And I'm back, witht the second part of my piece on Werckmeister Harmonies. This is longer than yesterdays, but it is in more parts, and less about theory, so it might seem shorter... If you gave up halfway through, please let me know in the comments. I'm still trying to figure out how to structure this.
The Style
Apparently, Bela Tarr insists that he doesn't make allegories. I'm not sure what to make of that. Taken at face value, Werckmeister Harmonies could seem to be about the evil powers of stuffed whales and Slovakian little people. I really don't hope that is his message. No, there are a lot of allusions and images with a lot of connotations, but most of the times, his images are much too complicated to be seen of as simply 'symbols' or 'allegories'.
To begin with, I feel as if I should use an example to explain what I mean by being too complicated to be symbolism. The opening scene is an example of symbolism. Janos uses different drunks to symbolize the planets of the solar system, and the mystery of an eclipse. If the scene had been perhaps three or four minutes long, that would probably be what we thought it was about. It was foreshadowing. An allegory perhaps. But the camera stays on the drunk men for eleven minutes. At some point, it has stopped uncovering any new levels of symbolism. We get the point. Yet the camera stays. It forces us to in the end see the men for what they are. Notice the smile of the sun. The exasperated look of the barkeeper. And, less fortunately, the bad dubbing of Lars Rudolph... The drunks stop being symbols and become drunks again. This is a feature of the long-shot. Symbols, allegories, metaphors, it is all a question of signification. And when the camera stays with an image, after we have discovered the significance of all the elements, then we are forced to notice the imagery in itself, if we haven't already. When asked why the shot of the men marching from the square to the hospital is so long, Tarr answered that it was because that's how long it took to get there. But the shot also forces us beyond just noticing that they are a mob, and that they signify danger, or perhaps political uprisings, or something. We are forced to pick out the humans from the mob.
In some ways, Tarrs style seem to echo Andrei Tarkovsky, another wilfully obscure Eastern European director, who claimed he never ever used symbolism. Filmic images are inherently too complicated to be symbols. This is not always true – for instance, the image of a cross is pretty easy to see as a symbol – but it is definitely true that visual images has more potential for complexity than written words. Although someone like Thomas Pynchon could be said to use the same kind of strategy, where what at first glance seems like a metaphor sort of takes on a life on it's own, until we cannot conceive it as anything else than as an image. I just opened up Gravitys Rainbow at random, and here is how Roger Mexico describes his loved one Jessica 'She is his deepest innocense in spaces of bough and hay before wishes were given a separate name to warn that they might not come true, and his lithe Parisian daughter of joy, beneath the eternal mirror, foreswearing perfumes, capeskin to the armpits, all that is too easy, for his impoverishment and more worthy love' (p 210 in the Vintage Edition) To begin with, it is a metaphor, but that Parisian daughter is just too detailed to work simply as a symbol. Kinda like the Hungarian drunks are.
These elaborate long takes has become a common feature of Eastern European Cinema, as far as I know dating back to Tarkovsky and Kalatozov, and today also being a fixture in modern Romaniam Cinema and the films of Sokurov. The first important feature of Soviet cinema was something completely opposite, however, namely Eisensteins montage-technique, in which shots gained meaning through being juxtaposed with other shots in agressively cut montages. The long takes does away with the montage almost completely. It is a new way of trying to be realist, that can in no way be said to be like Soviet Realist Movies, but is also very far from Eisenstain or his comtemporaries. Of course, slowness is a feature of arthouse cinema everywhere, I'm not saying it must at all times be an attack on montage. But I think it is at times a reaction against what was once considered 'proper' communist filmmaking. I think it is a huge part of Sokurovs Russian Ark for example, which was completed in a simple take without any cuts whatsoever, and which treats history as jumbled and without any kind of development. But that probably deserves it's own post.
The Whale:
Every reading of Werckmeister Harmonies has to grapple with The Whale. It is just such as striking image, marvelously utilized by the director. And first of all, to claim that The Whale doesn't symbolize anything is just plain wrong. It is shown in the movie to symbolize a lot of things. Janos repeatedly claims, that the whale shows you the greatness of The Lord. Gyuri says the whale is a stage of evolution he would gladly had remained at, which Freud or Lacan would probably see as a longing for the pre-traumatic childhood or something. Other characters see the whale as a symbol of doom. As rotten. When discussing The Whale, it is not wrong to ask what it means. The wrong thing to do, is to ask what it means to Bela Tarr. This is unimportant, as there isn't supposed to be any single authoritative interpretation of The Whale. It is not wrong to ask what it symbolizes to Janos. To Gyuri. To the citizens. To yourself. It is far from certain that you'll agree with me when I say, that I think the whale is at least supposed to invoke the Sublime. Perfection imposible in Werckmeisters tuning. What I think everyone can agree on, is how sad the whale looks. Janos first visit to the whale is – of course – filmed as a single shot. The camera follows Janos into the trailer, and then stays there. For me, the speed with which Janos leaves this magnificent creature makes it even sadder.
The decay of the whale. The sadness of his eyes. All those points to the sad state of the sublime in the world the characters inhabit. It is really in short supply, amidst all the mediocrity.
I would propose that there is an image in the movie, that counterposes the whale: The Helicopter. While the whale is nature, the helicopter is manmade. While the whale is of the ocean, the helicopter is of the air. And while the whale seems sublime, to me the helicopter seems threatening, but slightly banal, as it glides in the air over Janos. It's the banality of evil, if I may use a term from Hannah Arendt, and perhaps plumb into clichéd banality. And of course, on Werckmeisters piano, the banality of evil is unavoidable while the sad and sublime is destroyed.
The Main Character:
When I've read articles about this movie, I have several times seen Janos described as 'not-too-bright' or something like that. It baffles me... Yeah, he is slow, but he is after all a character in a Bela Tarr movie... Far from being slowwitted, he seems to me to be an aspiring intellectual. He is the only curious character in the movie. He is the one who has to show the drunkards about the eclipse, he is the only one who is interested in the whale, he is shown reading a newspaper in a scene, showing that he is also curious about world events. But he has never been allowed to develop his abilities. He is a note in the Werckmeister Harmonies, and have therefore not been able to rise about mediocrity. He is truly a tragic character, marvellously played by Lars Rudolph. In the end, he is in short succession shoved into the only two available roles for the unusual mind in the opressive world he inhabits. First he is the dissident. And thereafter, he is the lunatic. And I'm not sure, but I think it is entirely plausible that he has been lobotomized at the asylum in the end.
The Setting:
I've already sort of talked about this, but the setting of the movie is obviously important. I've seen the settings of Tarrs movies described as being like hell or purgatory, but I have also been to a few small villages in former communist countries, and I don't think Tarrs cities are that far off. Obviously, he makes them seem strange, but the obsesive, slow camera also makes it seem quite defined. It is 'just' a little village, but that shouldn't belittle what happens. Every little village is important. It has significance, not through history or important landmarks, but through the little stories and the little people. It has significance in itself.
The real question is instead, when is this movie? This is what baffles me. Tündes commitée and the military at the end seems to suggest it is set during the communist dictatorship – of course, the easy reading might be that the movie is an allegory of the Soviet invasion of 1956 – but it doesn't really seem like a period piece. Yet again, when was the citizens, even in the smallest cities of Hungary, ever so starved for entertainment, that they would pay to see a whale in a truck? This seems more to me as a Western European, like something out of the 19th century, or from the first half of the 20th at the latest. And why does Gyuri care about a theorist from the 17th century? But the helicopter... That the place is anonymous while the time is rather confused might be simply a necessity – after all, stuff like clothing or interiour says much more about time and place, making it very difficult to attain an 'anonymous' age – but it also creates a setting, where the people and their surroundings seem very defined and important, while the events seem not as important in themselves. It is the consequences of the events, how they change the people and their city, that is the important part, rather than the events themselves.
The Plot:
Strangely, I have also seen the film described as 'plotless'. But it clearly has progression and development. Not many characters go through the movie unchanged, some of them end up severely changed from the beginning. What the film lacks, however, is any clear-cut causality in it's progression. It can therefore be said to lack a 'narrative' in the way that great historical events have mostly been narrativized. It doesn't progress with any kind of internal sense. This is extremely important, and it is a huge reason why the film must not be considered as some simple political allegory. It is rather an a-political allegory, if it is anything. We are not supposed to define, that the uprising of the people are an allegory for the danger of 'capitalist spectacle' (the circus) or foreign interventions (the Slovakian 'Prince') or Tündes cabal of militant cleanliness. No. It is not meant to be a political film. Rather, for me, the meaning is, that whatever causes violence, the effects are always the same. The weak will be hurt. The potential intellectuals will be punished. Beauty will be destroyed.
Some might say that the events are apocalyptic in some way. That the film shows 'the end of days' or something like that. I don't think so. The film might show a end of days, but not the end of days. It perhaps seems plausible to think of Bela Tarr as a religious filmmaker. With filmtitles such as Damnation and Satantango, that seems about right. And to be honest, I cannot entirely deny that there might be a religious element to this movie, Janos seems awfully Christlike in the end. But I do not think that this reading is very interesting. Janos is only a martyr insofar as he is a scapegoat. The importance is not in the absence of meaning, as that would immediately push the events into the sphere of the mystical. The importance is the abundance of meaning, and the resulting uncertainty of meaning.
However, there is an important allusion in some of the proposed causes for the uprising. We are probably not supposed to see the notion of an uprising caused by a stuffed whale and a 3 feet tall Slovakian as attacking capitalism or the nobility or anything. But I would think we are supposed to notice the absurdity of this proposed conspiracy. Which immediately brings to mind the absurd allegations thought up in countless cases against people during dictatorships anywhere. Yes, the conspiracy at the heart of the film is implausible. But so was the conspiracies which the Soviet Secret Service apparently uncovered during the purges of the thirties. No matter what the causes, of course it will all come down on poor Janos. The curious, kind, slightly naive wanna-be intellectual.
Also, while we don't know the cause of the uprising, we know why it stops. The naked old man. But what does he mean? Is he innocence? I can't look at his horribly thin body without being reminded of the camps, and all the connotations connected to them. He seems like the ultimate victim. Killing him would be the ultimate crime. And when the mob realize that this is what they've come to, the people turn around. Perhaps it shows the importance of history? If we remember atrocities, we might not commit them again? The people doesn't recognize the steps to atrocities, but they recognize when the effects have become to severe. Again, purporting the importance of showing the effects of ideologies and regimes, rather than their causes. Perhaps.
Apparantly, at a film festival, someone asked Bela Tarr 'Where is the hope?' But when the mob is topped by an innocent old man, that to me is not just hopeful, that is to me almost naive. And very, very, humanistic.
A Limited Conclusion:
Werckmeister Harmonies destabilizes signification. And it points to the trouble with narratives. Is it a Postmodern film? In some ways. I do believe, that the film has taken to heart certain deconstructivist lessons by Derrida and Lyotard and other likeminded Frenchmen. But in other ways, it is very far from what we normally consider postmodernist. Postmodernism is normally thought of as being superficial and ironic. If that is the case, then no postmodernist movie could ever contain the sadness within Werckmeister Harmonies. In fact, it might be more appropriate to consider the film as trying to reestablish meaning in an uncertain, non-narrative world. The camera insists on the importance of the people. The people matter, and they are the foundations of all that matter. If the word had no connotations attached to it, I wouldn't mind calling this movie 'reconstructivist'. It takes a world that seems meaningless, and creates it's own meaning in it.
More important, however, is that I think it is a masterful movie. In a lot of articles, the purely technical aspects has been thrown around. Yes, there are only 39 shots in a 140 minute movie. But that isn't really what is impressive. I could film 39 shots of stuff for a few minutes each, and recreate the experience. The impressive part is how extremely immersive and emotional this slow, meandering, 'artful' film is. The sad drunks in the opening shot. Or the concerned looks of Janos as Gyuri is stopped up by the complaining citizens. It is a marvelous movie. And I would think it is so successful because it insists on the importance of it's characters, in all their dull, inglorious life. The film very clearly shows melodies played out in Werckmeisters harmonies. But it insists that even the most mediocre melody has it's importance anyway. And with that banality, I will - finally - stop.
[Part I: The Title]
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