Werckmeister Harmóniák

I figured Béla Tarr deserved another shot. And, well, he blew it. I’d hoped getting away from the dreary everyday and the hazardous dullsville of cinema verité might make his films watchable, but, alas, not to be. Werckmeister Harmóniák is a story of a town beset by psychological horrors. How do you make that boring? By making every shot way, way too long, apparently. Remember that powerful, long shot at the end of The Third Man, with Valli walking from a long distance away towards and straight past Joseph Cotton. It’s a great final shot, well-paced and well-scored. Make the music mournfully dramatic, extend the length of the shot by about 50%, and you have the end of every scene in this film. It’s painful. And somehow, by the end, it still isn’t terribly effecting, hindered in large part by its own opaqueness. There’s a critical scene involving a massacre in what appears to be an old hospital. The whole film built up to a fight, but it wasn’t clear to me who the aggressors in this scene were: the townsfolk? the strangers? No answers, and not very many compelling questions The story started out on a great note: there’s a brilliant scene in which János explains how eclipses occur, but it was all downhill from there.

It’s starting to look like maybe I lack the discernment to appreciate art films. I have considered that possibility.

See also: IMDB, Wikipedia.