The Man from London (2007) User Reviews

Apparently what some consider "pretentious rubbish"...

[billtobin10 · 8/10 · 30 November 2010]

...others find fascinating and beautiful. Yes, it's a Béla Tarr film, and as such, it will contain extremely long shots and a ponderous, deliberate storyline. If that's not your cup of tea, then why bother? Buy a ticket to the next Mission Impossible or Bourne Identity.

This film is Tarr's homage to the film noirs of old. Shot in shadowy, low-key black and white, the story concerns a murder, a recovered briefcase full of money, and a slow descent into despondence and guilt. Miroslav Krobot is wonderfully morose as Maloin, the dock worker who witnesses the murder and retrieves the money, and Tilda Swinton is superb as usual as his high-strung wife, but the real star of the film is the cinematography.

Again, like of all of Tarr's work, this is a stylized, demanding film. The first shot lasted nearly 15 minutes, but within that one shot, we bear witness, along with Maloin, to events that drive the narrative of the film. It's as if, perched high in his railway tower, he's seated alongside us in a theater box, watching a deadly play. For a filmmaker to place so much significance in its visual aesthetics, the camera work has to be expert, and cinematographer Fred Kelemen proves up to the task, painting everything in a brooding chiaroscuro. It truly is a mesmerising, strangely compelling, even somewhat alienating piece of work, and a treat for the viewer who can afford it the patience.

One of the lesser films of Bela Tarr, but still with beautiful moments

[frankde-jong · 6/10 · 30 April 2020]

In "The man from London" an ordinary civilian finds by accident a lot of money originating from a criminal transaction. We regularly find this story element in films, for example in "No country for old men" (Ethan and Joel Coen) from the same year.

How different do these two films elaborate on this basic ingredient. In "No country for old men" the "lucky" finder is being chased by a hit man and the emphasis is on action. In "The man from London" the finder is chased by his own guilty feelings and the emphasis is much more on internal psychological elements.

Needless to say that also in the Tarr film the finder ends up everything but lucky. The film has the usual Tarr elements as slowness, bleakness and beautiful images. Especially the first half hour has striking black and white imagery.

Watching this movie I realised that the mood of a Tarr movie has much in common with the mood of a Kaurismaki movie. Erika Bokk belongs to a Tarr movie just as much as Kati Outinen belongs to a Kaurismaki movie. Music from an accordian is indispensable for a Tarr movie just as much as the Finnish tango is for a Kaurismaki movie.

As beautiful as the images are so artificial and clumsy is the dialogue, especially the dialogue of the English inspector . This is in my opinion the main reason why "The man from London" does not for a single moment succeed in its attempt to be a neo noir Tarr style.

Slightly disappointing effort from Bela Tarr

[zetes · 7/10 · 22 October 2007]

Tarr returns after a long absence. Unfortunately, it's not up to par. Well, I should say, I have much of the same problem with this film that I do with all of Tarr's films. I'm certainly not his biggest fan anyway. I love his aesthetic, and would definitely call him a genius just for his visual prowess. It's so extremely original. And he's so good at setting mood, although I should say that the mood of all of his films, at least his later, more well known films, is pretty close to the same. Dark, cold, lonely, the drudgery of life, etc. But as soon as the characters start to speak, I stop paying attention. I find most of the actual words of Tarr's films uninteresting, and, when the characters are talking, I start to realize that I don't find these people that interesting. They may look interesting, as Tarr captures their essence in severe close-ups, but they never say anything interesting. The Man of London unwisely adds plot to the mix. Tarr's earlier films have a wonderful meandering quality, where it feels like he's just capturing people going about their lives. That is true here to an extent, but this one has a pretty clear plot structure, and one that's been told often before: a man finds a pile of money that belongs to crooks, and he pays for it. It's not plot driven by any means, but that skeletal plot is followed, and it makes the film less interesting than Tarr's other films. Also, Tilda Swinton shows up as the protagonist's wife in what amounts to a cameo (she has about five minutes of screen time in this 2 hour and 12 minute film), and it's pretty distracting. There's a cute little nod to Satantango at one point, where people in a bar dance like they did in that behemoth. Also, the little girl with the cat from Satantango shows up as the protagonist's daughter. It's weird, because she looks exactly the same, except she's a woman now. A very, very creepy woman. Who probably still kills cats when nobody's looking.

Quality cinema that forces us to look at the art form in a different way (even if you're patience is tried in the doing so)

[Chris_Docker · 10/10 · 15 August 2007]

When you were a kid, did you ever hear the phrase, "You'll understand when you're older"? This weighty, grinding, almost intimidatingly lugubrious film from iconic filmmaker Béla Tarr may make you cringe in your seat as if it is all just too awful to understand.

The Man From London is interminable hours of the most hauntingly composed black and white photography you could see for a long time. There's slow symbolism dense enough to sink the Titanic. You'd beg them to crank the movie faster, but daren't in case it's a masterpiece. As a stylistic exercise it leaves you gasping, but working it all out is another matter. There's a Wagnerian majesty to it. A dignity that defies intellectual comprehension. At least until it has had time to sink in at a deeper level.

The opening shot made me think of that boat that ferried the dead across the River Styx. We see the hull of the ship. It is drained of colour and sunlight. Eventually waves of darkness drift down across the screen like eyelids closing. We are forced to contemplate it. The shimmer of lamplight on the damp dockside. Looking out through the lattice squares of a window, train lines frame the noirish scene. Low key lighting and oblique angles evoke a sense of dread.

We have panned back to take in more of the ship in the desolate jetty. This could be somewhere in Eastern Europe. Somewhere you pull your coat collar around you tight to keep out the damp, dank feelings permeating everything. Somewhere you'd rather not be alone.

Diagonal foreground lines of an overcoat collar intersect our view. We look over the shoulder of someone (Maloin) watching the scene below. There, men dressed in black woollen overcoats and hats. Only their faces highlighted. Steam issuing from between the wheels of a waiting train. A wordless conspiracy over a suitcase. Feel the cold, clammy atmosphere of undetermined threat.

The Man from London proceeds not at the speed of hell freezing over. More like a hell frozen over long ago and never to thaw. Ever. A place from which there is no escape. A god-forsaken wasteland.

The plot, what there is of it, is taken from a story by Simenon. It involves the discovery of a suitcase of money that railway switchman Maolin fishes out of the drink. The corpse comes later. The dosh was stolen. But the mystery, while satisfyingly concluded in its own good time, is little more than a pretext. Enigmatic justice dispensed by a police inspector takes our mind off to unexpected pathways. Hope, hopelessness, redemption (and without any simplistic religious overtones). Justice and humanity. But the real power of the film is in its formalist rejection of cinematic convention. There is a plot, but it is not plot-driven. The landscape, the bare-furnished rooms, are all protagonists, as much as the sullen and uncommunicative characters.

The cinematography cuts the air like a Baltic ice-axe and supports the film's main theses. We first see Tilda Swinton, Maloin's wife, almost as a hidden part of this surly man's own persona. The camera pans up slowly from behind Maloin, revealing her slight figure as she sits opposite him. In another scene, she goes to the window and is totally engulfed by sunshine for a brief second until she closes the shutters to let him sleep. Inside Maolin and his humdrum existence is hope for dignity, for something better. But it seems so unlikely that he can barely face the possibility. Precisely focused shots draw attention to tiny, grimy detail (often further enhanced by use of 'chiaroscuro' deep-shadows lighting). The grain of wood or the lines on skin, or even fingernails. We feel Maloin's almost invincible acceptance of his lot at a painfully deep level.

Compositions have the breathtaking precision and deliberateness of such Tarkovsky masterpieces as Andrei Rublev, but with the megalithic slowness that is one of Tarr's trademarks.

Apart from forcing us to contemplate much more deeply than we are used to in a world of fast-moving, CGI-enhanced cinema, the slowing-down reveals other interesting effects. In one scene, there is a long, unmoving head-shot of the murderer's wife under questioning. She says nothing for several minutes, but we see the gradual build-up of emotion in her features (the scene is reminiscent of Andy Warhol's Screen Tests, which are fortuitously exhibiting in the Edinburgh Festival at the same time as the UK premiere of The Man From London).

The forlorn beauty of The Man From London might inspire you to question the assumptions we make about cinema, instilling a deeper appreciation of the aesthetic possibilities of this wondrous art form. Or you may leave disenchanted, claiming that, however wonderful the characterisation and deep-stage photography exhibition might be, it seems rather less than the sum of its parts. Either way, the coldness of the atmosphere will have eaten into you to such an extent that you long for a bowl of hot soup or a mug of warming coffee. Your body wants to escape the implacable struggles and silences, the constant dirge-like accordion, the austere minimalism, and dialogue designed as much for its audio qualities as its content. And if you do, I hope, like me, you will look back and treasure what you might almost dismiss.

Trackless noir waste, empty but filled with time

[chaos-rampant · 25 January 2009]

The night is quiet, shapes of faint, lifeless forms in the grim perimeters about, the streets lie black and steaming in these alien reaches of a city of curious architecture, much like yours perhaps. This is a world lying in wait, beset by a thing unknown.

When it finally comes it's the hull of a ship, a long vertical shot tracking across a vessel that looks like a bleached bone of a whale washed out on shore. The camera moves three times back and forth on its tracks, as though some kind of ritual must be performed for this to begin.

There's not much plot or story to speak of. A suitcase full of money. A crime committed. Smalltime crooks and an ordinary man in the wrong place the wrong time. The banality of a plot so unmistakeably familiar contrasted with intimate moments, people living some kind of life. Small bursts of life woven into a genre framework so frail and transparent as though to be nonexistent, a form of dramatic percussion to the wandering and the aimlessness. Staccato rhythms throughout the movie abet this, the passage of time. The thumps of a ball on a wall, sounds of billiard from an adjucent room, the slashes of a meat-cleaver, rhythms to which existence can dissipate.

Transfixing and hypnotic, this is the visual equivalent to the albums of drone artists Sunn0))) and their 14 minute monotonous drones. Mostly aural, Tarr's camera ferries us back and forth in these godless corridors, where our only bearing is time.

It doesn't come from anywhere nor goes, it's rather a mantra, whereby repeating it we can concentrate on the texture of the sound itself. And how it reverberates.

Don't blink! Or you might miss a shadow...

[rationalandpsyched2 · 6/10 · 11 October 2007]

In retrospect… I am a bit more appreciative now, at the time of viewing not so much.

My retrospect tells me there is a lesson here- "good things come to those who wait", I got that because Maloin didn't spend the money in the briefcase that he harpooned out, but in the end got a small monetary reward- I'm pretty sure that in the end he figured out that the "old guy" wasn't a cop, and thus changed the meaning of the briefcase altogether.

I am sorry but I do not remember the "old guy's" name, he had INCREDIBLE bags under his eyes- that is really the only reason I kept watching him.

A lot of the arduous black and white shots at the beginning were seamless, which was really awesome- but I guess made it a little harder to follow the plot and I really didn't know where I was in relationship to the boat that set up the beginning.

I really couldn't visually SEE what was happening at first, and I never blinked for a second. I put the pieces together only at the end, although I wish I had seen whomever was in the shed one last time because it would have allowed me to enjoy the irony of the situation more. The irony is that the whole wife spiel wasn't even necessary because Maloin was already fulfilling his destiny in returning the briefcase... But that scene served as a segue and an excellent example of good on-screen crying.

I enjoyed the deliberateness of the details- down to Maloin's money arranging and the way he picked up the bag of food, fabulous.

I wondered if people use pounds in Hungary, but I suppose it doesn't matter.

I think a lot of the problem for me was that there was too much distraction from the plot by the terrible dubbing. Not just the dubbing (which completely ruined Tilda Swinton's performance, she should have just learned Hungarian) but the post-production studio sounds, adding in the footsteps, etc. I hate this whenever it's too obvious, and it was way too obvious.

Sure, the noir plot was cool in theory- but the dialog translated terribly and the beginning was not built up at all in an effective way, causing me to completely not care what happened to any of the characters in the end, whatsoever!

Tilda Swinton and Maloin also had really no chemistry at all as husband and wife. It seemed to me that all the women in this film were helpless and angry except Maloin's daughter, who confused me with her lack of loyalty towards her father in the store but ultimately made me happy in the end because she was not a materialistic character, nor a beautiful Hollywood actress.

Lastly, there was a typo in one of the subtitles, shame on whomever proofread that, or didn't.

This was my first Tarr film in full (I don't think seeing clips counts), obviously something does not deserve excessive praise just because it's what's expected, but it also could have been a lot worse.

Stylish, visually compelling cinema - an ode to noir

[paulmartin-2 · 9/10 · 13 August 2007]

I saw this at a sold-out screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival and was surprised at how good it was, considering I'd heard some negative or indifferent murmurs about it. It goes to show that you never can judge a film until you've seen it yourself. This is my first Béla Tarr film.

The Man From London is clearly a highly stylised homage to film noir of the 1940s. The lush black and white photography, using classic noir shadows and imagery is a feast for the eyes. The camera work is slow, fluid and dynamic, with very long takes in which little seems to happen. Combined with a mesmerising score slightly reminiscent of Angelo Badalamenti's sounds on Twin Peaks, a mood of ever-growing suspense and menace is created that powerfully engages from start to finish.

The basic premise of the film is that Maloin, a night harbour worker (played by Miroslav Krobot) witnesses some treachery between a disembarking passenger of a ship (the man in the title) and another man on-shore. A death may have occurred and when Maloin investigates, he becomes involved in an intrigue from which he cannot extricate himself.

Tilda Swinton plays Maloin's wife, though her voice is dubbed over in Hungarian. The film was part-English produced, so maybe a name known to English-speaking audiences was required to market the film. The role was small, and I always find Swinton an interesting actor, so it was a curiosity to see her in this role. In general the tired and worn-out characters looked terrific on film, with a timeless quality that matched the aesthetics of the decaying town.

This is not a film for everyone, as it requires some patience and appreciation for aesthetics over action, and there is not a whole lot of the latter. While the film's major strength is its visuals, they serve to subtly drive the slow-burn suspense. I was surprised when people started walking out of the film, first one by one, then after an hour about twenty or so walked out in unison. I estimate 60 people left, around 10% of the audience. I was equally surprised that so few walked out of Inland Empire (I counted only four, about 1% of the also sold-out screening a few nights earlier).

Still, what's a good film or a good film festival without walk-outs? Many of my favourite films have had them. I have read that this is not one of Tarr's best films. Well, I loved it and must seek out his others.

Rich cinematography, music and sound make film different from most other crime films

[JuguAbraham · 7/10 · 29 March 2023]

Mesmeric cinematography, music and sound. Tarr and his co-director colleague/collaborator Agnes Haranitsky make this film very interesting in spite of the awful dubbing and Tilda Swinton's below-par, theatrical over-the-top acting with a quivering lower jaw, further pronounced by the bad dubbing. The mood of the film and its alienated characters are top-notch as are the lighting effects employed. Tarr brings a new unusual dimension to Belgian Georges Simenon's tale on crime and murders with an unusual cop. A tale of innocent ordinary folks, whose peaceful lives are disturbed by strangers with evil plans.

Tarr's Noir

[MacAindrais · 10/10 · 21 September 2007]

The Man from London (2007) ****

After 7 years Bela Tarr makes his return with an adaptation of a Georges Simenon's story. That Tarr has chosen to make an adaptation of a noir novel means that he has chosen to make his own, very unique take on film noir. That in itself has created one of the first rifts that has become evident in the criticism the film has received from fans of Tarr's previous films.

The film opens with a slow pan up from the water to the bow of a ship. The camera slowly climbs up and through the hatch of a watch tower. We stop behind Maloin (Miroslav Krabot) as he watches a conversation between two men on the ship. The camera follows as they leave. One of the men meets someone else on the docks and they get into an argument, and eventually a fight. One falls in the water, taking a case with him that had been thrown from the ship to the other man, Brown. Brown, stunned that the man isn't resurfacing, takes off. Maloin watches, then goes down and fishes the case from the water. He discovers that it is full of money and then meticulously dries out each bill.

This sets up the plot to which the rest of the film will adhere. This is the first major departure from classical Tarr films. The film is dedicated to this plot and the affect the money and crime has on Maloin. After stopping at the pub for a drink Maloin walks home through a beautifully framed alleyway. He sees a young woman mopping the floor, her dress barely covering her behind. We think he must be gawking, only to discover that he is angry that she, his daughter, is forced to mop the floors at work where everyone can "look at her arse." He hides the money from her and his wife, played by British actress Tilda Swinton.

Tarr creates a surprising amount of tension through out the film. Brown, watches Maloin leave his tower and assumes he must know something. He will follow Maloin for much of the rest of the movie. In the aforementioned scene in the ally, we think the camera might stay with Maloin's daughter (Erika Bok) but it only stops to look, and then whip back as we discover Brown is following.

Mihaly Vig's excellent score and the slow, very deliberate camera movements work wonderfully. One particular scene, which done by any one else, may have came across as quite conventional, but the way it is shot and the brooding score transcend it - Maloin awakes from sleep, he walks to the window, , and looks out. Far below on the street is Brown standing in the only lit spot, under a lamp post. He stands there while the camera slowly zooms in. He then walks off.

The film is filled with many transcending moments, and the camera while moving in typical Tarr fashion, also I think is different in a very important way. In Tarr's other films, the camera moves along as a participant. In The Man from London, the camera is simply an observer. This point is evident in one pivotal scene where Maloin will walk into his shed to confront someone while the camera is forced to wait outside. Long takes and slow movements follow the actors wherever they go. Swinton is captured in one particularly beautiful shot as she is totally absorbed into sunlight light, creating an almost ghostly image. Edits are said to be events in themselves in Tarr's films because they occur so rarely. The fades and extended black screens between takes, though different from his other work, I think work perfectly to capture a distinct mood.

It is important that the acting in the film be mentioned. Though all performances are good, perhaps the best comes from Brown's wife, who has only a few lines of dialog. She is confronted by the police inspector who knows that Brown stole the money and has committed murder since the body has now washed up. The camera stays on her face for several minutes as the inspector describes her husband's crimes and what she must do. She displays such a disciplined level of sadness that is truly incredible. No reaction shot has ever seemed so real or so affecting.

Criticisms I think are based in that the film is so similar in style to Tarr's other films that is somewhat confusing to accept that this is essentially a different film. Tarr claims to be making the same film over and over, but there is a very different tone here. He is essentially making film noir. Many have argued that this is a minor work. I disagree. I think this is a very accomplished piece of film. I truly believe that it will be widely accepted as a great film given time. I don't necessarily think that it is as good as Werckmeister Harmonies, or Satantango, but I think it is overall better than Damnation. That said, I must say that I've loved all of Tarr's films.

Of course there are simply those who cannot handle Tarr's endurance test films. One woman declared loudly that it was the worst film she's ever seen. I think this woman needs to see more films. Tarr makes films outside all convention, and I think that The Man from London is outside of his thus far established work. Any great filmmaker will be judged against his previous work, which I think is a shame. Each film should stand on its own merits, and this has not been the case with The Man from London. Herein lays the answer to its criticisms. If you see this film, forget all you know about film, even Tarr's. Sit, and wallow in the film's magnificent black and white shadowy cinematography; allow yourself to become nothing more than what the camera is asking you to.

Solid

[Cosmoeticadotcom · 5/10 · 25 August 2010]

Style over substance.

That is the plaint of many a critic when they come across a film or book or any work of art they simply do not like, but which has undeniable merit, at least technically, if not in a few other measures, as well. But, the fact is that my opening words have little to do with most of the gripes labeled such. In fact, the reality is that while there indeed are such artworks for which the opening plaint is valid, far more often the correct plaint is good style, poor execution. Perhaps I have not encountered before a better example of this than the latest film by Hungarian director Bela Tarr, 2007's The Man From London (A Londoni Férfi). Anyone familiar with any of the later films of Bela Tarr, when he reputedly became Bela Tarr- filmmeister, will recognize that, stylistically, this film is brilliant. Where it fails, however, is in the way most films fail- a poor screenplay; and in the way that great filmmakers often do, once they've reached a certain artistic level- they start ripping off their own greater, earlier works (and this is a Tarr work, through and through- despite the claim that Ágnes Hranitzky was a co-director).

As for the DVD, put out by Artificial Eye, in Region 2, its subpar re: their usual quality. The DVD subtitles and dubbing, as mentioned, are bad, although only the subtitles would be the DVD's fault. The film is shown in a 16:9 aspect ratio. But the package comes with very skimpy extras- a mediocre interview with Tarr, who lapses between English and Hungarian, and not even a booklet nor theatrical trailer, much less an audio commentary. Even the DVD sleeve wrongly lists the film's time at approximately 90 minutes. This is true if 130 minutes, or 40 minutes' leeway can be considered approximate.

Also annoying is scanning the reviews of the film and seeing so may critics caught cheating, yet again. I hate critical cribbing- the practice of not even engaging a work of art, but merely copying ideas or claims made by others and grafting them into one's own work. The two most egregious examples of this that stick in my craw are the claims regarding character names that simply are not so in Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup and Alain Resnais's Last Year In Marienbad. This practice shows why criticism has fallen to desuetude in most cultural contexts. In this film, the most repeated error is one grafted from the film's ad campaign- that there was a murder. Yet, seemingly no critics have watched the scene of the fight on the pier, nor recognized that there is no visual evidence of foul play in the presumed death of Brown. So, why repeat these fallacies? My guess is that, as film critic Ray Carney has often noted, most of what passes for film criticism, these days, is merely a variant form of the film's advertising campaign. And this ties back to the idea that this film is all about style over substance. Yes, there's not much substance to this film, but had it been better executed, in terms of the mise-en-scenes, the scoring, a lack of poor self-plagiarism, etc., the thin substance of the film would have been a non-issue. Some defenders of the film even try to gloss over the poor screenplay by claiming the plot simply 'meander.' But this is no more or less true than in any other of Tarr's films. It has no qualitative bearing on why this film fails and the others succeed, often brilliantly. No, meandering is not its sin, unconnectedness is. The individual scenes (no matter if well or poorly crafted) never cohere with each other; they are a jagged hodgepodge. The upshot is that Tarr may be on a long downward slide from here. I hope not, for the sake of cinema, but he just seems to have nothing left to say and no original ways to say it. Werckmeister Harmonies may have been his acme. And calling a black and white film, set mostly at night, a film noir, does not cover its sins. It simply is not film noir, not even by Tarrian standards. Perhaps the attempt to make a film noir so perplexed Tarr that it is the main reason for this film's failing, but that is speculation, not criticism. Tarr is famously quoted in an interview as stating, 'I believe that you keep making the same film throughout your whole life.' More accurately, this film disproves that, unless one equates self-plagiarism from better works with making the same film.

Nevertheless, as disappointing as The Man From London is, it is not the total garbage that most Hollywood films ejaculate into the culture. It is only a 'relative' failure, from an acknowledged master of the art form; therefore, still a good, solid film, and one worth watching, if only to use as a ground in comparison to his better, earlier films. And, hopefully, like Ceylan- from his last film, Tarr will recognize this failure, and return to his better form in his next film. That's one lesson Hollywood never seems to learn.

The Essence of the Human Condition

[Stanislas Lefort · 9/10 · 21 August 2007]

The storyline is taken from a Georges Simenon novel, L'Homme de Londres (1934). In an interview in 2001, Béla Tarr avowed: "I believe that you keep making the same film throughout your whole life." His most recent work upholds this declaration, placing itself squarely in line with his previous feature-length films, especially Damnation (1988), Sátántangó (Satan's Tango) (1994) et Werckmeister Harmonies (2000). These four films share identical layouts of the credits, black-and-white film, minimalist dialogues, long scenes, and stories that are more suggestive than narrative in nature. Most of Tarr's actors are not professionals and several appear in different films, notably Erika Bók who is Estike in Sátántangó and Henriette in The Man from London. As for the handful of foreign actors, they are dubbed into Hungarian.

If it was amusing to see Gyula Pauer play the innkeeper in two films, his third appearance in The Man from London indicates that the choice is deliberate. Same with the role of Henriette (Maloin's daughter), assigned to Erika Bók, who appeared as Estike (the child with the cat) in Sátántangó. In all of Tarr's stories, the innkeeper appears as one, single person. This is also true of Estike and Henriette who share a common destiny as child-victims. And yet Tarr only winks at us across the characters of different films; the most ordinary actions are equally allusions throughout all his works creating a universe of apparently insignificant habits. Maloin drinks in accordance with the same ritual as the neighbor-informer of Sátántangó. And when he throws a log on his fire, the stove in the first image of Werckmeister Harmonies springs to mind. So many habits in which the insignificant becomes significant because the images and the characters of Tarr's ceaselessly question one another: their existence is a succession of futile, routine gestures whose repetition bears witness to their vanity. Habits are simultaneously both their prison and their lifeline in the labyrinth of existence, giving them something to hold onto while, at the same time, preventing them from escaping their condition. True, the protagonists seek to purify their existence (Valuska), to change their destiny (Karrer, Irimiás, Maloin), to reverse the course of History (Eszter and his theories of sound). But they are inevitably reeled back in and crushed.

Though the decor and the ambiance are consistent with classic film noir, the unraveling of the plot is so exact that two viewings are necessary in order to begin to understand. But, at the base of things, the story doesn't really matter. What Tarr shows us is less a criminal entanglement than the poles between which the characters oscillate. First there is the black and the white, admirably opposed in the first scene where half of the ship's body is illuminated. The screen is black at the beginning of the film; it is white at the end. The music is also bipolar. From the first notes of a long arpeggio, we believe we hear an organ, then realize it is the sirens of ships. In Homer's Odyssey, the song of the Sirens, inaccessible feminine creatures, threw the sailors off-course so that their ships ran aground on the reefs. Here, the song of the sirens is like a requiem. This dirge contrasts with the accordion ritornello, reminiscent of the inns in Sátántangó and Damnation. With Tarr, bistros are always places of escape where one re-creates the world, gets drunk, and devises the most absurd projects. The melody, acting as a setting for these hallucinations, allows death to be forgotten, but which the arpeggio obstinately calls back to mind. Its minor key and its infinite nostalgia only make it less able to elude destiny.

Where does The Man from London fit into Tarr's works? In the first scene – a shot twelve minutes in length – the lens surveys and captures the entire space in a way unknown to the tracking in Tarr's other works, and shows, by its fluidity and freedom, at what point the characters are prisoners of their own gravitation. The camera seems to have wings so it may better watch the men and love them, without ever judging them. In this way, it is sister to Damiel and Cassiel, the two angels of Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders, 1987). Like them, Tarr's camera leisurely insinuates itself, beyond concepts of time, and penetrates the heart of beings, ready to capture each of their convulsions in a world where the only certainty is death, humanity's habit par excellence. Looking at the earlier films, several of the characters in The Man from London bring an unexpected contrast. Such as the Inspector Molisson, who seems above the law and alone brings justice. No other film of Tarr's has a main character so tenuously attached to the human condition. His behavior with Maloin and Mrs. Brown is Christ-like, in a manner of speaking. He consoles; he cleanses sins; he tries to console. In comparison, Mrs. Brown seems like Anna Schmid, Harry Lime's mistress in The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949). Both women were used to entrap the man they loved. Both women, in the last images of the films, refuse compensation and disappear, dignity intact. In the end, Maloin, marred by sudden wealth, seeks redemption by turning himself in. He isn't sure if Molisson's pardon will allow him to find peace once again. The glass harp that punctuates the siren arpeggio as Molisson re-enacts the toss of the suitcase greets only Molisson's discovery of the truth. The final notes of the film, still played on the glass harp, mark the end of the inspector's work and the end of the riddle. Life continues for Maloin and Mrs. Brown with both their doubts and failures. But what makes The Man from London a new development in the works of Béla Tarr is the fact that this film brings together so perfectly cinematography, music, and plot line, creating a complete and emotional spectacle about the human condition.

(Thanks to Jessica Alexander for the English translation!)

The Slowest Film in History

[robert-temple-1 · 3/10 · 10 November 2009]

This film has many extraordinarily interesting qualities, but they are all ruined by the apparent vanity of the director, who appears to be a kind of inverted snob (I watched the interview of him on the DVD). The first shot of the film lasts about five minutes, maybe more, and is interminably boring, moving at slower than a snail's pace. But the director, a Hungarian named Bela Tarr, is determined that we must watch it, perhaps on the theory that anyone lacking the patience to do so is one of the unworthy ones, and does not deserve to see the rest of what he considers his masterpiece. The film defies all normal expectations of a viewing public and does not appear to be made for audiences at all, but rather an example of the director making something to please himself and his two or three best friends. The film is in black and white, and the cinematography is spectacularly good. Tarr gives the impression that he wishes to evoke the same moods as the famous night photos of Paris by Brassai. The film is based upon a novel by Georges Simenon, and the dialogue is in a mixture of French and English, with no Hungarian spoken, as all the Hungarian actors are dubbed in either French or English. It is supposedly set in a French port which has a ferry whose passengers disembark onto a waiting train. We often see them doing this at night, heads bowed, like passengers entering the Afterlife, carrying small valises to last them for Eternity. The film is based so entirely upon images that, if not for its sluggishness, it would qualify as Imagiste in the tradition of Ezra Pound and Hilda Doolittle ('H.D.'). In his interview, the Director says it is not necessary to hear the dialogue or read the subtitles, as the images speak for themselves. Tarr appears to be inspired by the films of Carl Dreyer, and wishes to sear our sight with ravaged faces, upon which the camera lingers for whole minutes, in the hope that souls will emerge from the eyes and the skin, with the characters' inner depths spilling out like guts on the battlefield. Long, sombre shots where nothing happens are suddenly interspersed with explosions of intense and violent human emotions. Characters who had seemed dead have their electricity turned on and suddenly start shouting and gesticulating. In this melée the chamaeleon-like Tilda Swinton (who is always likely to turn up in the most bizarre settings, and the stranger it is, the more certain we can be that she will be there) has a cameo part, which may have required one or two days's shooting time (or should I say weeks, at Tarr's pace?) Once again, she startles us with her brilliance. Making good use of her fluent French, she plays a desperate, shrieking, terrified harridan of a wife to a man who never speaks and has no money, played by a taciturn Miroslav Krobot, with knitted brow and lips stuck together with glue. The weird music by Mihaly Vig is hauntingly effective, drawing upon its sheer monotony to create a captivating and eerie atmosphere which matches the film to perfection. A girl named Erika Bok plays the daughter of Swinton and Krobot, and is utterly fascinating in her slack-jawed ugliness and simulated stupidity, so that one cannot take one's eyes off her. All of the characters are like figures from a dream, none seems real. Surely these are the people who come to haunt one at night when one has had too much fois gras and sauterne. Can people like Tilda Swinton even exist? I have in other reviews pointed out that she is an extraterrestrial at least, if not someone from another dimension. As for Erika Bok, she cannot possibly exist, she has to be invented. The ultra-weird Istvan Lenart, speaking with the dubbed voice of Edward Fox sounding like a séance-voice of a disembodied spirit reciting the Creed at a black mass, or a corpse enunciating its views from its crypt, outdoes even Swinton in non-human appearance, in the competition to appear unreal and trans-human. He has more folds and wrinkles to his face than a rhinoceros, and has the eyes of a dead man who has lain in his grave for at least twenty years without rotting down properly. This film is like a film full of nocturnal zombies, but the film itself is also like a zombie, since it is clearly just as asleep as a ward full of sedated patients in a lunatic asylum, who have all just had electric shock treatment and forgotten who they are before passing out of consciousness. If Tarr were not so vain, and had been willing to make this film watchable, it could have been an astounding classic. But he is even more irritating than the French director Jacques Rivette, whose 'La Belle Noiseuse' (1991) I had previously believed to be the Number One Most Boring and Interminable Film of All Time. Why does Tarr want to bore us to death and drive us away? Because he is 'above' such things as audiences and viewers? If so, we are so far beneath him that we truly do not deserve him. He should be making films for jungle sloths. What a terrible waste, that a man with such talent should be so perverse in refusing to make 'compromises' that he forgets that films are meant to be seen by people, and not to be kept at home in a locked drawer. 'Vanity, vanity, all is vanity!'

Quai Des Brumes

[dbdumonteil · 7 February 2011]

If you are FRench ,first thing to bear in mind is that this is the second version of Georges Simenon's novel .This is not to say it's a "remake" for the two versions are as different as they can be.But it must be written that Henry Decoin's movie(1) was made in the darkest hour of the Occupation in 1943 ,and produced by the Continental ,a German firm ,so the writers had to deal with the censorship.What am I driving at?simply that at the time,there was no need to create a nightmarish atmosphere (although Decoin succeeded in doing so) for the nightmare was all around.

Compared to the "modern" version ,the old one may seem conventional (but please give it a try if you can ) .This one looks like a nightmare with its stark black and white ,its interminable fixed shots ,its lugubrious music -sometimes a simple accordion tune looks like Tangerine Dream or even Nico music - its actors whose performances are so overblown it's almost unbearable .The movie is very long and I must admit that ,If I did not know the plot,I would have got lost since the first reel.The lines are few and far between and it sometimes recalls films of the silent age this side of German Expressionismus.Bela Tarr refuses any suspense ,any show (the scene in the cabin by the sea is revealing:close shot on a padlock).The atmosphere is much more important than the detective story ;even the social comment which was present in Decoin's movie (If only my son could get into Ecole Polytechnique) gets totally lost in the treatment, deliberately so of course ;this man does not really want to get by ,his wife is a shrew ,his daughter is ugly and all the furs in the world can't change that .The characters melt into the background .

(1) "L'Homme De Londres"

Desolation, Hopelessness and Stagnation

[ilpohirvonen · 10/10 · 18 March 2011]

Bela Tarr is a Hungarian director renowned for his minimalism and extremely long shots. His films have shocked the world - especially the incredible length (7h 15 minutes) of his magnum opus Sátántangó (1994) - with their ambiguity and uniqueness. In his films Tarr combines tragic elements with absurdly comic, but there's never linear dramatic structure. His art is a combination of Tarkovsky's slow, monotonous shots and camera movement, and Bresson's static camera that picks small details for us to observe. In the aesthetics of Tarr the states start turning into physical places and details become more than important. The Man from London was his first international film, followed by The Turin Horse (2010) which is - according to Tarr - his final film.

After Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) it took five years for Tarr to get a chance to work with a feature-length film. In 2005 Tarr started to film The Man from London but the producer suddenly committed a suicide. After emotional and financial difficulties the film got a new producer and was finished in 2007. It's minimalist as usual but has surprisingly many dramatic ingredients for Tarr: A man lives in the island of Corsica with his wife and daughter. He works at the dock, supervising it and its train service. One day he witnesses a crime from his glass ivory tower; two men fight because of a suitcase and the other dies. The man takes advantage of this situation and goes to pick up the case - full of money.

The crime plot is just part of the frame-story, even that the cinematography is at times very noir-like, as it was in Tarr's earlier film Damnation (1988). It's quite an unusual story for him but it's not the story that fascinates us. It's the images, sound-scape and the wonderful entirety. Bela Tarr's work can easily be separated into two parts: The first consists of his Hungarian features that tried to depict social reality through documentary-like style. The second was opened by Damnation (1988) where the films turned black-and-white, dramatic ingredients were cut to minimum and the length of the shots grew. Sátántangó was the culmination of this profound aesthetic reorientation.

Another difference between these two eras is the depiction of time and place. The documentary-like fictions were set in certain cities, depicting the Hungarian reality. But in the second part the milieus turned into unclear rural communities which tried to depict a more universal and abstract world. The Man from London doesn't exactly take place in countryside as Damnation, Sátántangó and Werckmeister Harmonies do, but it also portrays an abstract world. The characters live in a rural community; general stores, old shacks and run-down clothes. The East-European reality exhaled from Tarr's Hungarian films but The Man from London is strictly universal with its pessimistic world view and depiction of essential themes of humanity.

There are many things that could be brought up about the film, such as the brilliant development of aesthetics and the construction of the state, the relation between sound and image, and the time of the film. But perhaps the most important thing is how the cinematographer, Fred Kelemen, uses light. As we know film is art of light, and it feels that no one else understands it as beautifully as Bela Tarr does today. This is another strong parallel to Andrei Tarkovsky who's probably Tarr's biggest influence. Just as in the films by Tarkovsky (especially in Nostalghia and The Sacrifice) in The Man from London, the state builds up and develops through light. Once the viewer can see a luminous - ethereal - state and then suddenly it changes to a dark one, full of agony and despair. The ending is one extremely intriguing example of this. As the camera first films the face of the woman and then the image overexposes. In cinema it is very important whether you fade to black or overexpose the image to an ethereal state. The significance of the state should not be forgotten, as film is both art of light and art of state. The Man from London is a unique masterpiece for its style, content and philosophy. It's Kafkaesque for its absurd black-humor and existentialist for its philosophy of film and characterization; we're thrown into the world, doomed to be free and forced to give our life a meaning. Existentialism and the absurdity of being are all part of Bela Tarr's art, and it reinforces the desolate despair in his films.

Bela Tarr hardly ever cuts (the film lasts for over two hours and consists of 26 shots) but he uses a lot of internal montage; when the camera moves the dimensions of the image change and the entire state changes, without a cut. The film is Bressonian minimalist and Tarkovskyan poetic; it's important to see that Tarr doesn't try to reach realism nor naturalism. The Man from London is very expressionistic for its cinematographic style and visuals but there is something more in the black-and-white images than just aesthetic styling. Color is an over-naturalist element for Tarr and using black-and-white film he makes it sure that the reality of cinema and the Reality remain separated.

It's a film where nothing happens but where, on the other hand, everything happens. The Man from London has an inconsolable world view and disconsolate despair. It's incredibly pessimistic depicting the hopelessness of the world and the decay of morality. All the characters of it live in an unclear place but are all trapped. They can't move forward; they're stuck in their desolate situations and are pretty much going to die in them. The protagonist feels powerful at his work, he supervises and controls the environment but at home, in his personal life, he can't come to terms with his existence and is unable of facing his troubles - he is a prisoner of his own limited world. Optimism for a better life, the hope for something better changes him, and his morality.

Struggle and temptation

[oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx · 9/10 · 12 July 2009]

Let me just start by saying that this is a very beautiful film. It is shot very well, and it has a haunting score that repeated in my mind the whole of the next day. I think that this is a great tribute to Georges Simenon.

The main character is a guy called Maloin (Miroslav Krobot) who works mostly at night in a glass cage down at the harbour, a signalman for the railway that picks up passengers from the ferry. The film is shot in black and white in the old port of Bastia on the island of Corsica which is quite scenic though not in a meretricious way, and I'm sure more of a purgatory for Maloin. I once read a powerful short novel by John Steinbeck called The Pearl, where a fisherman discovers a large pearl that will enable him and his family to live a life with less struggle. At the moment he discovers the pearl he lets forth a huge scream, it's a great release from suffering. So here Maloin also has a pearl dropped into his lap, which as in the Steinbeck novella will however cause it's possessor much turmoil. Tarr also manages to access this raw Steinbeckian power. He does this through looking at the relationship between Maloin and his daughter. Maloin is upset that she works in a grocery store where the proprietress is an abuser, and that her arse is available for any man to see (the words of the film). So when he comes across a highly dubious little nest egg, a briefcase he sees smuggled past customs from his vantage point, he takes her out of the shop, even though threatened with violence by the proprietress, and buys her an incredibly expensive fur stole. There was a deep rawness of emotion there, in the act of honouring someone you love.

Tilda Swinton is in the movie as well Maloin's wife, I thought her acting was pretty superb in the couple of scenes that she was in. It's a very simple film really. The guilt and fear is very tangible, as is the hopelessness of Maloin's existence.

It's a very contemplative sombre film, and the touches are very well done, the sighing barkeep at one point, "Little Vera has had the flu for the third time this year", a child playing football on his own, as opposed to the typical cliché of a whole street gang playing.

The only slight problem I had was that the first time we see Maloin playing chess with the barkeep, the chess board is set up incorrectly, "white on the right" folks! It does "break the frame" slightly.

Good film noir

[freebart · 8/10 · 3 July 2014]

I like Simenon as an author and Tarr as a director, so an adaptation of a Simenon novel by Tarr raised my interest. Tarr has resumed his Ars Poetica with the two words "human dignity", and in this he resembles Simenon, who also portrays with compassion even his most wretched characters. I think Simenon would have liked this film of Tarr, as he was fond of plastic scenes, and strove for plastic descriptions. I do not know what Simenon might have said of the slow pace of the film or the reduced plot. There is a slowness to his books also, but also many action, dialog, tension, humor etc. As for me, the slowness annoyed me a bit, as in all films of Tarr, yet I was watching it on the video and jumped the scenes I found boring. The overall effect of the film was good and it was lasting as well.

Pretentious rubbish

[fnaticchi · 1/10 · 17 March 2009]

Completely & unbelievably pretentious. Forget beautiful cinematography, it was just long black & white shots & there are only so many times one can play on shadow & light before even the dimmest member of the audience gets the message. Forget the tragedy of the human condition, it's all been done before & in a much better, so much less pretentious way.

As for the switching between English & French...why? Pretentious rubbish. I am both English & French & it annoyed ME!

The symbolism was so heavy-handed it was like being hit with a sledgehammer. So little sublety that at times I was actually convinced it was a spoof!

The director obviously felt that if he made a film boring & pretentious enough, everyone would think it was terribly 'deep' & judging by some the comments on here, he was right!

My first Tarr experience

[lasttimeisaw · 8/10 · 19 May 2015]

Admittedly it is daunting to start watching my very first Béla Tarr's works (with his wife and longtime editor Ágnes Hranitzky credited as the co-director), who has already retreated to a permanent retirement in filmmaking after THE TURIN HORSE (2011), as his oeuvre is mostly notorious for stirring audience's usual viewing habits with long takes exceedingly overstay their length of tolerance, a mixed anticipation and perturbation has overtaken me when I selected his lesser praised 2007 feature as the very first introduction piece, rarely I was in such a state before even embarking on the ritual of watching a film.

I would be dishonest if I say that the opening 13-minutes long take doesn't put me into a split second of slumber severe times, but how can anyone not to be flabbergasted by its solemn chiaroscuro grandeur, rigorously composed to illustrate a key event without spoon- feeding what is happening to audience, it is a paradigm-shifting innovation deserves admiration and endorsement, and more impressive in Tarr's long takes are not counter- narrative, in fact, he meticulously orchestrates the narrative within the long-takes, invites audience to be fully aware of our own self-consciousness towards the happenings on the screen during the overlong shots, particularly when framing at the back of characters' heads or the ones linger on characters' facial expressions as if they are tableaux vivants after the dramatic occurrences.

Once I passed the early stage of maladjustment, the film tends to be rather galvanising (an accomplishment should also be ascribed to composer Mihály Vig's resounding score with accordion or pipe organ), adapted from Belgian writer Georges Simenon's 1934 French novel 1934 L'HOMME DE LONDRES, Tarr transmutes the thrilling plot to an existential quest of our protagonist Maloin (Krobot), who has incidentally discovered a windfall after witnessing a murder during his night shift as a switchman in a French-speaking port town where a harbour and the wagon station are conveniently located with each other. The subsequent storyline involves the investigation of a senior detective Thompson (Lénárt) from London and domestic wrangles with his overwrought wife Camélia (Swinton) when he splurges their money wantonly, plus the British murderer Brown (Derzsi) is very eager to get the money back.

Tarr avoids any choppy development devices to pander for audience's attention span, he cooks up an equivocal scenario in the end, we never know the critical event happened inside the hut (Brown's hideout) as Tarr's camera fixates itself firmly outside the hut with its door closed, and regarding to Maloin's following behaviour, after knowing his character for almost 2-hours, each of us can give various motivations contingent on our viewings of the incident Tarr ingeniously chooses not to show us.

The film is infamous also for the suicide of its producer Humbert Balson in 2005, just before the shooting due to the apparent financial burdens of Tarr's hefty Corsican setting, so the reality check is even grimmer than the formidable fiction. What can I say? My gut feeling tells me I'm officially on board with Tarr's filmic methodology and all the trappings, his sui generis aesthetic language soundingly enshrines his filmography into the lofty tier of contemporary auteurism and maybe one day he will curtain his retirement and surprise us if inspiration strikes!

Sadistically overlong, boring, pretentious rubbish

[astream99 · 2/10 · 24 October 2010]

I started watching this film and after about 5 minutes, boredom set in. The boredom continued for another excruciating two hours. This should have been a short film of about 15 minutes instead, it's stretched needlessly with nonsense shots that seem to last forever - an old guy eating, the main character undressing and going to bed followed by darkness for what seems like three minutes, a butcher unconvincingly chopping a piece of meat, two guys dancing like imbeciles and on and on...

While there are much worse films out there, this has to be the most tedious film ever made. This is the kind of film pretentious people brag about loving because they think it makes them seem smart and intellectual and deep. I'm sure understand it!", but let's face it, there's nothing to get here. I'd rather watch a marathon of Uwe Boll films than see another film like this. I think you should get a free t-shirt after sitting through this - one that says "I survived The Man From London"

Stay far far away from this bs.

Time Stop

[tieman64 · 20 November 2009]

"All stories have resolved themselves. All that remains is time." - Bela Tarr

Bela Tarr directs "The Man From London." The plot? Maloin is a grim-faced railroad employee. He sits in a signal cage all night, pulling giant levers which cause rail tracks and train signals to alternate. In other words, he makes choices for a living. These choices, of course, have ramifications; they literally "change the course of things".

One day Maloin witnesses a murder, a small briefcase being lost in the scuffle. He retrieves this briefcase and opens it up to find six thousand dollars in stolen cash. Maloin faces a moral dilemma. Does he keep the money or does he return it to the authorities?

It's a familiar, noirish plot, but Tarr handles the material in his own inimitable way. This is a world of infinite seas and lustrous blacks, the film's characters rarely speaking, Tarr's camera observing them all with agonisingly slow long takes. Many have complained that the film is "boring" and "listless", but these are characters who have long accepted a kind of slow and inevitable deterioration. They've chosen to live in complete isolation, succumbing to a kind of existential dead-lock; no amount of action will halt death, so they stew in their own private miseries.

And so the antagonist of this film is time itself. Time is a monster, Tarr says in interviews, his Hungarian drawl like a discordant piano. Time sucks and draws blood, reducing its players to mechanical ghouls, alienated and resigned to fate.

But of course Maloin sees a way out. This little briefcase of money could bring him happiness, couldn't it? The film thus becomes a sort of religious parable, the temptations of a new life seducing Maloin. Does he reject the money and embrace a kind of ontological damnation or does he embrace the money and hope for some brief respite? If you've seen Tarr's other films, you know the answer.

Elsewhere the film uses the tropes of noir – high contrast lighting, men in coats, a crime, a moral dilemma, a prowling police inspector, cold urban spaces etc – but Tarr has flattened these signifiers and placed them within a world that is comprised of four clearly demarcated planes.

There's the domestic space (the home in which we eat/sleep/defecate), the space of entertainment or amusement (the bar, where our hero plays chess, gets drunk etc), the space of labour (the railroad and harbour) and beyond (the infinite ocean). The first 3 spaces sit next to the ocean. They teeter fearfully beside this limitless mass of black, always threatening to fall in. The ocean - thick, black and inky - is the final plane. A plane of murder and perhaps spiritual and physical death.

Indeed, water has such a strong impression on the inhabitants of this world that when Maloin sees his daughter sweeping water out of a shop - pushing back time - he immediately resolves to make her happy, forcing her to quit her job and buying her a fancy new coat. But of course it's no use. These are empty purchases, idyllic gestures which Maloin doesn't believe in anyway; he believes solely so that she may temporarily hope, the reverse of the characters in Tarr's "Damnation", who cut down the beliefs and hopes of others so that everyone might partake in a kind of communal misery. Significantly, when Maloin argues with his wife over the purchase, Tarr's instinct is to cut to the little girl mechanically eating a bowl of soup. Spoon after spoon she swallows...spoon...after...spoon...

8/10 – Tarr seems to be repeating himself here, and aesthetically the film's not as strong as his best work. For those who find the film ponderously slow, watch it at x2 speed. Worth two viewings.

slow rollin'

[cpower-35472 · 8/10 · 12 December 2019]

Need a mood for this kind of a movie. But, this is art, a masterpiece, no doubt about that! Anyone realized that the chessboard is wrong way around (~30mins into the movie)?

Tarr makes a detective film

[ricardojorgeramalho · 8/10 · 21 November 2022]

Adapted from a story by Georges Simenon this film is essentially a detective movie. However, filmed in Tarr's characteristic style, in black and white, slow, with a depressing and monotonous soundtrack, the work ends up not being out of tune with the cinematographic universe of the Hungarian director. If the pace is certainly not that of a thriller, the story is one of the most accessible in Tarr's work and the underlying message is consistent with what the author has accustomed us to, an amoral universe populated by calculating humans who live only for the satisfaction of their own interests. Tarr's fundamental disbelief in humanity is not in the least pinched in this light-hearted foray into the detective genre.

Anyone who appreciates the author's skepticism and aesthetic sense will not be disappointed, even though this film is hardly one of Tarr's best. The others will have a slightly easier approach here to the work of the Hungarian, but on the opposite side of a Hollywood thriller.

Beautiful, but way too slow!

[floydwild · 1/10 · 25 July 2008]

I went into this film with high expectations and unfortunately was incredibly disappointed.

The film was beautifully shot and i thought the lighting was particularly amazing.

However the whole film felt like it should have been watched on fast forward, it was the most boring film i have ever seen, it was excruciating! I would rather have every hair individually ripped from my body than watch that film again. Everything about it was slow, the shots, the action, the dialogue. I found myself getting excited when you heard a church bell ring because at least something was happening!

The score didn't help it at all, it had 2 sets of looping music repeated thought the whole film. It was one of those films you find yourself looking around the cinema thinking: I wonder how high up that speaker is? If i jumped off it would it kill me? How do I get up there?!

From the first half hour I wanted to walk out but resisted because I'd heard the film was good and figured it must have an alright ending. Wrong! The film doesn't pick up at all. An hour in and the 2 people on either side off me were asleep. I almost felt jealous of them, at least they weren't being dragged through this.

I like to think I'm not just some ignorant Hollywood film fan, i mean, i love festival films, but watching this was probably the single low point of my life. I mean, there has to be something wrong with this director, at one point he had a 5 minute shot of a door. Just a door. No dialogue. No music. Just a door!

The only thing it has going for it that it is truly beautifully shot. But that is it. If you want to see it, get it on DVD or something and watch it in fast forward.

Bela Tarr you have been blacklisted! I am never seeing anything remotely related to you ever!

Left halfway through...

[benmarshall-2 · 1/10 · 5 August 2008]

...and I NEVER do that at the movies! I saw this at a press screening last night, and all that I can say is anyone who says they enjoyed this film has to either be unbelievably pretentious or just flat-out pretending.

An hour in and NOTHING HAPPENED! Without a doubt the most BORING film I have ever seen. I can't believe I lasted that long without falling asleep, although I did feel my eyes getting frequently heavy.

It also had the most terrible dubbing I've seen in ages, it reminded me of that guy from the Police Academy movies with the voice effects! Tilda Swinton was obviously speaking English because he lips matched the subtitles. Why bother to dub iit into FRENCH (err wasn't this supposed to be a Hungarian film?) and then subtitle it in English?

Avoid like the plague.

A relatively more accessible film, after a 7-year wait, from Bela Tarr

[harry_tk_yung · 3 April 2008]

I watched this film in the Hong Kong International Film Festival where director Bela Tarr, in a brief appearance to an audience of close to 1,000 before the film started, graciously thanked them for coming to watch "a tragedy in black and white" while there are so many vying choices to spend the evening. He then pleaded with the audience (indeed he used the word "beg") to, while watching the film, think of the people therein not just as characters in a film but as real people who well deserve our sympathy despite their shortcomings. It's not for me to second guess the master auteur, but I just thought that because some of his admirers focus so much on his inimitable style and awe-inspiring technique, perhaps he wished to remind them that there is certainly a lot more to his work.

I confess that I have only watched one of the master's films, "Panelkapcsolat" (Prefab people) (1982), one of his earliest work and the first one in which he used professional actors. Depicting the strife and frustration of a working-class family, that film was a harsh reminder of how unpleasant life could be, whether by destiny or by choice. After his widely acclaimed "Werckmeister harmoniak" (2000), his loyal followers had to wait seven years for another full-length feature, "The man from London", which was received with mixed feelings. Some view the noir crime story as a welcomed attempt to be more accessible to the general audience. Others do not like the master's departure from his social and spiritual (not in a religious sense) agenda.

But first of all, the stunning visual is probably still the dominating aspect of this film. Coincidentally, I've very recently watched, belatedly, Akira Kurosawa's "Kagemusha" (1980) and posted an IMDb comment with a summary line "Does Kurosawa really need colour". I am certainly happy that Bela Tarr didn't. The mood created with the marriage of black and white and long shots is absolutely unique, which nobody else can offer. The torturously (or delightfully, depending on the viewer's perspective) long (12 minutes) opening shot from railroad worker Maloin's POV from his monitoring tower will be the talk among Tarr admirers for a long time to come. My particular favourite however is the shot of the protagonist's walk to a store to take his daughter home from an exploitative employer. This one is only a few minutes SHORT, but the camera angle is as close to magical as anything you can find on a movie screen. And one must always remember that there is no editing or cutting in these long shots throughout the film. Come to think of it, the film does not require editing – a good way to cap the budget?

As mentioned, "The man from London" has a plot, a simple one. In the opening sequence mentioned above, we see how Maloin (mostly through his own POV) witnesses a murder and fishes out a briefcase with sixty thousand pounds. The story then develops along two lines: investigation by an inspection from London and Maloin's internal struggle and family problem (Maloin's wife is played by Tilda Swinton, whose appearance unfortunately is close to being cameo). There are other supporting characters, including the murderer and his wife.

Heeding the director's opening remarks, I did pay attention to the characters. One review I subsequently gleaned, talking about the protagonist's misguided greed, compares him to the character played by Billy Bob Thornton in the Coen Brothers' "The man who wasn't there" (2001). But despite my conscious effort to relate to the characters, I found myself mesmerized by the auteur's style and technique above all.