Werckmeister Harmonies (2000)

AMERICAN CINEMATHEQUE’S BLEAK WEEK:  CINEMA OF DESPAIR  IS HERE!  AS ONE OF OVER A HUNDRED PARTICIPATING  MOVIE THEATERS AROUND THE WORLD, WE’RE OFFERING UP THREE DOUBLE FEATURES  (WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES / COME & SEE, IN A YEAR OF 13 MOONS / STROSZEK, CHRISTIANE F. / AU HASARD BALTHAZAR) & A CLOSING  7 PLUS HOUR  BELA TAR MONUMENTAL FEATURE  SATANTANGO!

NOTE:  THIS DOUBLE FEATURE WILL BE WITH THE NOTORIOUS RUSSIAN ANTI-WAR EPIC COME & SEE!

Staff member Don Sherry’s pick!

 One of the major achievements of twenty-first-century cinema thus far, Béla Tarr’s mesmeric parable of societal collapse is an enigma of transcendent visual, philosophical, and mystical resonance. Adapted from a novel by the celebrated writer and frequent Tarr collaborator László Krasznahorkai, Werckmeister Harmonies unfolds in an unknown era in an unnamed village, where, one day, a mysterious circus—complete with an enormous stuffed whale and a shadowy, demagogue-like figure known as the Prince—arrives and appears to awaken a kind of madness in the citizens, which builds inexorably toward violence and destruction. In thirty-nine of his signature long takes, engraved in ghostly black and white, Tarr conjures an apocalyptic vision of dreamlike dread and fathomless beauty.

“Mesmerizing, haunting, deeply moving.” – Diane Carson, KDHX (St. Louis)

“It is an arduous task, but the film achieves a transcendent and ethereal beauty that only the few truly great masterpieces attain.” – Derek Smith, Cinematic Reflections