Bela Tarr is a Hungarian director renowned for his minimalism and extremely long shots. His films have shocked the world - especially the incredible length (7h 15 minutes) of his magnum opus Sátántangó (1994) - with their ambiguity and uniqueness. In his films Tarr combines tragic elements with absurdly comic, but there's never linear dramatic structure. His art is a combination of Tarkovsky's slow, monotonous shots and camera movement, and Bresson's static camera that picks small details for us to observe. In the aesthetics of Tarr the states start turning into physical places and details become more than important. The Man from London was his first international film, followed by The Turin Horse (2010) which is - according to Tarr - his final film.
After Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) it took five years for Tarr to get a chance to work with a feature-length film. In 2005 Tarr started to film The Man from London but the producer suddenly committed a suicide. After emotional and financial difficulties the film got a new producer and was finished in 2007. It's minimalist as usual but has surprisingly many dramatic ingredients for Tarr: A man lives in the island of Corsica with his wife and daughter. He works at the dock, supervising it and its train service. One day he witnesses a crime from his glass ivory tower; two men fight because of a suitcase and the other dies. The man takes advantage of this situation and goes to pick up the case - full of money.
The crime plot is just part of the frame-story, even that the cinematography is at times very noir-like, as it was in Tarr's earlier film Damnation (1988). It's quite an unusual story for him but it's not the story that fascinates us. It's the images, sound-scape and the wonderful entirety. Bela Tarr's work can easily be separated into two parts: The first consists of his Hungarian features that tried to depict social reality through documentary-like style. The second was opened by Damnation (1988) where the films turned black-and-white, dramatic ingredients were cut to minimum and the length of the shots grew. Sátántangó was the culmination of this profound aesthetic reorientation.
Another difference between these two eras is the depiction of time and place. The documentary-like fictions were set in certain cities, depicting the Hungarian reality. But in the second part the milieus turned into unclear rural communities which tried to depict a more universal and abstract world. The Man from London doesn't exactly take place in countryside as Damnation, Sátántangó and Werckmeister Harmonies do, but it also portrays an abstract world. The characters live in a rural community; general stores, old shacks and run-down clothes. The East-European reality exhaled from Tarr's Hungarian films but The Man from London is strictly universal with its pessimistic world view and depiction of essential themes of humanity.
There are many things that could be brought up about the film, such as the brilliant development of aesthetics and the construction of the state, the relation between sound and image, and the time of the film. But perhaps the most important thing is how the cinematographer, Fred Kelemen, uses light. As we know film is art of light, and it feels that no one else understands it as beautifully as Bela Tarr does today. This is another strong parallel to Andrei Tarkovsky who's probably Tarr's biggest influence. Just as in the films by Tarkovsky (especially in Nostalghia and The Sacrifice) in The Man from London, the state builds up and develops through light. Once the viewer can see a luminous - ethereal - state and then suddenly it changes to a dark one, full of agony and despair. The ending is one extremely intriguing example of this. As the camera first films the face of the woman and then the image overexposes. In cinema it is very important whether you fade to black or overexpose the image to an ethereal state. The significance of the state should not be forgotten, as film is both art of light and art of state. The Man from London is a unique masterpiece for its style, content and philosophy. It's Kafkaesque for its absurd black-humor and existentialist for its philosophy of film and characterization; we're thrown into the world, doomed to be free and forced to give our life a meaning. Existentialism and the absurdity of being are all part of Bela Tarr's art, and it reinforces the desolate despair in his films.
Bela Tarr hardly ever cuts (the film lasts for over two hours and consists of 26 shots) but he uses a lot of internal montage; when the camera moves the dimensions of the image change and the entire state changes, without a cut. The film is Bressonian minimalist and Tarkovskyan poetic; it's important to see that Tarr doesn't try to reach realism nor naturalism. The Man from London is very expressionistic for its cinematographic style and visuals but there is something more in the black-and-white images than just aesthetic styling. Color is an over-naturalist element for Tarr and using black-and-white film he makes it sure that the reality of cinema and the Reality remain separated.
It's a film where nothing happens but where, on the other hand, everything happens. The Man from London has an inconsolable world view and disconsolate despair. It's incredibly pessimistic depicting the hopelessness of the world and the decay of morality. All the characters of it live in an unclear place but are all trapped. They can't move forward; they're stuck in their desolate situations and are pretty much going to die in them. The protagonist feels powerful at his work, he supervises and controls the environment but at home, in his personal life, he can't come to terms with his existence and is unable of facing his troubles - he is a prisoner of his own limited world. Optimism for a better life, the hope for something better changes him, and his morality.
After Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) it took five years for Tarr to get a chance to work with a feature-length film. In 2005 Tarr started to film The Man from London but the producer suddenly committed a suicide. After emotional and financial difficulties the film got a new producer and was finished in 2007. It's minimalist as usual but has surprisingly many dramatic ingredients for Tarr: A man lives in the island of Corsica with his wife and daughter. He works at the dock, supervising it and its train service. One day he witnesses a crime from his glass ivory tower; two men fight because of a suitcase and the other dies. The man takes advantage of this situation and goes to pick up the case - full of money.
The crime plot is just part of the frame-story, even that the cinematography is at times very noir-like, as it was in Tarr's earlier film Damnation (1988). It's quite an unusual story for him but it's not the story that fascinates us. It's the images, sound-scape and the wonderful entirety. Bela Tarr's work can easily be separated into two parts: The first consists of his Hungarian features that tried to depict social reality through documentary-like style. The second was opened by Damnation (1988) where the films turned black-and-white, dramatic ingredients were cut to minimum and the length of the shots grew. Sátántangó was the culmination of this profound aesthetic reorientation.
Another difference between these two eras is the depiction of time and place. The documentary-like fictions were set in certain cities, depicting the Hungarian reality. But in the second part the milieus turned into unclear rural communities which tried to depict a more universal and abstract world. The Man from London doesn't exactly take place in countryside as Damnation, Sátántangó and Werckmeister Harmonies do, but it also portrays an abstract world. The characters live in a rural community; general stores, old shacks and run-down clothes. The East-European reality exhaled from Tarr's Hungarian films but The Man from London is strictly universal with its pessimistic world view and depiction of essential themes of humanity.
There are many things that could be brought up about the film, such as the brilliant development of aesthetics and the construction of the state, the relation between sound and image, and the time of the film. But perhaps the most important thing is how the cinematographer, Fred Kelemen, uses light. As we know film is art of light, and it feels that no one else understands it as beautifully as Bela Tarr does today. This is another strong parallel to Andrei Tarkovsky who's probably Tarr's biggest influence. Just as in the films by Tarkovsky (especially in Nostalghia and The Sacrifice) in The Man from London, the state builds up and develops through light. Once the viewer can see a luminous - ethereal - state and then suddenly it changes to a dark one, full of agony and despair. The ending is one extremely intriguing example of this. As the camera first films the face of the woman and then the image overexposes. In cinema it is very important whether you fade to black or overexpose the image to an ethereal state. The significance of the state should not be forgotten, as film is both art of light and art of state. The Man from London is a unique masterpiece for its style, content and philosophy. It's Kafkaesque for its absurd black-humor and existentialist for its philosophy of film and characterization; we're thrown into the world, doomed to be free and forced to give our life a meaning. Existentialism and the absurdity of being are all part of Bela Tarr's art, and it reinforces the desolate despair in his films.
Bela Tarr hardly ever cuts (the film lasts for over two hours and consists of 26 shots) but he uses a lot of internal montage; when the camera moves the dimensions of the image change and the entire state changes, without a cut. The film is Bressonian minimalist and Tarkovskyan poetic; it's important to see that Tarr doesn't try to reach realism nor naturalism. The Man from London is very expressionistic for its cinematographic style and visuals but there is something more in the black-and-white images than just aesthetic styling. Color is an over-naturalist element for Tarr and using black-and-white film he makes it sure that the reality of cinema and the Reality remain separated.
It's a film where nothing happens but where, on the other hand, everything happens. The Man from London has an inconsolable world view and disconsolate despair. It's incredibly pessimistic depicting the hopelessness of the world and the decay of morality. All the characters of it live in an unclear place but are all trapped. They can't move forward; they're stuck in their desolate situations and are pretty much going to die in them. The protagonist feels powerful at his work, he supervises and controls the environment but at home, in his personal life, he can't come to terms with his existence and is unable of facing his troubles - he is a prisoner of his own limited world. Optimism for a better life, the hope for something better changes him, and his morality.