rubasov I have seen this movie first while the memory of the 1999 total solar eclipse across Central Europe was still fresh in me. It is like the eclipse, both in its queer beauty and the chilling way it reveals nature's secrets.It also has its own pace. If you expect something to happen in a movie in every minute, don't watch this, you won't like it. However if you liked the slowness of Tarkovsky pictures for example, then this one is for you. This movie is a delight to the senses, a feast of fantastic pictures and music. And you're given time to enjoy it.It took me some thought to realize I actually know the town in which it was photographed, because they have omitted all the particular details, but they still retained what's common in all towns like Baja. The miniature society of this town is presented to the viewer with absolute clarity. There's not a single character and act in it without a role and a reason. Then the actions get out of control and they become history over the heads of its creators. There's one moment of magical hope in it though which stops the madness.The script of the movie is thoroughly self-referential, so let me sum it up with a line from it:"They also say... the whale's got no part in it. Then the next moment, that the whale is the cause of it all."

jj_cat I appreciate the previous review explaining the movie's similarities to Buddhist emptiness and discussing Mizoguchi's influences but the incredibly slow pace of the movie and incredibly long takes made me press the FF button of my DVD player and believe me it happens extremely rarely. There are many other excellent artistic movies with a slow pace e.g. Institute Benjamenta but their "magic" makes us watch them with constant interest. OK, there is a rhythm in the Wreckmeister's long takes and there is a visual magnetism of black and white presentation of a poor little town but the monotonous film lasts for much too long- much too long- much too long- (and so on for 141 minutes). Well, no to be totally critical, there is a clear advantage of such movie structure- you can safely take a toilet break or bring a cup of tea from your kitchen and when you are back... they are still walking (and walking, and walking).

Cosmoeticadotcom The DVD, put out by Facets Video, is a good one, qualitatively. But, it is utterly bare bones: no commentary, no trailer, no featurettes. Its only 'extra' is a small booklet with essays on Tarr and the specific film, However, when a film is this great, it doesn't really matter. The sound quality is very good, and the film is in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio. There is one BIG negative, though, and that is the white subtitling Facets employs. I've often ripped on titles from The Criterion Collection for this flaw, but this particular Facets DVD is even worse, for not only are the subtitles white, but very thin. Also, there are several scenes where the extreme white in the cinematography (excellent by Medvigy Gábor, and supposedly composed of less than 40 actual shots in the film- claims range from 33-39, which, according to legend, allowed Tarr to edit the film in less than a day) almost totally blanches out what one can read. What the hell is wrong with the folks in the subtitles department? Is it too damned much to add a bit of gold, or even some black trim about the subtitles so that they can actually be read? It's bad enough DVD companies skimp on English language dubs, but illegible subtitles? The score (piano and violin), by Míhaly Vig, who played Irimias in Satantango, is spare, but highly effective, as any scoring should be, and its likely the best in the Tarr films I've seen, adding to the reality that this film is the most emotional of the films, as well. Some critics, however, have taken issue with the film's scoring, claiming that the film argues that music is an immanently flawed vehicle to base any sort of foundation upon, thus the film's score is at odds with its artistic claim. But, this is clearly wrong, since the film does not argue that music is immanently flawed, just one of its characters does- Eszter.Another error that many critics have made is calling Werckmeister Harmonies a minimalist film. It is not. It's amazing how many critical notions in art and life are flawed simply due to the critic's inability to understand the definitions of the very terms they use. Minimalism is when a work of art is reduced to its barest minimum- i.e.- some of the Absurdist plays of a Samuel Beckett, or some scenes in George Lucas's THX 1138 or some films of Carl Theodor Dreyer, come to mind. These critics conflate mere economy with strict minimalism, but there's a world of difference. Minimalism is not just a spare setting, but that spare setting with a singular focus, a character or two, and brevity in action. Economy can have multiple characters, themes, and plot points, but be told in broad, singular strokes. This far more fits the description of a Tarr film, including this one. The film is not larded down with symbolism, but the few moments of such are ripened and potent. The scenes with the whale, never seen in its entirety, when seen by Janos, but only in the final scene, with Eszter, is a good example; for when we see what has so enraptured Janos, in the daylight, it is not nearly as mysterious nor awe inspiring as when we see only glimpses of it in shadow. To paraphrase, the elephant that the seven blind men feel, in the old parable, will always be more interesting and exciting than if they could see the real beast. Werckmeister Harmonies is not minimalist; in fact, it's the exact opposite, it's loaded with meaning, detail, and subtlety. And the elephant also hearkens back to the ending of Federico Fellini's masterful La Dolce Vita, and its ending with the discovery of a manta ray's corpse, and its all seeing eye.Despite many of the critical misreadings, Werckmeister Harmonies is a truly great film; audacious in its depiction of reality, however askew, and even bolder in its plumb of human consciousness; especially in its relationship to things greater than the self. That it does not lay out all its cards on the table for immediate perusal is not a weakness, but a strength, in that it invites rewatches. If all films offered only a quarter of what this film does, cinema would be far better for it. But, when given a rare full plate, like this, it's OK to gorge between the famines. Grace is optional.

tieman64 "I'm a man with a huge world-view, surrounded by microbes." – Woody Allen Bela Tarr directs "Werckmeister Harmonies". The plot? A circus act, consisting of a giant whale and a special guest called "The Prince", arrives at a small Hungarian town. With the circus comes a palpable sense of impending doom. Pretty soon, local townsfolk kick-start a violent uprising. They seem compelled by invisible, magical forces. One man, Janos Valuska, observes these mysterious proceedings with fascination. A figure of innocence and perhaps naivety, Janos watches as the circus causes violent gangs to form, some taking advantage of the situation and seizing power, others attempts to restore "order and cleanliness".The film begins with a beautiful sequence. Janos enters a bar and persuades a group of drunks to create a model of the solar system. Dancing in circles the gang reenact a solar eclipse, a ballet which is beautiful until one looks closely. The participants are all drunk and in a state of mental confusion, readily believing Janos' apocalyptic description of a solar eclipse. To Janos, an eclipse is not a scientific event, but a quasi-religious one which heralds the end of mankind. Instead of rational explanation, Janos and his congregation thus cling to irrationality and superstition. Later, when Janos sees the giant whale up close, he attributes its presence to God; surely only a powerful, supernatural being could create such a funny creature.Tarr then uses the whale as a metaphor for a kind of irrational, medieval superstition akin to blind, fascist obedience. No one in the film even considers taking a closer look at the whale, for if they had they would have noticed "The Prince" hidden behind it, a shadowy leader who represents nothing but an image onto which anyone can project whatever ideals they wish.Midway in the film, Janos overhears his uncle talking about Andreas Werckmeister, a musician famous for dividing the octave into twelve half-step tones. Werckmeister believed that maths, music and astronomy were linked manifestations of the harmony of the universe, a view held by Pythagoras, who argued that most euphonious harmonies resulted from tones that reflected the proportions of simple integers (2:1, 3:2 etc). But basing musical scales on simple ratios leads to contradictions and octaves that aren't true, which led to people like Werckmeister (and others) seeking to find an "equal temperament" or some form of "new musical system".By adopting this new system, Janos' uncle believes that mankind has deprived musical instruments of their divine tuning, replacing it with an artificial system which is nothing but an illusion; an illusion which western music is based on. Werckmeister is thus a sort of Promethian figure, taking the gift of knowledge/music away from God and handing it down to men.Janos' uncle thus believes that music, and by extension life itself, was better when it belonged solely to God. He longs for a simpler universe ruled by a sovereign Master Figure, and fails to acknowledge the vast achievements developed under the Werckmeister scale. As a musicologist he fails to appreciate the higher level of organisation and harmonies which "man's creation" has led to.The film's treatment of "order", "chaos", "anarchy" and "civilization", are thus reduced to musical terms; a three-way battle between order and symmetry (the unified world-view of classical Greece and the Middle Ages), superstition and mysticism and a more nuanced blending of the two. Consider again the first scene, in which Janos attempts to create heavenly order using the drunken bums. The bums fumble about, irregular in their movements, always falling out of position...and yet they are supremely beautiful, spinning in circles whilst the camera pulls back and the music swells. For Tarr, all quests for perfection must take into consideration humanity's imperfections; harmony depends on imprecision and compromise.But Tarr makes a larger point. Late in the film we're introduced to a gun waving police chief, his dictatorial children and his lover, a woman who seeks to use the escalating chaos of the village to acquire more power. Using these characters, and various symbolic sequences, Tarr then sketches a political allegory about the fascist's quest for order, and fascism's unstoppable tilt toward collapse.Hungary became a "Communist" (or rather, state capitalist) state after World War 2, the Soviet Union maintaining a military presence and enforcing Stalinist principles. This led to a revolt in 1956, which helped to topple authoritarianism and give birth to a kind of mixed ideology Socialism, a greatly liberalised approach to communism that lasted until 1989 (upon which democratic government and capitalism became the norm). But the film is not a strict allegory of Hungarian history, rather it aims to show how one political ideology can replace another when an aimless populace irrationally follows a charismatic demagogue. It is about how reactionary opportunists exploit superstition to gain power in the name of order, how people obsessed with "order" have contributed to disturbing the harmonic "disorder" of things and how impotent members of the intelligentsia often sit on the sidelines whilst the world burns. Indeed, it's no surprise that the first thing the violent gang does in the film is to raid a hospital, destroying scientific equipment in a crazy rage. With science dead they become slaves to lies; an irrational force, an angry mob which is only halted by the sight of a naked old man. This man, his body frail, his bones protruding from his flesh, forces them to confront a mass of paradoxes. Humbled and disgusted, they retreat into the night. But the damage has already been done. The old order has been destroyed and a new era has begun, Janos, the boy who believed in apocalyptic whales and the mysterious beauty of god, ending the film in a sterile hospital ward, misdiagnosed by science and branded an insane criminal.8.9/10 – Though comprised of only 39 shots, this is perhaps Tarr's most accessible film.