Thursday, November 23, 2006

Werckmeister Harmonies Clip

The opening scene from Bela Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies. See how he explains the phenomenon of solar eclipse with some poetic digressions towards the end. The whole scene is shot in a single cut, the original has a couple of minutes extra.



Have been meaning to read the Hungarian novel The Melancholy of Resistance on which this film is based, but haven't been able to lay my hands on it yet.

youtube has lots of clips from Bela Tarr's films. I particularly like this musical interlude from Damnation.

6 comments:

readerswords said...

Thanks. I was not aware of this Hungarian work. And the video, too.

Alok said...

His new novel 'War and War' also came out a few months ago in English. He is, I have heard, a very difficult writer. Even the films are very experimental and require lot of patience and will-power :) But they are unlike anything you might have seen in movies. Satantango, based on another of his novel of the same name, not yet available in english, runs to seven hours.

Anonymous said...

The musical interlude is bewitching...
I lost myself deliberately to find myself afresh.Perhaps, I should link this to my blog..

how rain portrays cyclical patterns of silence over lonely human-islands and mute walls.Life is a cyclical pattern that we tumble through seasons and emotions in a cyclical format.
There's no termination.It's just the beginning that comes back to me.I am drenched!

Alok said...

how rain portrays cyclical patterns of silence over lonely human-islands and mute walls.

nice summing up. this is also the mood that the film conveys. it is quite bleak.

Space Bar said...

The whole scene is shot in a single cut

Sorry to nitpick, especially since I'm visitng after a long time -- surely you mean, a single shot? Or a single take? A cut is very specifcially a transition.

Also, no idea why your posts have not been turning up on my bloglines. This mornign, I realised you hadn't been on holiday after all! They all arrived in a bunch.

Alok said...

Yeah, that would be a single take. you are right...

no holiday for me, been blogging regularly :)