Review: Werckmeister Harmonies (2000)
Directed By: Béla Tarr
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| Hanna Schygulla & Péter Dobai dance to Johann Strauss I’s Radetzky March |
How would Bela Tarr film an action scene? If this question
even slightly intrigues you, this film shall offer you a rewarding answer. And
that answer might just be gratified gasps of ‘Maestro! Maestro’!
Seeing as I am this film, after having
previously seen Tarr’s The Turin Horse (2011) and Satan's Tango (1994), this
film announces itself as somewhat of an aberration (note that my Tarr
experience is limited to these three extra-ordinary films). The film for
starters is rather eventful and I would say fast paced and extremely
engrossing. Not that his other films aren’t, but in his other films the formal
pleasures of the film outweigh the narrative pleasures, in this film, the
story, even away from Tarr’s direction, is interesting, surely something that
can only help a film’s view-ability. So, taking into account Satan’s Tango’s
extreme length and The Turin Horse’s extreme despair, with Werckmeister
Harmonies, I might have arrived at Tarr’s most easily re-watchable film. Make
that last epithet also a stand-in for accessible.
The story concerns a small sleepy town
where on-going tensions and problems are escalated drastically by the arrival
of a traveling circus with a stuffed whale (!!!) resulting in a terrifying
burst of violence and rioting that spares no one and brings down the natural
order of the town. No one is spared including our naive lead character, young
János Valuska (Lars Rudolph), who gets caught in the acrimonious relationship
between his uncle and aunt György & Tünde Eszter (Peter Fitz & a fantastic Hanna Schygulla) and suffers for
it. The film builds very quietly and at first all the doom and destruction
referred to seems oblong at best (or maybe I was cultured so by The Turin
Horse, a film where an event as major as the end of the world happens off stage), spoken about in hushed tones
and discussed in agitated whispers. Shit does get real and Tarr actually shows
the lid blowing off on stage in the
aforementioned dazzling action set piece.
Alfonso Cuaron’s Children Of Men (2006)
has nothing on this film. Tarr films the entire riot in a single unbroken seven
and a half minute long tracking shot as the mob runs rampage in a local
hospital. The scene demonstrates Tarr at the pinnacle of his formal mastery, as
he engineers an entire crowd of extras in a perfectly co-ordinated sequence of
choreographed chaos, the camera runs from room to room and passage to passage
as the mob lets off steam in unfathomable acts of violence and destruction.
Even apart from this great shot, Tarr offers up other visual pleasures
including a long tracking shot of the profiled visages of Rudolph and Fitz as
they rush to a meeting, the languidly sauntering camera in a giant square full
of people, a tension fraught dance sequence where Schygulla dances with a gun
totting police constable to Johann Strauss I’s Radetzky March blaring out full
volume on the radio, the police constable’s children dancing destructively to
it and a threatening helicopter encircling János as he tries to run away from
the destruction of the town.
The usual rigors of Tarr’s auteurship
are out in full force, though perhaps not as tightly enforced as in The Turin
Horse. This film comes in at 39 total shots which seems almost undisciplined
when compared to the much sparer The Turin Horse which has 30. The Turin Horse
reached a refinement of technique where the entire film was broken down to the
barest of film-making essentials; anything even remotely extraneous was
discarded away. Not that 9 more shots in an equivalent time equals fat in any
sense but some of the transitional shots, where János walks from one place to
another were rather short, like only a minute long and seemed uncharacteristic
of Tarr. But then again maybe it is the story, which has a much broader scope
than either Satan’s Tango or The Turin Horse – they might be weightier films
but Werckmeister Harmonies is the most eventful and more crowded with
ungovernable factors. Still, the film is extra-ordinarily tightly constructed
at 39 shots and flows extremely fluidly; even its detours are of extreme
interest like the aforementioned dance sequence and the scene of the children
indulging in bracing anarchy.
This film energizes my keenness for
Tarr’s cinema even further as it proves that Tarr’s rigorous film-making style
can be seamlessly applied to even general purpose narratives rather than only
‘special’ narratives like people would say about The Turin Horse or Satan’s
Tango. Composer Mihály Vig and the team of 6 cinematographers must be singled
out in making this a unusually vivid and unforgettable visual and aural
experience.
Bela Tarr is one of our great masters
and I immensely look forward to seeking out other work from him.
5/5
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