Boys and Girls, don't forget that while heaven may arguably be a place on earth according to a certain pop song, Bela Tarr and Agnes Hranitsky came by to tell you that hell is absolutely here and can be summoned by a giant whale carcass in the middle of a town square. If, indeed, that is what is happening here.
It was probably good for me to not write about my experience with this film immediately after it ended, as is my way most times I see something and want to get all my thoughts out (maybe sometimes because I worry I'll forget). But Werckmeister Harmonies is unique in that it won't leave your brain for hours after, and I'm sure it will be there for days after as well. Tarr and his co-director Hranitsky conceive of and execute a vision that is gloomy and hostile and sad and very likely nihilistic (or that is how things have unraveled and spiraled out for this small town where the film takes place), and it has this complete sense of mystery around what is happening that is not off-putting; on the contrary, you want to find out what is going on with this Circus that has come to town and intrigued and/or angered the locals, and of course what kind of Circus is this where what appears to be the *only* attraction is a dead whale carcass that people have to pay (one at a time) to see inside of a truck-car. The power of the film is how much the filmmakers suffuse everything, like a rag dripping ever more into the kerosene that will blow, in metaphor, so it really means a whole host of things - or *could* mean.
What I mean is, despite being adapted from a novel (and a cursory search shows the novel had its own daring structure as it's a story with no line breaks- the book is one long paragraph with a handful of chapter breaks), Tarr and Hranitsky's boldness is to leave this whale open for interpretation, but also what is up with this town and its denizens, what time it's taking place. One reading of the film could be that it's not set in any kind of present, but is an alternate-reality ala 1984 or Clockwork Orange, only with the Dystopia extremely muted or distorted into beyond impoverishment (maybe with the hospital where the Big Unruly Mob invades before stopping for a reason I won't mention here is an example of that), and the unrest and madness that overtakes the population connects to the Dystopia. And, as in Dystopian stories, how Power is depicted could make for an entire doctoral thesis I'm sure (Hanna Schygulla, one of Fassbinder's major players, gets to do so much because the camera won't move away - and yet nothing she does in her first two scenes betrays what will come later).
Or the book's title, "The Melancholy of Resistance," means it's a deeply political film where a young man, Janos (Lars Rudolph, I'll get back to him), does what he's told in a world where the working classes are rudderless and life may just have to come to an end. I'm also thinking now of the opening scene/shot where he shows a demonstration with some drunk townsmen about the Sun and the Planets all revolving and coming to an end... but then becoming reborn somehow - this is a beautiful moment of a community who are together, but they all live drab lives and nothing can seem to change or improve (look at the food Janos eats, even that seems pathetic). But, and this is key, Janos doesn't question leaving or staying and that leads to his ruin (and that's maybe a better title, but I get why this stands out more, given what the old man talking about tones have to become natural again and Werckmeister's significance to the distortions).
Another reading could concern the significance of this goddamned Whale: why does everyone stand around in the town square where it seems like some are waiting to see it but others are just shuffling around - do they know if they look into the whale's eye that they will be transformed or changed in some way? Is the Whale like the Golden Calf but instead of a symbol of riches that drives people crazy it's because it's decrepit (like, "a DEAD WHALE! KILL CRUSH DESTROY!") - or an evil totem. like in an old pulp story, where someone gets ahold of an object and it slowly causes a (small) apocalypse? What's interesting is Tarr doesn't show the Whale all that much, but we and the townspeople always know it's there - meanwhile, it can still serve as this surreal distraction, as people are all in this town square while the real Powers That Be (hint: one of them dances with a police chief) are plotting taking things over. Even the fact that it's an eye is significant; remember that the eye is the proverbial window into the soul. What does this eye tell us? Maybe not much, but it is more than the rest of this ugly and decrepit carcass has for us.
I write all of this, and I know there's more I haven't even scratched yet. On the Formalist level, this is another of Tarr's staggering attempts (and this maybe his most profound, yeah, even more than Satantango) at pushing the Narrative bounds of what we are seeing with this world through the shots that go on and on. This film has a total of 39 shots (damn, I would've thought 45 at least, ho-ho) over a run-time of 140 or so minutes, making for an average of around 3 to 4 minutes per shot (a handful are shorter, most are longer). An argument could be made at least a few of the shots, like one following Janos and Gyorgy as they are walking in a dual close-up and there isn't any conversation until they meet up with some other townspeople (it involves a list of names for people who may be able to break through and stop the chaos that is to come) - all we are doing really is seeing two faces walking side by side. But there's more to it than that, which is Tarr asking us something profoundly deep: what is our relationship to how *we* are thinking and pondering what we are seeing? What are the actors thinking, and conveying to us? These may not be the best actors in the world, but because of the time we have with them we get to know them more intensely and intimately, and it creates this different dimension to space and time with the Medium itself. And, I should note, it definitely helps to see this in a theater where there's no distraction from this connection.
Werckmeister Harmonies is also a deeply spiritual film, on top of the politics, and there are mysteries to this and questions that remind me why religion holds such a magnetic power for so many in the world. Spirituality need not always be connected to a specific denomination; sometimes it's more potent to simply explore through actions and what people don't do in a specific circumstance. What I mean is that moment when the Big Unruly Mob attacks the hospital and comes upon the old naked man. Who is that? Is that "The Prince?" Am I being thick-headed even wondering about that? He could just be another poor soul in that hospital, but for some reason when the men come upon him instead of thrashing him like they've done to everyone else, they stop (this is when the gorgeously funereal Mihaly Vag score that comes in and out of the film), and then slowly leave and shamble away.
Are they guilty for this? They don't say. Do they feel shame? Who knows! This is the kind of sequence I don't even feel I fully comprehend, but I was mesmerized by it because there's something else behind it, some other idea of how violence will only cause despair and pain. Is this Old Man a figure of Faith somehow? A Martyr? What will become of him? Who knows! Isn't the not knowing what keeps people coming back? All I knew was that as these men finally walked away from that place into the dead of night, the camera rising and the music making this gloom ethereal, it made me realize I was in the presence of a wholly (and holy) unique vision - a visualization of the World as Nightmare. The closest I can compare it to, on the sense of how the filmmakers realize their innermost turmoil and disillusion with the state of society (and how it can unravel), is David Lynch's Eraserhead, which is also its own completely unique specimen.
Ok, to close this off, back to Lars Rudolph, the man who we see this world through. It's not a subjectively told story exactly, since we are seeing things through this very precise, meditative rhythm of images that draws us into its black and white miracle of darkness (as in, it's horrible, but it's also miraculous it's even here to begin with). But Rudolph is crucial to the success of the picture, and why I ultimately prefer this film to Satantango; that film had its share of indelible and cruel depictions of images and tableaus of its little Hungarian spot of working-class sadness, but there was no one that really stood out to me as far as someone I could connect with on a human level. (As an aside... anyone think he is a dead ringer for Will Forte?)
Janos is the one who is, more or less, the audience in this damned town and he has an optimism deep down that is expressed up front (perhaps, arguably, even naiive), and he is changed by seeing that Whale's eye in a way he can't even explain, or would want to if asked. He is transfixed by the older man talking about tones, and he never asks him to elaborate, he just likes to... listen and take things in. But he also has a flaw (a fatal one, perhaps) which is that he doesn't fully grasp what is about to come from the people in power, like this "Auntie" played by Schygulla, and all through this Rudolph has this great expressive face and eyes and Tarr and Hranitzky give us a lot of time to see him thinking, or conversely not, and it's engrossing to see him eventually realize (when it's too late) how deep in shit he and everyone in the town will be in, once things get set in flames and the explosions and tanks roll in.
So.... a great big buffet of an existential-horror-nightmare-surreal-slow-jam-cinema experience. I'll revisit it some day. Maybe when the Resistance is less.... futile.
