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Werckmeister Harmonies

7.6

3,421

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Original title

Werckmeister harmóniák

Year

2000

Running time

139 min.

Country

Hungary

Director

Béla Tarr, Ágnes Hranitzky

Screenwriter

Béla Tarr. Novel: László Krasznahorkai

Cast

Music

Mihály Víg

Cinematography

Gábor Medvigy (B&W)

Producer

Co-production Hungary-Germany-Italy-France;

Genre

Drama. Mystery

Synopsis

This story takes place in a small town on the Hungarian Plain. In a provincial town, which is surrounded with nothing else but frost. It is bitterly cold weather - without snow. It is twenty degrees below zero. Even in this bewildered cold hundreds of people are standing around the circus tent, which is put up in the main square, to see - as the outcome of their wait - the chief attraction, the stuffed carcass of a real whale. The people are coming from everywhere. From the neighbouring settlings, from different holes of the Plain, even from quite far away parts of the country. They are following this clumsy monster as a dumb, faceless, rag-wearing crowd. This strange state of affairs - the appearance of the foreigners, the extreme frost - disturbs the order of the small town. The human connections are overturning, the ambitious personages of the story feel they can take advantage of this situation, while the people who are condemned anyway to passivity fall into an even deeper uncertainty. The tension growing to the unbearable is brought to explosion by the figure of the Prince, who is pretending facelessness and is lying low behind the whale. Even his mere appearance is enough to break loose the destroying emotions. The apocalypse that sweeps away everything spares nothing. I does not spare the outsiders wrapped up in scientificness, does not spare the teenage enthusiasts, the people who have philistine fears for ease, the family - nothing that the European culture preserved as from of attitude in the last centuries.

Rankings Position

#67 Best Mystery Films
#72 Best Movies of the 21st century

Awards: 2001: Chicago Film Critics Awards: Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film

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Ranking Lists Position

37 My Top 10 Movies from 2000 (66)

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Werckmeister Harmonies

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