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Werckmeister Harmonies
Drama - 2000
8.2
98%
92
This story takes place in a small town on the Hungarian Plain. In a provincial town, which is surrounded with nothing else but frost. It is bitterly cold weather — without snow. Even in this bewildered cold hundreds of people are standing around the circus tent, which is put up in the main square, to see — as the outcome of their wait — the chief attraction, the stuffed carcass of a real whale. The people are coming from everywhere. From the neighboring settlings, even from quite far away parts of the country. They are following this clumsy monster as a dumb, faceless, rag-wearing crowd. This strange state of affairs — the appearance of the foreigners, the extreme frost — disturbs the order of the small town. Ambitious personages of the story feel they can take advantage of this situation. The tension growing to the unbearable is brought to explosion by the figure of the Prince, who is pretending facelessness. Even his mere appearance is enough to break loose destructive emotions...

Details

Rated:
N/A
Runtime:
139 min
Release date:
12 Jul 2000
Country:
FR, DE, HU, IT
Languages:
Hungarian, Slovak
Budget:
$0
Revenue:
$25,461
Awards:
6 wins & 2 nominations

Top Critics Reviews

fresh:
Over two hours and 20 minutes, not much actually happens, and Tarr creates a mood so lulling that even the rare scenes of dialogue can be hard to follow. But Werckmeister's standout moments are searing like few others in film history.
– Noel Murray,
AV Club,
11 Mar 2006
fresh:
A chilling, mesmerizing, intense account of ethnic cleansing (in spirit if not in letter) from Hungarian master Bela Tarr.
– Jonathan Rosenbaum,
Chicago Reader,
14 Sep 2007
fresh:
Bela Tarr's style seems to be an attempt to regard his characters with great intensity and respect, to observe them without jostling them, to follow unobtrusively as they move through their worlds, which look so ordinary and are so awesome, like ours.
– Roger Ebert,
Chicago Sun-Times,
14 Sep 2007
fresh:
Six years after the 7-1/2-hour Satan's Tango, Magyar maverick Bela Tarr makes a stunning feature return with "Werckmeister Harmonies," another hypnotic meditation on popular demagogy and mental manipulation that's a snap at 145 minutes.
– Derek Elley,
Variety,
5 Oct 2007
fresh:
As wearying as the film becomes in its long, bleak sequences, its uniquely cinematic and emotion-charged experience makes the effort worthwhile.
– Kevin Thomas,
Los Angeles Times,
21 May 2014
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