are willing to pay money to see more of, even if it still doesn’t do more than raise them above some of the increasingly gossiping villagers who are getting to the point of saying the world is about to end.
I think the walking to the hospital/destruction/shameful retreat is amazing. The single, shivering thin man in the bathroom stops everything short, and you can put any universal victim in his place. They stop and realize the reality of what they have done through the increasingly crazy talk in the village. The eternal mob in search of a target.
A few thoughts from me; I was inspired by your post and I am only getting into Tarr myself. I hope some of this makes sense.
When I saw this in the theater, a couple arrived in the audience the very moment the first scene ended. I kept wondering how I’d respond if they’d leaned over to whisper, “Did we miss anything?”
TOM: Great post. Your closing line made me laugh out loud.
CLAUS: I completely agree with everything you wrote, and I appreciated all those individual things as I watched it (although I hadn’t quite connected the whale to the solar system dance – have to think about that one). But I still haven’t been able to wrap my mind around how all these wonderful and disparate elements fully integrate and synthesize into the ultimate meaning(s) of the film.
BEN: Very funny. The same exact thing could be said of the opening of SATANTANGO.
This is a great and complex film, which is neither easy to understand or analyze. After one watching, I was dazed, confused, but appreciative of Tarr’s vision. I loved the fact that Tarr chose to film in black and white – his entire film has the look of one of those avant-garde Eastern-European 60s films – like Ashes & Diamonds, though more resembling in content the colour Daisies. I liked this retro feel, the symbolism (whale, the prince, etc.), and the jumbled chaos in scene after scene.
It is a very difficult film to figure out. I would need to know more of Hungarian politics, history, and film culture to fully explore its meaning. Obviously, Tarr is making a political as well as metaphysical argument here. The film hovers, using a very dark comedy indeed, between good and evil. Starting with the beautiful opening sequence, where the drunken revellers enact a solar eclipse – the bringing of dark to the world – to the figure of the dark whale (ie, leviathan, with the Janos character being analogous to Jonah and the whale) and the dark Prince (the devil or man’s evil tendencies). The town, never a very nice place to begin with, where everyone is betraying everyone else, and even the kids are badly behaved, disintegrates into chaos. The insane musicologist (or is he the only one who sees clearly – a typical Tarr ruse), ‘predicts’ the chaos with his theory that all musical language is out of sync because of an original mis-representation from the old theorist Werckmeister (someone only Tarr would have heard of). This represents the stain, or original sin, that now condemns the town to ‘discordant’ behaviour as represented by the musicologist’s out-of-tune piano.
The presence of the whale and the prince is the action that unhinges the fragile facade of the town, as they represent the forces of darkness in what is, admittedly, a very bleak landscape already. Without any real explanation, things start to go haywire, just as the musicologist suggest has happened to Western music scales since Werckmeister, as Werckmeister shut out natural sound. It is also appropriate in this context to see the whale as a force of nature, and representing all that is incomprehensible to man in nature – especially nature on its grandest scale (the whale as the largest of mammals). In any case, somehow, chaos does reign and the crowd goes berserk. Here, I am sure, Tarr wants us to see this in a political context, as well, representing not only the insanity of the second world war, but Hungarian history since. On this political thesis from Tarr, I would await others more knowledgeable than me as to what exactly he is eluding to here.
But because this is also a metaphysical revolt, created by the disturbing presence of the prince and whale in the town, we can surely see this aspect in Tarr’s vision. His long tracking shot of the mob going about in an intense, almost hypnotic state, is very real and very poetical, at the same time. For me, it was the most disturbing scene in the movie. The ransacking of the hospital for old men is just the logical outcome of this group insanity. Only the presence of the naked old man, quivering in the shower, not knowing what is happening (as neither do we), brings the crowd to any sense of consciousness as to what they have done. It is the most poignant scene in the film, and one of the most moving in all of cinema.
I know there is much more going on in this dark, crazy film than I have elaborated here. This was my first Tarr film, but it won’t be my last. Perhaps after seeing more of his films, the obsurities in this will make more sense. Still, it is one of those films that restores, however darkly, one’s faith in the creative vision possible in cinematic art at its most complex. A film for the few, not the multitude, as Tarr definitely means it to be. He has turned his back, through his long tracking shots, black and white format, obscure subject matter, on the current trends in mainstream cinema as if to say, “Screw you and all the shabby critics” (or something worse).
Wow some great responses here, far better than anything I could muster. I just wanted to say hi to all the Tarr fans. I don’t have Werckmeister Harmoney deciphered 100% (and of course, I don’t really want to), but I think it’s one of the greatest pieces of art in recent history. I’m curious if anyone else has read the novel, The Melancholy of Resistance, on which the film is based.
Anyways, back onto the film. There are more than a few moments (usually when Mihaly Vig’s score kicks in) that leave me in tears… destroyed.
Several years ago, pre-DVD, I rented my first Theo Angelopoulos film. It was ULYSSES’ GAZE, that dark, beautiful (in its compositions of truly desolate landscapes), cold, and endless (nearly three hours in running time) travelogue through hell on earth. A Homeric journey, but Keitel was also Jason, chasing after the golden fleece of cinematography, a thin reed, I thought, to hang this epic upon. This film was hard work for me, the gazes too long, my attention wandered. I’d not encountered anything quite like it before, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to again.
Then, a few years later, I watched LANDSCAPES IN THE MIST, ETERNITY AND A DAY, and THE WEEPING MEADOW, and by then I had become an Angelopoulos convert, a believer. Still, I’m afraid to go back to ULYSSES’ GAZE. I think it is a film that asks more of me than I can give it.
I had a similar reaction to Tarr’s WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES. I greatly admired many of the film’s “39 parts”: Janos’s cosmic choreography in the tavern, followed by the careful undressing and putting to bed of Eszter; those stern faces in the plaza; Tunde’s dance with the police chief; the ancient naked man, whose discovery seems to change the mood of the mob. But the demands made, those long tracking shots: the mob’s march on the hospital — all quite fine for a couple of minutes, but they keep coming, and coming, and coming; Valushka’s and Eszter’s close-up walk into the village, which seemed to be on a loop, the same wall, the same window, again and again and again, for what seemed like an eternity. Compared with Tarr, an Angelopoulos film can seem like RUN LOLA, RUN.
Tarr wants our love, wants us to love him as much as he loves himself, but doesn’t give us his in return.
Yes, I have read MELANCHOLY OF RESISTANCE, after seeing WERCKMEISTER of course. The prose mirrors the film; extremely long, detailed sentences that often deal less with action and more with states of mind and atmosphere. I believe the first sentence of the novel was considered by some critics to be the most impressive opening to a novel in many a moon. The book also refuses chapters, so it’s one elongated stretch of type. It was certainly no fun read, but then again I’m a bigger cinema fan than literature fan, so it didn’t match Tarr’s film for me. However, there were some nice moments in the book, including some interesting scenes that Tarr omitted. When I read it, I felt I was beginning to translate it cinematically, just as Tarr did.
I think there’s significance, as Bob suggests, that the misleading Prince is Russian, and the drunken violent corrupt police chief is German, in terms of Hungarian history. But apart from some generalities I can’t say exactly what the significance is. Watching Tarr’s films makes me want to read a book about Hungary. It’s so easy to figure out German cinema, for instance, or even American — the historical context is so obvious. Tarr has moved from documentary-like social realism to a more surreal, allegorical cinema, but I think that’s progress rather than anything else.
Well in purely realistic terms Lars Rudolph, and Hanna Schygulla are actually German. I don’t think they are in the film, but it’s certainly… something. I read that the entire climatic scene in the hospital isn’t even in the novel. I haven’t read the novel, so, I can’t confirm, but it’s an enormous addition if it is indeed omitted in the book. It’s one of the biggest, most moving scenes in the film, and that shot of the men leaving is one of the saddest I’ve ever seen, at least recently.
The police chief is actually speaking in German, when he’s talking about calling in the Panzer. He’s speaking German. Aunt Tunde is, I guess, Hungarian but she’s also an interloper. Griyori is susceptible because of his preoccupation with German culture, specifically Werckmeister. Schygulla was deliberately cast, I think, because she is so closely associated with Fassbinder and his films about Nazi Germany.
But that scene where the guy goes to check on the police chief’s sons and they’re jumping around and banging on drums and screaming, “I’ll be hard on you!” — Bunuel would have given his left nut to direct that scene.
I just watched the film, and while I didn’t completely grasp it, it reached me on a gut level. I’ll have to watch Tarr’s other work.
This film isn’t about nothing, it is about everything and that is where it becomes literally cinematically illiterate.
Let’s tally the screen writers:
1Péter Dobai
2Gyuri Dósa Kiss
3 György Fehér
4 László Krasznahorkai
5 Béla Tarr
The film is based on the book Melancholy of Resistance by László Krasznahorkai
Maya Mirsky
says this:
The Melancholy of Resistance was first published in Hungarian in 1989, the year when state socialism in Hungary and other Central European countries ended, and a close atmosphere of those pre-1989 times can be felt in the book. Even the characters, while not exactly stock cliches, are understandable figures of those times.
She describes THE BOOK as an unheroic saga of entropy…. a sense of unaccountable, yet strangely inevitable catastrophe, as if some vital yet undetectable modification had taken place in the eternally stable composition of the air. ….In the midst of this theme of entropy and disintegration, sits the whale, gigantic and inscrutable — hardly a subtle figure. Neither good nor evil, it is a symbol of the inevitable. Resistance is melancholy indeed. No matter how fantastic and terrible, what must come cannot be avoided.
One can read the review and see where Maya tried to discern the way the book came together. Compare those to the way the film does NOT come together. There are too many for me to list.
She, most importantly, makes these two seemingly contradictory statements:
But nowhere does the story take precedence over atmosphere and language…… and then But the story seems to far outweigh its less than 300 pages.
Evidently, the book lacks a cohesive structure in that the story and the atmosphere don’t coalesce. This is precisely where the film becomes literally cinematically illiterate: the visuals and the story don’t coalesce.
The film lacks a central voice out from which a power dynamic is explored: discovered, recovered, uncovered.
No one answered the OP’s initial assertion:
Many of the elements of the story are fascinating individually (the whale, the Prince, the pianist and his obsession with tonal systems, etc.), but I am having real difficulty synthesizing them as a whole and understanding what Tarr was trying to do with this film.
Obviously it can not be answered – there is no synthesizing …. as a whole possible.
The film is literally cinematically illiterate.
Possibly, the most overrated film of recent cinema.
“literally cinematically illiterate.”
in other words,a stupid criticism.
Dan,i thought Gran Torino held that award,hehe.
>Dan,i thought Gran Torino held that award,hehe.
Ah, yeees! You’re right!
“literally cinematically illiterate.”
Valid and provable assertion on my part.
Would you like to pick a scene and discuss?
A rhetorical question I know, you don’t actually discuss films.
“Valid and provable assertion on my part.
Would you like to pick a scene and discuss?
A rhetorical question I know, you don’t actually discuss films.”
with phrases like the above one,i prefer to hold back from individual film threads.
You “prefer” meaning you lack the will – you’re hoping that others are assuming you do not lack the ability; to wit, I say, put up or shut up.
Well, I’ll have to agree with Robert on this one (certainly not the first time I might add). First off, Bela Tarr is a wonderful filmmaker. His extremist style and use (sometimes over-use) of the long-seemingly indefinite-shot is a great counter to modern filmmaking (where films today are formed and salvaged by the editor. There’s little pre-thought put into a shot and very little visual poetry for the cinematographer to indulge in). However, Tarr’s consistent style doesn’t fit every film perfectly. In Werckmeister Harmonies, it’s not so much Tarr’s cinematic style that interferes, but his lack of definition. Nothing is defined or elaborated, and no one central thread is followed. While normally I’d applaud this approach, for this film it just doesn’t work very well. Tarr treats his subject as a simple one and therefore shoots it that way, but the story itself requires a bit more direction.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fine film, but a lot of coherency is lost because of Tarr’s fixation on style and simplicity. What I believe Robert means with the phrase (correct me if I’m wrong): “literally cinematically illiterate”, is that Tarr attempts (perhaps it’s not an attempt, rather simply a “result” of his unwavering style) to encompass every possible aspect of the story as a mysterious, existential, general “truth tale” about man and his oftentimes misguided search for knowledge. But this subject is so broad that he introduces a very interesting setup for each of these little “sub-plots” that are never followed through or given even a frame of reference. Perhaps separately all these things would’ve worked, but together in one film, one can only surmise what possible connection they might have with each other.
Indeed the conventional purpose of film is to present scenes relevant to the story being told, but with Harmonies, it is like Tarr is showing every scene, insisting that every occurrence is relevant … and I’d say in a universal way he’s right, but if he’s really so enraptured with this idea then he should develop it more and show us why these things are relevant. He doesn’t literally have to have a character tell us certain plot points are connected, but rather use his obvious talent for handling the camera and show us somehow that way. In A Man From London he fleshed out the story very well in a relatively short amount of time and the film still retained Tarr’s signature style and the little “universal musings” that he tends to incorporate. I think with Harmonies it was more a problem with too little running time to get everything out that Tarr wanted to say.
Robert means with the phrase ………….: “literally cinematically illiterate”
This ’ll do it:
…setup for each of these little “sub-plots” that are never followed through or given even a frame of reference
And this:
doesn’t literally have to have a character tell us certain plot points are connected, but rather use his obvious talent for handling the camera and show us somehow that way
Btw, This is what the film was supposed to be about.
Jancos is metaphor for Hungary – a country caught between Germany and Russia. Hungary, like Jancos, lacks agency. Those subplots are Jancos confusingly attempting to control things and then running away. He is patronized, lied to, and scared resulting in a Melancholy of Resistance.
The film is literally cinematically illiterate.
Usually when I finally end up seeing a film that is talked about and hushed tones I’m almost always let down because it doesn’t live of to my expectations. Not so in the case of Werckmeister Harmonies. I was completely blown away. Just an amazing cinematic experience.
“The film is literally cinematically illiterate.”
Wow, you know big words. Oughtn’t you write this sentence again in case we missed it the first four hundred times? And I’ve found ‘bolding’ doesn’t quite achieve the gravity of self-importance you’re looking for – I’d recommend italicising and underlining, so we can fully comprehend how Perceptive and Important your analysis is.
You might have something with your ‘allegory for Hungary’ theory, but the rest is pretentious wank. Deckard Croix’s criticism is more interesting (not to mention fairer and less, well, illiterate), but I disagree – Tarr’s signature style is perfect for The Werckmeister Harmonies, and I feel that (as he acknowledges) it’s so different to conventional cinema that this supposed lack of directorial control can be excused by the sheer uniqueness of what Tarr portrays. Frankly, I don’t think we need less subtlety here, as that is a quality that cinema as a whole sorely lacks. Werckmeister is a fantastic film, in my opinion, which is not to say that criticisms like Deckard’s are unwarranted, but that pompous assertions like yours certainly are.
WH is the only Tarr film I’ve seen, and I adore it. I’ll be seeing The Man from London soon, though.
Indeed, Robert, your bolding of your favourite phrase is not dissimilar to what you want this film to be – forced and artificial. Tarr’s ‘haphazard’ style is actually one of the things that makes his work so unique. There are plenty of directors out there already who provide the things you’re looking for.
I just came across this on Andreas Werckmeister’s Wikipedia article, I found it interesting.
“Werckmeister believed that well-crafted counterpoint, in particular invertible counterpoint 1, was tied to the orderly movements of the planets”
Just finished watching the film. So happy to have found such a forum!!
Thanks A. TAD CHAMBERLAIN!
writing about films can easily get really messy! over interpretations are hard to avoid.
So having JUST finished- 9 minutes ago- here is my STRAIGHT OFF THE BAT impression
point blank:
Werckmeister harmonies is about a young man, Janus, full of wonder for the world he seeks to explore who
is swept up by the rural town around him that destroys itself and swallows him with it.
and Frankly:
THE WHALE is the key.
Janus and the Piano player belong to this breed of WHALES. The uncommon, full of wonder. Special.
The prince came riding into town on top of one.
THE PRINCE- (fantastically undepicted except as a silhouette, chin up nonetheless)
represents all those messiah of destruction whose solution to the “nothingness” of civilizations past, present, and future are only complete in their ashes.
THE PIANO PLAYER long ago acknowledged the necessity for his type of persona, in this rural town, to
isolate himself. To dive deep into his world of art. Going as far as cutting the bonds to his wife TUNDE who we learn
is wholly into organizing groups of people in opposition or protection or attack against revolts. like all those saviors who rise up against these princes- using the same means persuasion/rallying/force etc.
Janus like the whale, is harnessed out of his world and essentially used.
Used to move the Piano player to use his mass “since no one can say no to him”.
The only Reason the Piano player gives into such a demand to gather signatures is because Tunde threatens to move back into the house, into his ocean, his world. He Only does it to secure his distance from it all.
If only Janus were as wise. “it all” is far too much, it is alien, it is nothing like his ocean because it isn’t one, and he loses himself by the end of it.
I strongly believe that in the closing scene the Piano Player sees in Janus in the eyes of the Whale.
left abandoned and used in the public square of some rural town in the aftermath of
inevitable and repeating “Princes”, Masses, Armies….
if only Janus could’ve dived deep into his own world, maybe he could’ve been living in the summer kitchen with the Piano player, where, yes, the windows need to be fixed, the cold draughts come through…. but separate and apart.
in their own space. Away from the overtaken house where Tunde and the Police chief are busy planning plans.
“The Inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehensions: seek and learn to recongnize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space”
italo calvino
I see Janus in the eyes of the Piano Player and the harnessed/dead Whale in the closing scene.
A. Tad Chamberlain
I’ve recently been going through and watching all of Bela Tarr’s films (the only one I haven’t seen yet is THE MAN FROM LONDON). I’ve become a huge fan and have officially added him to my favorite directors list.
I just finished watching WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES and I have to say that while I loved the visuals, the pacing, the signature long takes, etc., as a whole I found this to be the most obscure and inaccessible of Tarr’s films. Many of the elements of the story are fascinating individually (the whale, the Prince, the pianist and his obsession with tonal systems, etc.), but I am having real difficulty synthesizing them as a whole and understanding what Tarr was trying to do with this film.
I’d love to hear people’s thoughts and perspectives on what you think Tarr’s meanings and intentions for this film were. I haven’t done any research yet, as I literally JUST finished the movie and rushed to The Auteurs to post my initial thoughts. If I come across anything online that sheds some light for me, I’ll be glad to share my findings.
Tarr-ified,
TAD