Werkmeister Harmonies

2000 whale movie

Rating: 18/20

Plot: A frigid Hungarian town changes after the arrival of a traveling show boasting a gigantic stuffed whale and a mysterious dude known as The Prince. They arrive ominously, and the inhabitants of the town start to get violent. That's about all that happens.

At 145 minutes or so, this one will be a chore for most people. Not a lot happens during those 145 minutes, and what does happen happens more slowly than people in their right minds are willing to wait. There are only 39 shots in the entire film, and the average shot length (according to the Cinemetrics database) is 219.4 seconds. Compare that to my favorite movie (The Big Lebowski) which has an average shot length of 6.4 seconds. So it's slow-going, and to make matters worse, there's not even anything happening during these extended shots. See the poster up there with the guy walking? If you want to see that guy walking for five minutes at a time through desolate, absolutely empty Hungarian streets, this is the movie for you. Out of those 145 minutes, you could probably cut out 125 minutes and not lose anything that would mess up the plot. However, those 145 minutes add up to an intoxicating, mega-bleak experience. I'm a sucker for long takes anyway, so when you've got a film made up of long take after long take, I'm going to take notice. And the camera movements and character choreography is virtuosic and poetic and perfectly show this little town as a place constantly in limbo, waiting for something (probably dark) to happen. The opening scene at closing time in a bar in which the main character directs some drunkards in an illustration of how the solar system and eclipses work sets everything up. It's quietly chaotic, kinda humorous, and so impressive with the way the camera catches it all. And the scene just kept going and going, and I knew early on that I was in for a treat. The next great scene is the arrival of the whale in a beast of a trailer pulled by a tractor. Like the rest of the movie, it's almost in slow motion, and the dark shape approaches ominously before the headlights semi-illuminate the street and the trailer passes by. But the greatest of these long shots is during a lengthy riot scene, a deliriously fervent scene that begins with several minutes of a shot of a marching mob approaching a backward-moving camera, includes a long unbroken attack on the inhabitants of a hospital, and ends with a really haunting image bathed in white. It's a really amazing climax for a really amazing film. And there's a giant freakin' whale in it! This feels allegorical although director Bela Tarr says it isn't. I have rudimentary guesses on what this movie is about, but it probably doesn't matter much. It's a haunting experience that I think will stick with me for a long time, maybe even almost as long as one of the shots in the movie.

Did you see this one yet, Larst? We should have simul-watched it although I did have to watch in two installments.