Werckmeister Harmonies

A philosophizing postman (Janos Valuska) is stirred, along with the rest of the members of his Eastern European village, by the arrival of the circus (with an extended panel truck hauling a whale as its centerpiece) and a nihilistic prophet. Bela Tarr's challenging but rewarding Werckmeister Harmonies generates scenes of wonder with great camerawork and a sparing using of Mihaly Vig's profound score (the opening is worth the price of admission alone) and is interspersed with other protracted, dull sequences.  Valuska is expressive and just right for the role.

*** 1/2 out of ****

The Turin Horse

The narrator informs of a story involving German philosopher Friedrich Nietzche who, upon seeing a horse whipped by his master near his country home in Turin in 1889, sunk into a deep, near inconsolable depression. The film then follows the cab driver to his desolate country home where he wallows in misery with his daughter, a scene we get to regard for the next three hours. After watching "The Turin Horse", supposedly the last film (fingers crossed) for acclaimed Hungarian director Bela Tarr, I quickly googled "synonyms for snail's pace" as I did not want to be insulting towards snails when referencing this films interminable plotting. When carping about Michael Bay films and the like, whose films contain a cut about every three seconds, we should be equally weary of faux art films like this, here containing only approximately thirty shots, feigning to tell a story, and dragging on seemingly forever. "The Turin Horse" is a resoundingly bleak and pretentious bore, which Tarr clearly thought was his great final statement. Maybe if he would have made the film about Nietzche.