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Piano Tuner of Earthquakes, The
Zeitgeist Films


5.4

based on 14 reviews
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How did we calculate this?

based on 5 votes
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MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Starring Amira Casar, Gottfried John, Assumpta Serna, César Saracho, Ljubisa Gruicic, Marc Bischoff, Henning Peker, and Gilles Gavois

The breathtakingly beautiful and long-awaited second feature from the Brothers Quay. On the eve of her wedding, the beautiful opera singer Malvina is mysteriously killed and abducted by a malevolent Dr. Droz. Felisberto, an innocent piano tuner, is summoned to Droz's secluded villa to service his strange musical automatons. Little by little Felisberto learns of the doctor's plans to stage a "diabolical opera" and of Malvina's fate. He secretly conspires to rescue her, only to become trapped himself in the web of Droz's perverse universe. (Zeitgeist Films)

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Foreign \| Romance
WRITTEN BY:	Alan Passes Stephen Quay Timothy Quay
DIRECTED BY:	Stephen Quay Timothy Quay
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: April 24, 2007 Theatrical: November 17, 2006
RUNNING TIME:	99 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	Germany / UK / France

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Los Angeles Times Kristine McKenna

Those who can surrender to the Quays' poetic logic will find The Piano Tuner to be nothing short of a masterpiece.

The New York Times Jeannette Catsoulis

Flaunting elements of "Phantom of the Opera" and "The Island of Lost Souls," the movie, with its haunting, claustrophobic environment, allows the living and the merely lifelike to interact with an eerie beauty.

The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett

The film is about vanity and pride, and the caging of beauty. Its elaborate fabrication has an intoxicating quality that captures the imagination like all good horror stories.

New York Post V.A. Musetto

Mainstream audiences will be put off by the lack of a straightforward narrative, but adventurous moviegoers will find pleasure in the hypnotic originality of the images.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Seething with suggestions of perverse pleasures and inchoate horror, this dark fairy tale won't win the Pennsylvania-born, London-based Quay brothers any new fans -- it plays to the converted, and the converted know who they are.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Their film is a fiendishly detailed toy -- the sort found at the back of a forgotten museum -- and while the shadow play it presents is an old and eternal one, you never cease to hear the whirr of the gears.

Variety Leslie Felperin

Impresses as a visually exquisite, rigorously intellectual but dauntingly obscurantist fable about automatons, opera singers and herniated desire that will appeal exclusively to arthouse auds with rarefied tastes.

Village Voice Karen Wilson

The story--is only important in that it gives the Quays a foundation for their fabulous animated tableaux.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Like a dream, this film is wispy and ethereal; like a nightmare, it lodges in your hindbrain and gnaws away with gleeful abandon.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

The result is a cast of characters who are little better than automatons themselves. This wouldn't be a problem if the rest of the film were as captivating as it was surely meant to be. Instead, the Quays work overtime to make both their story line and images as obscure as possible.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Perhaps the film will connect with those attuned to the Quays' allusive wavelength, much as a dog responds to a whistle. Others won't hear a thing.

LA Weekly Tim Grierson

Once the Quay brothers confidently establish their film's astonishing look, they merely repeat their techniques until the images no longer delight or surprise, leaving all too visible the Quays' struggles with the trickier demands of storytelling and character development.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

With the film's hypnotic emphasis on artistry and architecture, most viewers will probably get their satisfaction from the striking visual elements, particularly the stop-motion animation.

Film Threat Phil Hall

By the end of the 99 minute running time, there is a terrible sense of been-there/done-that. And for artists of the Quays' caliber, that is a huge mistake.

The average user rating for this movie is 5.4 (out of 10) based on 5 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Chad S. gave it a4:
Is Adolfo(Saracho Cesar) dead, too? Who knows? "The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes" is beautiful to look at, but the story is needlessly opaque and arch. Why does Droz(John Gottfried) invite Adolfo to tune his "automotons" if he has it in mind to keep these former lovers apart? Trying to differentiate and identify the multiple planes of existence in this fantastical world is exhausting, and frankly just not worth it. The unique animation that these gifted artists are renown for would've been better served had the narrative not been so off-puttingly obscure. Poetic logic is fine for a short film, but all that enigmatic dialogue, non-linear storytelling, and ambitious editing choices(I think it might be in the early-Russian tradition) becomes a chore to sit through at full-feature length. "The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes" is purely an intellectual moviegoing experience. There is not a single moment that will elicit any sort of emotion from the viewer.

Margaret L. gave it a2:
The Quay brothers should stick to their original actors, puppets. They seem unable to direct living, breathing people.

James S gave it a10:
This is an amazing, unusual film, worth seeing for the art direction alone. The critics are right that it won't appeal to everyone, and honestly, I don't even know what to compare it to. Maybe that's one of the best compliments I can give to this film. It is extremely original, surreal and exquisitely beautiful.

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Piano Tuner of Earthquakes, The Zeitgeist Films

Piano Tuner of Earthquakes, The
Zeitgeist Films