Skip over navigation

Help

Werckmeister Harmonies / Damnation on DVD (2001)

Werckmeister Harmonies / Damnation cover art
Average rating: 72%
1513381015620
3.5
from 334 members
 
Starring: Peter Fitz | Janos Derzsi | Hanna Schygulla | Djocko Rossitch
Director: Bela Tarr
Studio: ARTIFICIAL EYE
Run time: 265 mins
Certificate: 15
User collections: The Sublime on Celluloid | The best things I have seen on the screen | G-Dog's Sofa Videothèque
Genres: Drama | World Cinema
Languages: Hungarian
Subtitles: English
Released: 23/02/2004

Brief synopsis of Werckmeister Harmonies / Damnation

A 2-DVD set containing Hungarian director Bela Tarr's tour de force WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES alongside 2000's DAMNATION. In a nameless, frozen, Eastern European village cloaked in fog, Janos (Lars Rudolph) choreographs three grizzly drunks in a pantomime of the earth circling the sun and the moon circling the earth. He freezes his actors and describes a total eclipse of the sun; the world grinds to a halt in momentary fear until the warmth of the sun again blankets the earth. On his errands in the wintry wee hours, he hears his neighbours worry about the severe coal shortage, the disappearance of entire families, and the impending riot. He watches as a truck lumbers into town, pulling an enormous corrugated shed behind it. Inside is a stuffed whale. The most gigantic ever seen. A sign says that a Prince accompanies the whale. Janos goes to visit Uncle Gyorgy (Peter Fitz), a musicologist determined to prove that the order imposed on sound by the Werckmeister Harmonies is false and only sonic chaos and disorder is truth. Weary and hungry, Janos finally makes it home when Aunt Tunde (Hanna Schygulla) arrives, threatening to move back in with Gyorgy if Janos does not convince him to use his influence to help her start her "clean town movement." It's simply exquisite.DAMNATION tells the story of Karrer, a virtual hermit who has no human contact save an obsession with a singer in his local bar.

All DVDs in this series

Werckmeister Harmonies
Werckmeister Harmonies is story takes place in a small town on the Hungarian Plain. In a provincial town, whic... 		Sign up
Damnation
Karrer plods his way through life in quiet desperation. His environment is drab and rainy and muddy. Eaten up ... 		Sign up

Related

Members Reviews

Reviews Voted Most Helpful

Rated - 0 starsPretentious rubbish

Stinkpot [Highly rated reviewer] , 16/11/2007

This film is well nigh unbearable to watch and I can only imagine that people rate it highly because they want to be seen as intelligent. I have no problem with slow paced films but Tarr's gimmick of stretching scenes out to interminable length suggests that he is having a laugh at the audience's expense. It's not enough to have beautifully composed shots but it seems that that's all some people want from a film. Personally, I need more and I object to characters talking complete nonsense and pacing that numbs the mind.

  19 out of 22 people found this review helpful
Report offending content.

Read all reviews

Rated - 5 starsWerckmeister Harmonies

Calvin from Nottingham [Highly rated reviewer] , 15/06/2007

A whale has arrived to be displayed in the town. An idealistic young man takes on endless chores for his relatives, hearing rumours of civic anarchy. People gather eerily in the market square. Suddenly, the town erupts into chaos...

The viewer needs to accept a couple of basic premises to 'understand' this film on its own terms:

1. Bela Tarr is a genuinely experimental filmmaker, reformulating cinematic grammar. Scenes of people walking are not mere connectives but events in their own right - arduous journeys, poetic gatherings.

2. Although his style at times resembles Tarkovsky, Cassavettes, and Herzog, Tarr is ultimately more of a surrealist. As a whole, this film (like Satantango) does not have a 'meaning' or articulate a 'world-view'.

If you can go along with that, however, this film can take you to extraordinary imaginative places. Sublimely lit, convincingly acted, and meticulously detailed - but above all it is the grace and beauty of the choreography (particularly in the camera-movements) that allows it to build to a strangely moving climax.

Magnificent and utterly unique.

  11 out of 13 people found this review helpful
Report offending content.

Read all reviews

Rated - 5 starsyou'll have a whale of a time

Andrew Otty from Devon, UK , 29/06/2005

From Valuska's enchanting method of explaining the solar system to his friends at the pub, to the dark final movements, this is one of the most powerful and moving films I have seen. Based on the equally beautiful novel 'The Melancholy Of Resistance' by Hungarian writer Laszlo Krasznahorkai, the Werckmeister Harmonies deserves more attention from film lovers.

However, if the only black and white film you've ever seen is Sin City, and you find that reading subtitles makes your brain hurt, you'd do best to stay away from it.

  11 out of 15 people found this review helpful
Report offending content.

Read all reviews

Rated - 2 starsLullaby of Hungary

barbi [Highly rated reviewer] , 29/09/2006

This was probably a deep and meaningful film.

I fell asleep.

  10 out of 12 people found this review helpful
Report offending content.

Read all reviews

Most Recent Reviews

Rated - 2 starsPretentious

A customer from Scotland , 15/04/2008

I love world cinema and am not at all adverse to challenging films, but aside from a few beatiful scenes (including the much-mentioned 'Planetary Dance of the Drunks') this film is dreary, overly long, and lacks narrative pull, dwelling simply in a highly metaphorical realm and plot, which, sadly, is very boring.

  1 out of 1 person found this review helpful
Report offending content.

Read all highest rated reviews

* * * This review contains spoilers * * *

Rated - 5 starsfantastickus

A customer from london , 05/08/2008

Another unique film from bela tarr.

Just 39 shots. Each exquisitely photographed. Telling a story of a world gone out of tune.

Set in another of tarr's blasted , seemingly abandoned villages populated by grizzled men with moustaches, that seem to exist who knows when....it's a shock when you see a car or a helicopter.

A 'Fantastickus' attraction comes to the village..an enormous mummified whale and a 3 foot freak called the Prince. Its arrival causes immense unease. The Prince, who we never see except as a deformed shadow, preaches a Stalinist gospel of destruction and obliteration. This seems to be the catalyst for a riot which ends in a silent horde of men destroying a hospital. Meanwhile the main character's musicologist uncle is questioning the very nature of harmonic scales. This sense of breakdown is contrasted and complemented by.his wife who has left him and started a 'Clean Town' campaign with the drunken police chief.

Yes, that's right, it's a european art film. And it's compelling, mysterious, baleful and utterly unlike anything else you will see.

  1 out of 1 person found this review helpful
Report offending content.

Read all highest rated reviews