Metacritic Film

Werckmeister Harmonies

Starring Lars Rudolph, Peter Fitz, Hanna Schygulla, János Derzsi, and Djoko Rosic

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Anthology Film Archives
Drama
145 minutes | B/W
Germany / France / Hungary
Released In Theaters October 10, 2001

Based on László Krasznahorkai's novel "The Melancholy of Resistance," this is an uncanny fable about powerlessness and tyranny. Set in a small Hungarian village at a moment of great crisis, a mysterious circus comes to town with a giant whale and news of an appearance by a Prince known for his strange powers. Soon the locals' emotions are stirred to a fever pitch of anticipation. (Anthology Film Archives)

WRITTEN BY
Béla Tarr
László Krasznahorkai (novel The Melancholy of Resistance)
Péter Dobai, Gyuri Dósa Kiss, and György Fehér (additional dialogue)

DIRECTED BY
Béla Tarr
Ágnes Hranitzky

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

92 / 100

Critic Reviews

100 Christian Science Monitor
This is as challenging as movies come, alluding to everything from philosopher Thomas Hobbes to the history of Western music.
100 San Francisco Chronicle
An indelible statement on loneliness and spiritual thirst.
100 New York Post
While Tarr's newest epic, Werckmeister Harmonies, isn't intended for the shopping-mall crowd, it is more viewer-friendly and will please adventurous moviegoers.
90 New Times (L.A.)
The pacing is slow, but the film is entrancing and earns a permanent place in the viewer's mind.
90 The New York Times
Mysterious, poetic and allusive, The Werckmeister Harmonies beckons filmgoers who complain of the vapidity of Hollywood movie making and yearn for a film to ponder and debate.
90 Variety
A stunning feature -- another hypnotic meditation on popular demagogy and mental manipulation.
80 Village Voice
A work of bravura filmmaking.
80 TV Guide
The film could easily be reduced to a parable of post-Communist Eastern Europe, but the allegory digs deeper into the very order of things, exemplified by 17th-century musicologist Andreas Werckmeister's arbitrary imposition of a "tempered" tonal system over naturally occurring tunings.

CLOSE THIS WINDOW

©2009 CNET Networks Inc. All rights reserved.