μικρές σημειώσεις: «Werkmeister Harmoniak»

...με αφορμή το φιλμ του σπουδαίου μαγυάρου σκηνοθέτη Béla Tarr

Director Béla Tarr et Ágnes Ágnes Hranitzky
Year of Production 2000
Country Hungary

Béla Tarr (center) with
wife and editor Agnes Hranitzky
and producer Paul Sadoun
brightlightsfilm, interview







μαλακά γκρίζα πλάνα, αντίθετα από τη σκληρή αντίθεση άσπρου μαύρου του μεγάλου Δανού σκηνοθέτη Carl Theodor Dreyer (1889-1968)
Νιώθει πως οι άνθρωποι στο δρόμο είναι απειλή. Ενα σύννεφο που, όπου νά 'ναι θα ξεσπάσει.
Απόγνωση στο βλέμμα. Καταρρέει το σύστημα αξιών του ήρωα.

Ανάλυση του έργου από το rotten tomatoes:

Werkmeister Harmoniak (Werkmeister Harmonies)
directed by Bela Tarr (2000)

Werkmeister Harmonies is a delicacy of international cinema. Bela Tarr, unleashes his prophetic vision much instep with his other Russian compatriot - Andrei Tarkovsky. Tarr's shots are incredibly long most of the time, although a few shorter ones do get through. This, a film of roughly 150 minutes is compromised of only 39 separate shots; you do the math. It's no exaggeration that Harmonies takes immediate concentration. In his longest of shots, it's hard to stay fully awake to the screen. We fidget, stray away like a lost pup, only to return, invigorated with new ideas. Tarr provides us with our plateau, and allows us to swim in our unconscious daydreaming. We emerge, refreshed, and awakened. This is inspiring at first, but it can, and does wear thin. Could it be that the film, it's characters and story is not indepth enough to support such a strong current of filmic exercises? Does that even matter? Is Harmonies an entirely different beast than any other film?

Werkmeister Harmonies forces you, begs you, to not blink, during the course of the film. Most of the time, we're too entrenched in the mood to even budge. Through repetitive nuances, such as a group of people walking a city street for six minutes, we watch until our eyes want to break. These types of shots encompass a maelstrom of potent ideas and subtleties. Somewhere, deep in these prolonged stages of nuance, four minutes, maybe even ten minutes into a shot, we reach a breaking point, where it hits us. It's an entity of common diligence. After a long session of meditative learning, our soul reaches up to a plateau of higher understanding, if only for a few seconds. It's an experiment that I think should be delved further into. Tarr doesn't just offer a crux, or corner of higher understanding, he offers each viewer his own, unique, God.

At first, I questioned his motives. Was this experiment merely pretentious excess? A few of the scenes seem downright oblong and dense just for the sake of the experiment, not in any justifiable way that compensates the story. Harmonies is the work of a master craftsman, with a dangerous outline, but not enough thematic ideas to fully blossom his finished work. Tarr's shots are set up with a sublime perfection. One could even outline the maze of camera movements if they wanted. It's layered, and provides a deeply rich emotional level we wouldn't have had otherwise. The mistake is when we search for a substance to the ploy, and we hardly find any.

The story revolves around a circus that enters a city, eventually corrupting it, and controlling it via the estranged ideas of one of its prince proprietors. From the opening scene onward, the film stirs up a bed-ridden apocalyptic nightmare of what the future has in store, and in our philosophical protagonist, a belief of the omnipresence and majesty of God's grace. This is pretty obvious, and when we're hit with the last prolonged shot of the film, we feel irresolute, confused, and enlightened, but we don't know why. It's the lifeless characters around him, the unexplained history, maybe. In one aspect, we're enraptured with the film's poetic, simple beauty, and at the same time, nauseously confused. Tarr, in all his possibilities, could be waging a future form of filmmaking - a repressive idea of a viewer that will be swept up with beautiful images, some modest plot proposals, and left to dwell in this forever, eventually winning them over with the finesse of a magician who has stumbled across an interesting trick.

Werkmeister Harmonies holds many possibilities, in interpretation, and film philosophy, as well as future cinematic explorations. It's a film that must be scrutinized until the end. It also must be given time to develop in one's mind before coming to an apt conclusion. Tarr managed to make a unique film of unimaginable craftsmanship, but, his globe, or mirror representative of ourselves is cracked and distorted. I'll admit, as experimental as I think I am, Harmonies twists the boundaries of acceptability and ideas so ridgedly, and obtusely, it will take a while to finally win me over.