Director: Bela Tarr
Country: Hungary
Year 2000
Runtime: 145 minutes
German & Hungarian w/English Subtitles
Awards: Berlin International Film Festival - Reader Jury of the "Berliner Zeitung", Hungarian Film Week - Grand Prize
From the Hungarian director of such films as "Damnation" and the 7-hour "Satan Tango" comes a story of a young man, Janos Valuska, a reader, amateur astronomer and wanderer of a cold city on the Hungarian plain. The movie is a work of long shots, no more than 40 for the entire film, which are both mesmerizing and thought-provoking. An example is the dance choreographed by Janos in a seedy bar filled with drunks. It illustrates the movement of the sun, earth, moon and other planets, culminating in a total eclipse. Then the drunken dancers are thrown out of the bar by the barkeeper. It is a collection of black and white scenes such as this that carries the audience into a world of magic, disillusionment, violence, inhumanity and humanity. The title comes from one of the film's characters, Uncle Eszter, a neurologist who spends his latter years trying to disprove the work of 17th-century music theorist, Andres Werckmeister, who created the 12-tone scale tuning system. Eszter thinks this has ruined all classical music. This is a film in which the audience needs to trust the director's vision and enjoy the complete film experience. WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES ranks with the work of Andrei Tarkovsky and Theo Angelopoulos. In the words of Roger Drugnat, noted British film critic, "a film is like an iceberg, one-tenth of it exists on the screen, the other nine-tenths in the spectator's mind." Which WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES will you see? (Synopsis by Fred Linch)
Principal Cast: Lars Rudolph, Peter Fitz, Hanna Schygulla
Producer: Miklós Szita, Frank Goëss
Cinematographer: Gabor Medvigy
Screenwriter: Laszlo Krasznahorkai, Bela Tarr
Director Bio:
Born in Hungary in 1955. Graduated from the Hungarian Academy of Theatre and Film in Budapest in 1981. Since 1981, employed by MAFILM. From 1979 to
1980, a member of the direction committee of the Bela Balazs Studio in Budapest, a film studio for young filmmakers. Since 1990, has worked as a visiting professor at the Film Academy in Berlin and has been a member of the European Film Academy since 1996.
Filmography:
2000 Werckmeister Harmoniak
1995 Utazás az Alfölön (Journey on the Plain)
1991 1994 Sátántangó (Satantango)
1989 City Life - The Last Boat
1987 Kárhozat (Damnation)
1984 Öszi Almanach (Almanac of Fall)
1982 Panelkapcsolat (Prefab People)
1982 Macbeth
1980 Szabad Gyalog (The Outsider)
1977 Családi Tüzfészek (Family Nest)