Werckmeister Harmonies (Werckmeister Harmóniák)

view image

Béla Tarr (Satantango)—one of the most distinctive filmmakers of the late 20th and early 21st century—collaborated with Ágnes Hranitzky on this mesmeric parable of societal collapse, comprised of 39 long takes, in ghostly black and white. In the Hungarian lowlands, during Communist times, a mysterious circus arrives and awakens a kind of madness in the citizens, which builds inexorably toward violence and destruction. The villagers line up by the hundreds to see the main attraction: a stuffed whale hiding a mysterious prince.