Werckmeister Harmonies Film Review: Béla Tarr 2000 - FILMS N THAT #1 

Great video. Glad to see more discussions about lesser known masterpieces like these. I'm not an expert in music theory or anything, but from what I understood, György Eszter (the character with the monologue about Andreas Werckmeister) was displeased with the current state of music and blamed Werckmeister for creating the modern tuning system for instruments, saying that because of his "innovation", works from the past are now rendered obsolete. In a later scene he plays a recording of one of Bach's pieces on a piano tuned according to Werckmeister, and complains about how grating it sounds, since it wasn't meant to be played this way. He also talks about the ancient greeks, who viewed sciences and arts to be closely related to the cosmos and planetary movements. Werckmeister too believed that music is connected to the stars, planets, and god. The opening scene of the movie fits in with this too. Just like the film itself, György Eszter is on a quest for balance and perfection and ponders on the nature of changes that bring unease and imbalance (his issues with the tuning systems but also the current state of the town, with the troubled post war times disturbed even more by the arrival of the whale and the prince). Janos, on the other hand, is a simple man who accepts imperfection and sees beauty and hope where there is none. In the opening scene he pushes the drunks around happily, despite their "astral" movements being far from perfect. He sees the giant rotten whale as a symbol of god's enigmatic power and grace, and not as a threat, like everybody else. In the end, though, both the movie itself and György resign to the imbalanced, imperfect and unpleasant world, and give up trying to resist the forces that transform it. He shows this by accepting Janos in his condition at the end and agreeing to take care of him. Janos' "state" at the end could also be interpreted as him having some kind of breakdown (or being broken down by the unjust authorities/the world) and giving in to life's constant oppression, just like everyone else, after having witnessed the atrocities that people are capable of committing. It's overall a pretty depressing message, but hey, that's Bela Tarr. In a way, you could say that György's monologue is the central and most important point, since it's an analogy for the film itself as a whole.

Way to go guys, and thanks for talking smartly about Bela Tarr. You've hit on some great points and reminded me why I got into his movies in the first place. Don't know if you're fans of Gus Van Sant or seen his Tarr homage Gerry....though not his best it did kick off an interesting run for him.

Thank you for an intelligent discussion that actually learned a few new things from. I'm trying to research more about the use of German actors and the dubbing later. I find it difficult think that any funding for Bela Tarr would require actors with "star power," although Hannah Schygulla's presence was great to see. And also thank you very much for not actually showing the pivotal moment which when I first saw it just overwhelmed me. It's on my list of the greatest and most moving moments in cinema (at least what I've seen - and I've seen a lot). Regarding Werkmeister, he developed the method of tuning a keyboard instrument so that instead of perfectly equal distance between each pitch on the keyboard, a tempering was required so that music in different keys could be played without all but one of the keys actually sounding weird. Bach immortalized this in his work, the Well-tempered Clavier, where he wrote a different prelude and fugue for each possible key to show that this tuning method was effective. I didn't know about Werkmeister myself until I discovered this movie. An important but unknown guy in music history.

Once I watched an interwiew with Tarr and he said he is not really interested in getting big names because of commercial reasons. He also likes using amateur actors. Like the guy who was playing the sun at the begining is actually a really weird underground painter and conceptual artist. I don't think he picked the german actors because of their names, he said he just saw the characters in them and he let them play just themselves in it. Plus I don't think they are very well known actors in Hungary. Although The circus master was played by Ferenc Kállai and Mr. Eszter was dubbed by Péter Haumann who are/were very well known and loved Hungarian actors. And János was dubbed by Tamás Bolba, who usually does cartoon dubbings (he was the voice of Disney's Aladdin). I really liked his job on the character, he added some extra innocence to it.

This film is film is in my top ten, a rare film that makes use of allegory.

this is an extremely interesting movie indeed. thank you for this video

Thanks for analysing these types of movies. Idk if there is another youtube channel which talk about them, so i really appreciate it! Maybe it will be harder to get thousand of subscribers, but I hope it's worth it!

Saying that something is constructed does not mean anything, its still there.

The dubbing was most probably a stylistic choice, like Jodorowsky.