Werckmeister Harmonies (Ágnes Hranitzky & Béla Tarr, 2000)

[StanleyK]

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Mankind is always seeking for answers. They have, in fact, a tendency to create queries for which there are no answers to keep themselves questioning. Is there a God? What's the meaning of life? In Werckmeister Harmonies, the mystery posited before us is a whale. The eye of a slain great white whale, a swirling vortex of light in the middle of darkness which looks as if it contains all the answers to all the questions of the universe. It's obviously a metaphor. What does it mean? What's the answer?

To get to that, it helps to look at how the film portrays the askers. Humanity in Werckmeister Harmonies is a strange beast, as capable of committing atrocities as they are of feeling guilt for them. This is the essence of the hospital trashing scene, a sustained display of brutality punctuated by a moment so (figuratively and literally) naked, almost beautiful in its patheticness, that a single frail old man can stop an entire crowd and send them away, heads hanging in shame.

The heart of the film is in moments like that, in finding something beautiful in the mundane. In how Valuska can take a bunch of drunks and, with them, describe a solar eclipse as a trascendent moment. In the way he helps his uncle György into bed. In how he cleans up his house and silently prepares a meal for himself. In his giddy excitement in describing the magnificence of the whale to everyone he meets. In his comically inept attempt to tuck in two rowdy kids. In a couple of lovers, neither particularly attractive but both perfectly happy with each other. In a man and his wife who look out at their departing nephew, separately but in the exact same way.

The film's most famous feature is likely that it's composed of 37 shots with an ASL of 3'39''. Far from a mere gimmick, the long takes allow the fluid cinematography to constantly shift points of view and subtly alter our perception; the scarcity of cuts make each one carry a great deal of impact. I'd like to someday dissect each shot, but for now I'll concentrate on its ending, a rapturous epilogue scored by Mihály Vig's haunting track 'Old.' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMlQ04g0pDc)



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The penultimate shot finds Valuska singing to himself, presumably post-lobotomization, blissfully unaware of his surroundings.





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The last cut of the film links Valuska to the whale, both thematically (like Valuska, the whale has been attacked and stripped, rendered powerless and laid bare before the world) and spatially, as both, roughly occupying the same spot of the frame, are regarded coldly at a distance from the camera. The last scene begins as a crane shot with a God's eye point-of-view...





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But slowly, the camera descends...





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And when it reaches the ground, we join György, in a behind-the-shoulder tracking shot reminiscent of the earlier ones following Valuska. We are now looking through his eyes...





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As he approaches the whale, it grows in size. The closer you are to the mystery, the bigger it appears to be...





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The trek from tail to eye takes a really long time. Like the previous shot of the truck taking over a minute to pass by Valuska, it helps us get a sense of scale, of just how gigantic the whale is...





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When György finally reaches the eye, the camera tilts upwards to look at it from below. Almost the entire frame is occupied by the dark hide of the whale, with the only other elements being its eye, and György staring at it in awe. He examines it for a long time, like Valuska, looking for an answer...





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Eventually, he starts walking away, and the camera rejoins him at his level, this time facing him dead on. He walks a few meters...





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And then stops, staring past us...





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He turns to take one last look at the whale...





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And leaves the frame. We can see the whale as György just did. We first saw the truck carrying it, which only glimpsed at its enormity; then we entered the truck with Valuska, and we could see parts of its whole, some detached from it and displayed in glass jars; later, only the eye, its most striking part, shrouded in darkness. And now that we are finally seeing the whole whale from the front, the daylight clouds it, makes it hard to see. It seems that it's impossible to see the mystery clearly in its entirety, as if God is denying it to us...





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Just seconds before the cut to black, a sunbeam emerges from a building behind and fills the entire top half of the frame...





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'Directed by Béla Tarr.'





Tarr is the God of this universe, and he is denying us the answer; there isn't one. Trying to figure it out has driven men insane. Thus the heresy of Andreas Werckmeister, who tried to apply formulas to decipher the indecipherable, quantify the unquantifiable. The mystery of life is exactly that, a mystery. It's pointless to try to know what the whale is a metaphor of. The metaphor itself is the meaning. I'm not saying Werckmeister Harmonies can't be understood, but it has primarily to be taken in, felt. In that sense, it's like the 2001: A Space Odyssey of this century; indeed, both films are about as close to a religious epiphany as I've ever come.

[Raiders]

Yeah, the film is very much about the dichotomy of the chaos of the world (the prince, the children, the mob) and those who try to add a controlling order to it (this includes politics). Hence Tarr's overwhelming display of contrasts between light and dark and his overstuffing the film with shadows and bright rays of light. I love how the opening, composed by Valuska, evokes Pythagoras and the harmony of the universe and the film ends not only with Valuska forced to rid himself of his own awareness of the world's chaos, defeated, but that the ultimate image is of the mystery of the whale exposed as a lifeless, beaten and ugly corpse. Nothing mystical, nothing magical. It makes the prince and the whale, these mythical figures that come into town and apparently rabble chaos and uprising, but ultimately exposed as the only ones to blame are those who so easily bought into the anarchy, which is really itself another attempt to put a controlling structure on life.

[Ivan Drago]

Based on those screenshots alone, this movie looks visually amazing.

[StanleyK]

Based on those screenshots alone, this movie looks visually amazing.

It may be the best looking, and best directed movie of the 00's.


Yeah, the film is very much about the dichotomy of the chaos of the world (the prince, the children, the mob) and those who try to add a controlling order to it (this includes politics).

As always, someone says what I would like to say and more articulately. Great thoughts. Food for thought as I give this


I'd like to someday dissect each shot

a try.

[StanleyK]

SHOTS 1 & 2 - 00:01:19 to 00:10:44; 00:10:44 to 00:11:59

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Werckmeister Harmonies opens on a seemingly mundane, yet fairly evocative image, representative of the film's main theme: A mysterious force (fire) that man tries to contain (metal grating). On such a small scale, he's successful: A hand comes along and extinguishes the fire. The shot then pans to the left, and we see that the hand belongs to a bartender.



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Now we have a full view of our first setting and characters: a bar, and a gaggle of drunks, one of them fallen over. Hardly people who you'd think would be very concerned about stuff like the Earth's rotation; and yet, they seem excited at the prospect of Valuska's demonstration. The bartender moves to the background...



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Allowing this man to come to the foreground and fill it with a close-up, aided by a slight zoom...



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And Valuska enters the frame from the right, turning it into an over-the-shoulder shot, implying that what we have seen so far has been from his eyes. This is the first occasion in which the film uses movement, of the camera and actors, to change our point of view in the same shot.



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The man and Valuska move to the background, and the room is cleared so that he can use the drunks for a practical explanation of the Milky Way. It's noteworthy, I think, that they're standing exactly below the room's light source.



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The shot moves in as Valuska starts his explanation; the first man is the Sun (representing the part by comically moving his fingers), and he picks a second one to be the Earth. Framed between the room's light sources, he says that he'll explain immortality in simple terms...



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He starts spinning the Earth around the Sun, and the camera surveys them from head on; then, he picks a Moon, and rotates the three celestial bodies. The foursome spin around haphazardly (even the Sun is moving!) humming a song, endearingly awkward, particularly Valuska in his childlike earnestness. This is the film's characteristic humanistic touch, taking something unremarkable, and making it quietly touching. This time, the camera follows them, doing a 360...



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And suddenly, they stop...



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By placing Moon between Earth and Sun (and having the latter bend over, natch), he describes a Solar Eclipse. We move into a close-up as he describes the darkness and chaos that follow...



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And as soon as says that, Mihály Vig's score (a track bearing the main character's name (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRl3VQQ0GUA)) first kicks in, and the shot pulls back across the room and moves upwards...



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So we can see the scene from above, from the roof's light. I've long held that natural sunlight in fiction is a sign of God's presence; this is most pronounced in film, where it serves so well as a visual shorthand for magnificence and beauty. Werckmeister Harmonies is strongly concerned with light, where it comes from and what it touches, and at this moment, we have not one, but two false Gods in the room (the man playing the Sun and the artificial light). Man may have the knowledge of the workings of the universe, but he can never truly figure out his place in it, never attain Ultimate Knowledge...



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Nevertheless, Valuska ends his story on an uplifting note, as the Eclipse dissipates and order is restored.



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The entire roomful of drunks dance in celebration, humming along to the soundtrack. The camera does a 180 with them and we are now facing opposite from the beginning of the shot.



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The bartender re-emerges, moving to the background to open the door...



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Once again, Valuska protrudes into the frame turning it into a POV shot as he walks to the door...



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Indeed. Mankind's desire for answers, their quest for knowledge is never over. With this, Valuska leaves...



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And we stay a long time on the bartender's expression, as he digests the demonstration and Valuska's words. It's an unexpected, humanizing touch, and it perfectly segues into the next shot:



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From a man in thought, to a man in motion, both captured by the camera in a seemingly random stretch of time. I like how David Bordwell (http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2006/10/22/tango-marathon/) puts it: "These shots are surprisingly open-ended. They could go on forever. They don’t anticipate a process of development and completion [...] Tarr just charges ahead, without hinting how, when, or if, the shot will end."



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In the second shot of the film, Valuska simply walks, for well over a minute. As the camera is pulling back slightly, it seems as if he is marching forward towards a destination that he'll never reach; by the end of the shot, he is but a tiny spot, almost completely surrounded by darkness, an apt visual complimentation to the first shot's conclusion as to Man's place in the universe.



And so, in 2 shots carried over almost 11 minutes, Hranitzky and Tarr have introduced us to our main character, established his child-like wonder at the mysteries that surround us, accustomed us to its style (the slowly searching camera, always shifting what we can see and from whose eyes, languid atmosphere, warm humanity from unusual places) and put forward the main thematic thrust of the film. This, ladies and gentlemen, is an opening.

[StanleyK]

Oh hey, I was doing a thing a while ago.

In the past few months, between my second and third viewings of Werckmeister Harmonies, my approach towards film watching has changed somewhat. These days, I'm less concerned with a film's themes and subtext (still important, of course) than with the film form, and determining what makes it work on a more visceral level for me. I guess I'm coming to terms with the fact that I'm no good with analysis- frankly, reading some of the things I used to write, I get the impression that I was trying too hard.

So, I may or may not do the whole movie, but here's two more scenes (also, it's probably sensible to spoiler it because of the image-heaviness):

The opening of the movie showed Valuska's interest in the metaphysical, establishing him as a somewhat mythical figure. The next section of the film shows his physical presence.

SHOTS 3 & 4 - 00:11:59 to 00:18:22; 00:18:22 to 00:22:05

From his comtemplative walk home, the next shot abruptly cuts the music short and changes scenery to a window.



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Valuska passes by the window, and the camera follows him to the door:



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From how long it takes him to reach the entrance we see this is a pretty big place, probably a fancy townhouse, which we'll later learn belongs to an important member of the community, and yet the inside looks pretty dingy:



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He makes his way to a room, where there's an old dude sleeping...



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He wakes the old dude up, and takes him to his room. I like the detail of the large pile of newspapers stacked in the corner, unopened- this is a guy who really isolates himself from the world, like the doctor in Sátántangó with recordings instead of journals (it's probably Valuska who keeps bringing them on his paper route).



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This old dude is Gyuri Ezster, Valuska's uncle (although he calls pretty much everybody 'aunt' and 'uncle', so I figure it may be an Hungarian term of endearment), and this scene, where he slowly, silently helps him get dressed and tucks him into bed says a lot about their relationship without any significant dialogue being said. Nothing needs to be said; we just need to see how comfortable Ezster is around Valuska, and how patient the latter is, and how familiar and routine this feels.



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Routine is the key word here. As Valuska walks around the house, feeding more wood into the heater, putting some makeshift curtains up on the windows (and these things reinforce the absurdity of this big fancy house not even having gas or curtains), putting dirty dishes in the sink, without even thinking about it, we can feel that he does this every day, and it's this tactility that's important for placing him in a physical plane after his metaphysical introduction (Tarr later pushes this repetition to an extreme in The Turin Horse).

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Valuska prepares for the next part of his nightly routine, he leaves the house (without even washing his hands, gross), and the shot ends with a wider view of the same angle from which it began- the whole thing was circular, emphasizing the repetitious nature of it.


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Cut to a deserted street.

Slowly, a truck starts making its way up it:



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The truck is really big and slow. The fact that it takes so long to drive up to the camera makes its approach rather ominous, as it relentlessly lumbers over more and more of the screen:



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By the time it reaches it, its corrugated side turns the shot into a visual abstraction...



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...until it's broken up by Valuska, who turns out to have been standing there the whole time.



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That's another instance where Tarr reveals that we've been watching a scene through a character's eyes. Notice how positively tiny Valuska is compared to the truck. He watches the truck drive off and starts walking away...



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He walks by a sign:



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"Fantastic! The world's largest giant whale! And other wonders of nature! Guest star: The Prince."

That's a pretty brilliant way of delivering exposition- there's no way to miss that the truck is carrying both the Prince and the whale, and it piques our interest regarding both. Most importantly, by tangibly showing how humongous the truck is, the mysteries it contains feel suitably enormous as they loom over Valuska.

[elixir]

I just saw this yesterday. Great movie. I'll try to add more to this later. I am posting this at the 3.5 hr mark of Satantango. I need a short break.