Tuesday, March 19, 2008
I don't understand this movie, but I'm glad I saw it.
My quest has brought me now to the films of Bela Tarr. Lest ye doubt the seriousness of my Kommittment to Klassiks, this is a 2 1/2 hour Hungarian film consisting of only 39 shots, filmed in black and white, containing many long, silent shots of people walking for several minutes at a time. I think watching this makes up for Hell of the Living Dead and whatever is the next shitty Italian horror film I watch instead of watching a good movie.
Bela Tarr's style was apparently very influential on Gus Van Sant's recent crop of films. And judging from some of the long shots through unruly mobs in a crumbling city, I wouldn't be surprised if Alfonso Cuaron saw this before he did Children of Men.
Well, this is a long, slow and often confounding movie, about a mysterious circus that rolls into town with the corpse of a giant whale as its main attraction. The circus's other attraction, a disfigured man seen only in shadow named The Prince, begins amassing a small army and causing dissent in town, until the town descends into complete chaos. For a while it's seems soooooo prototypical foriegn art film-y that if you shoved it a little further in the right direction it could be almost parody. But by the end we get a full scale riot, a tank rolling around and even a helicopter chase, and it starts to feel like no other movie I've ever seen.
The film creates a somber, eerie mood throughout, but there are moments of strange humor and unexpected beauty. I can't for the life of me tell you what it "meant" or anything like that, but I do know that it was interesting and unique in a way that few movies are.
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