From the Collection: Werckmeister Harmonies

Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky’s Werckmeister Harmonies is one of the newest films added to the Criterion Collection.

Adapted from a novel by László Krasznahorkai, Werckmeister Harmonies unfolds in an unknown time in an unnamed village in Hungary, where, one day, a mysterious circus—complete with an enormous stuffed whale and a shadowy, demagogue-like figure known as the Prince—arrives and appears to awaken a kind of madness in the citizens that builds inexorably toward violence. Shot in stark black-and-white and in a mere thirty-nine hypnotic long takes, auteur Béla Tarr and codirector-editor Ágnes Hranitzky conjure an apocalyptic vision of dreamlike dread and fathomless beauty.

Here’s what the disc includes:

• New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Béla Tarr, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Family Nest (1979), Tarr’s first feature film
• New interview with Tarr by film critic Scott Foundas
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by film programmer and critic Dennis Lim
• Cover art by Polly Dedman

Werckmeister Harmonies is one of the most highly-regarded films of the twenty-first century and one of the most confounding films I think I have ever watched. The film challenges you in ways you don’t see in movies nowadays. The themes of the film are vague and it’s one of those movies where everyone who watches it will come away with something different. For me, it was the idea of chaos in the world of order that struck me and this theme feels as relevant as ever over twenty years later. Tarr and Hranitzky slowly reveal the events that happen and the film becomes more and more intense and captivating with every scene, culminating in a sequence where an angry mob tears apart a hospital that is one of the most unsettling scenes I have ever seen in a movie. This is a masterwork in directing, with Tarr and Hranitzky using long takes that can feel uncomfortable, terrifying, and confusing, but each one being as gripping as the previous one. This is not an easy movie to shake and should be essential viewing for anyone who takes film seriously as an art form.

The film is a visual stunner. The black-and-white is beautiful and the 4k restoration pops even more. The dubbing of the film and the ADR was off in some scenes, which was a little distracting and took me out of the hypnotic trance in some scenes. Not sure if that was an issue with the film or an issue with the disc restoration, but that’s the only issue I saw while viewing the film. 

Werckmeister Harmonies is another reason why the Criterion Collection is essential to keeping cinema history alive. I’m not sure I would have seen this film otherwise, but because of Criterion, I was able to view it in the best quality possible and witness an astounding piece of cinema that I will be thinking about for a long time.

You can buy the Criterion edition of Werckmeister Harmonies at the Criterion website or anywhere Criterion Collection movies are sold.

More From the Collection

Imitation of Life

Three Colors Trilogy

Last Hurrah for Chivilary

The Fisher King

Targets

One False Move

Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams

Drylongso

The Runner

From the Collection is an analysis piece of non-new-release movies, whether seen on DVD, streaming, or in a theater, and includes a brief history of the film, a review of the film, and content about the experience of seeing the film and/or the contents of the film’s DVD.

Follow Kevflix on Twitter, Instagram, and Letterboxd @kevflix and Facebook by searching Kevflix.