Joyce Glasser reviews Béla Tarr Mini-Retrospective (August 10-September 2024) Curzon cinemas featuring The Werckmeister Harmonies (August 10-11), Cert 12, 147 mins. Multiple cinemas
When Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr’s The Turin Horse was released in 2011 to critical acclaim, the 56-year-old self-proclaimed atheist and anti-nationalist announced his retirement from filmmaking (although he has since set up a film school).
The arthouse cinema world was stunned. He had “only” made nine films, three of which are undisputed masterpieces. But after The Turin Horse, which appears in the Curzon Cinema chain’s mini-retrospective from August 24th, what else was there left to say? With Beckettian bleakness – and his touches of dark humour – we watch, with Tarr’s trademark long shots, some lasting eleven minutes, two increasingly impoverished farmers reduced to sitting in silence in front of their last raw potato.
Back in 2000, The Werckmeister Harmonies, co-directed with Ágnes Hranitzky, and now given a new 4K print that highlights Tarr’s visceral and artistic visual skills, Tarr not only had something powerful to say, but, like a modern-day Cassandra, he seemed clairvoyant.
Whatever the validity of the underlying concerns, the destructive riots engulfing the UK this summer were sparked by ignorance and mob rule and spread by losers coveting attention and power by social media.
The Werckmeister Harmonies is co-written with László Krasznahorkai whose 1989 novel, The Melancholy of Resistance is a dystopian political allegory about the Eastern Block. The scenes of rioting in the film are as shocking in their depiction of an ignorant mob setting fire to their town and destroying a hospital, as are the scenes from Southport to Leeds, Darlington and Belfast.
In the calm before the storm, young newspaper deliverer and odd-jobs man János Valuska (Lars Rudolph, The Edge of Heaven, Run Lola Run, who is here dubbed in Hungarian) enters a bar in an unnamed town, in an unnamed country (Hungary) at closing time. The inebriated customers greet him warmly, and János immediately begins to teach the dazed men about the total eclipse by positioning their bodies as the sun, moon and earth.
With a visit to the town’s Spartan newspaper office; to György Eszter (Peter Fitz), a composer and musicologist who is like a father to the young man and later, to a newly arrived travelling “circus” with its sad display of a huge whale, which he recommends to everyone, János, is the voice of learning, the arts and education. The patrons bury their hard lives in booze and live in ignorance that sits over the town like a perpetual eclipse.
When János pays his first of several visits to György’s large, comfortable house to put the elderly scholar to bed, he finds him recording his observations about 17th century musician, composer and theorist Andreas Werckmeister’s introduction of a temperament that would make all tonalities sound acceptable on the keyboard.
György Eszter is relieved to be living apart from his philistine, insular wife Tünde (Hanna Schygulla, Everything Went Fine, Peter Von Kant, The Marriage of Maria Braun). He complains he is serving a life sentence for a one-off dalliance. He and János watch as another “display” in the circus, the bodyless voice of “The Prince” spreads disquiet and stirs up the town.
Meanwhile, Tünde, who is living with the corrupt police chef and his two unruly sons, is determined to leverage the circus into political power. She approaches the hapless János with her blackmail plot against György. The idea is to threaten to move in with György (she even brings along her packed suitcase) if he does not become chairman of a Clean Up the Town movement, and recruit members from a list of names she provides.
György refuses, but the practical, peace loving János knows György will not survive his estranged wife’s presence. He encourages György to get it over with and promises to accompany him in the diabolical plan, providing him with dinner.
In the underlying novel, The Melancholy of Resistance, a crowd of rabble rousers arrives in a small town led by a mysterious Prince, who represents a totalitarian ideology being forced on Hungary. The book and film’s villain, Mrs Eszter, wants to control the town by pretending she is fighting off the mysterious combatants, represents nationalist idealogues. Some viewers will think of the list as social media today, and Mrs Eszter as an autocrat hoping to acquire power by appealing to the base instincts and ignorance of the masses.
If you see one film this month, make it this magnificently filmed (in black and white) dystopian masterpiece that keeps you rivetted for its 147-minute running time. Yes, there are scenes of cruelty and violence, as the mob marches through the town toward the hospital in a frightening long, continuous take, and János pays a high price for his artistic soul, quest for knowledge and his individualism.
Yet we have to think back to the first scene in the bar. János explains to the patrons that the eclipse, which spreads cold and darkness over the earth, disturbs, then silences the birds and animals. But they should not despair. It finishes with the grand return of the warm sunlight as “the burden of darkness is lifted.”
The Béla Tarr cinema season:
The Man From London (Curzon Soho, August 10th at 2PM)
The Werkmeister Harmonies (Multiple cinemas August 10-11)
The Turin Horse (Multiple Cinemas from August 24th)
Damnation (Curzon Soho, August 31, 2PM
In the autumn Curzon will be releasing an 8-disc Blu-ray collection of his complete filmography. The set also features posters, an extensive booklet, and new artwork by Paul West.
