Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Kinley This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

lasttimeisaw Admittedly it is daunting to start watching my very first Béla Tarr's works (with his wife and longtime editor Ágnes Hranitzky credited as the co-director), who has already retreated to a permanent retirement in filmmaking after THE TURIN HORSE (2011), as his oeuvre is mostly notorious for stirring audience's usual viewing habits with long takes exceedingly overstay their length of tolerance, a mixed anticipation and perturbation has overtaken me when I selected his lesser praised 2007 feature as the very first introduction piece, rarely I was in such a state before even embarking on the ritual of watching a film.I would be dishonest if I say that the opening 13-minutes long take doesn't put me into a split second of slumber severe times, but how can anyone not to be flabbergasted by its solemn chiaroscuro grandeur, rigorously composed to illustrate a key event without spoon- feeding what is happening to audience, it is a paradigm-shifting innovation deserves admiration and endorsement, and more impressive in Tarr's long takes are not counter- narrative, in fact, he meticulously orchestrates the narrative within the long-takes, invites audience to be fully aware of our own self-consciousness towards the happenings on the screen during the overlong shots, particularly when framing at the back of characters' heads or the ones linger on characters' facial expressions as if they are tableaux vivants after the dramatic occurrences.Once I passed the early stage of maladjustment, the film tends to be rather galvanising (an accomplishment should also be ascribed to composer Mihály Vig's resounding score with accordion or pipe organ), adapted from Belgian writer Georges Simenon's 1934 French novel 1934 L'HOMME DE LONDRES, Tarr transmutes the thrilling plot to an existential quest of our protagonist Maloin (Krobot), who has incidentally discovered a windfall after witnessing a murder during his night shift as a switchman in a French-speaking port town where a harbour and the wagon station are conveniently located with each other. The subsequent storyline involves the investigation of a senior detective Thompson (Lénárt) from London and domestic wrangles with his overwrought wife Camélia (Swinton) when he splurges their money wantonly, plus the British murderer Brown (Derzsi) is very eager to get the money back. Tarr avoids any choppy development devices to pander for audience's attention span, he cooks up an equivocal scenario in the end, we never know the critical event happened inside the hut (Brown's hideout) as Tarr's camera fixates itself firmly outside the hut with its door closed, and regarding to Maloin's following behaviour, after knowing his character for almost 2-hours, each of us can give various motivations contingent on our viewings of the incident Tarr ingeniously chooses not to show us. The film is infamous also for the suicide of its producer Humbert Balson in 2005, just before the shooting due to the apparent financial burdens of Tarr's hefty Corsican setting, so the reality check is even grimmer than the formidable fiction. What can I say? My gut feeling tells me I'm officially on board with Tarr's filmic methodology and all the trappings, his sui generis aesthetic language soundingly enshrines his filmography into the lofty tier of contemporary auteurism and maybe one day he will curtain his retirement and surprise us if inspiration strikes!

Cosmoeticadotcom Style over substance.That is the plaint of many a critic when they come across a film or book or any work of art they simply do not like, but which has undeniable merit, at least technically, if not in a few other measures, as well. But, the fact is that my opening words have little to do with most of the gripes labeled such. In fact, the reality is that while there indeed are such artworks for which the opening plaint is valid, far more often the correct plaint is good style, poor execution. Perhaps I have not encountered before a better example of this than the latest film by Hungarian director Bela Tarr, 2007's The Man From London (A Londoni Férfi). Anyone familiar with any of the later films of Bela Tarr, when he reputedly became Bela Tarr- filmmeister, will recognize that, stylistically, this film is brilliant. Where it fails, however, is in the way most films fail- a poor screenplay; and in the way that great filmmakers often do, once they've reached a certain artistic level- they start ripping off their own greater, earlier works (and this is a Tarr work, through and through- despite the claim that Ágnes Hranitzky was a co-director).As for the DVD, put out by Artificial Eye, in Region 2, its subpar re: their usual quality. The DVD subtitles and dubbing, as mentioned, are bad, although only the subtitles would be the DVD's fault. The film is shown in a 16:9 aspect ratio. But the package comes with very skimpy extras- a mediocre interview with Tarr, who lapses between English and Hungarian, and not even a booklet nor theatrical trailer, much less an audio commentary. Even the DVD sleeve wrongly lists the film's time at approximately 90 minutes. This is true if 130 minutes, or 40 minutes' leeway can be considered approximate.Also annoying is scanning the reviews of the film and seeing so may critics caught cheating, yet again. I hate critical cribbing- the practice of not even engaging a work of art, but merely copying ideas or claims made by others and grafting them into one's own work. The two most egregious examples of this that stick in my craw are the claims regarding character names that simply are not so in Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup and Alain Resnais's Last Year In Marienbad. This practice shows why criticism has fallen to desuetude in most cultural contexts. In this film, the most repeated error is one grafted from the film's ad campaign- that there was a murder. Yet, seemingly no critics have watched the scene of the fight on the pier, nor recognized that there is no visual evidence of foul play in the presumed death of Brown. So, why repeat these fallacies? My guess is that, as film critic Ray Carney has often noted, most of what passes for film criticism, these days, is merely a variant form of the film's advertising campaign. And this ties back to the idea that this film is all about style over substance. Yes, there's not much substance to this film, but had it been better executed, in terms of the mise-en-scenes, the scoring, a lack of poor self-plagiarism, etc., the thin substance of the film would have been a non-issue. Some defenders of the film even try to gloss over the poor screenplay by claiming the plot simply 'meander.' But this is no more or less true than in any other of Tarr's films. It has no qualitative bearing on why this film fails and the others succeed, often brilliantly. No, meandering is not its sin, unconnectedness is. The individual scenes (no matter if well or poorly crafted) never cohere with each other; they are a jagged hodgepodge. The upshot is that Tarr may be on a long downward slide from here. I hope not, for the sake of cinema, but he just seems to have nothing left to say and no original ways to say it. Werckmeister Harmonies may have been his acme. And calling a black and white film, set mostly at night, a film noir, does not cover its sins. It simply is not film noir, not even by Tarrian standards. Perhaps the attempt to make a film noir so perplexed Tarr that it is the main reason for this film's failing, but that is speculation, not criticism. Tarr is famously quoted in an interview as stating, 'I believe that you keep making the same film throughout your whole life.' More accurately, this film disproves that, unless one equates self-plagiarism from better works with making the same film.Nevertheless, as disappointing as The Man From London is, it is not the total garbage that most Hollywood films ejaculate into the culture. It is only a 'relative' failure, from an acknowledged master of the art form; therefore, still a good, solid film, and one worth watching, if only to use as a ground in comparison to his better, earlier films. And, hopefully, like Ceylan- from his last film, Tarr will recognize this failure, and return to his better form in his next film. That's one lesson Hollywood never seems to learn.

Harry T. Yung I watched this film in the Hong Kong International Film Festival where director Bela Tarr, in a brief appearance to an audience of close to 1,000 before the film started, graciously thanked them for coming to watch "a tragedy in black and white" while there are so many vying choices to spend the evening. He then pleaded with the audience (indeed he used the word "beg") to, while watching the film, think of the people therein not just as characters in a film but as real people who well deserve our sympathy despite their shortcomings. It's not for me to second guess the master auteur, but I just thought that because some of his admirers focus so much on his inimitable style and awe-inspiring technique, perhaps he wished to remind them that there is certainly a lot more to his work.I confess that I have only watched one of the master's films, "Panelkapcsolat" (Prefab people) (1982), one of his earliest work and the first one in which he used professional actors. Depicting the strife and frustration of a working-class family, that film was a harsh reminder of how unpleasant life could be, whether by destiny or by choice. After his widely acclaimed "Werckmeister harmoniak" (2000), his loyal followers had to wait seven years for another full-length feature, "The man from London", which was received with mixed feelings. Some view the noir crime story as a welcomed attempt to be more accessible to the general audience. Others do not like the master's departure from his social and spiritual (not in a religious sense) agenda.But first of all, the stunning visual is probably still the dominating aspect of this film. Coincidentally, I've very recently watched, belatedly, Akira Kurosawa's "Kagemusha" (1980) and posted an IMDb comment with a summary line "Does Kurosawa really need colour". I am certainly happy that Bela Tarr didn't. The mood created with the marriage of black and white and long shots is absolutely unique, which nobody else can offer. The torturously (or delightfully, depending on the viewer's perspective) long (12 minutes) opening shot from railroad worker Maloin's POV from his monitoring tower will be the talk among Tarr admirers for a long time to come. My particular favourite however is the shot of the protagonist's walk to a store to take his daughter home from an exploitative employer. This one is only a few minutes SHORT, but the camera angle is as close to magical as anything you can find on a movie screen. And one must always remember that there is no editing or cutting in these long shots throughout the film. Come to think of it, the film does not require editing – a good way to cap the budget? As mentioned, "The man from London" has a plot, a simple one. In the opening sequence mentioned above, we see how Maloin (mostly through his own POV) witnesses a murder and fishes out a briefcase with sixty thousand pounds. The story then develops along two lines: investigation by an inspection from London and Maloin's internal struggle and family problem (Maloin's wife is played by Tilda Swinton, whose appearance unfortunately is close to being cameo). There are other supporting characters, including the murderer and his wife.Heeding the director's opening remarks, I did pay attention to the characters. One review I subsequently gleaned, talking about the protagonist's misguided greed, compares him to the character played by Billy Bob Thornton in the Coen Brothers' "The man who wasn't there" (2001). But despite my conscious effort to relate to the characters, I found myself mesmerized by the auteur's style and technique above all.

zetes Tarr returns after a long absence. Unfortunately, it's not up to par. Well, I should say, I have much of the same problem with this film that I do with all of Tarr's films. I'm certainly not his biggest fan anyway. I love his aesthetic, and would definitely call him a genius just for his visual prowess. It's so extremely original. And he's so good at setting mood, although I should say that the mood of all of his films, at least his later, more well known films, is pretty close to the same. Dark, cold, lonely, the drudgery of life, etc. But as soon as the characters start to speak, I stop paying attention. I find most of the actual words of Tarr's films uninteresting, and, when the characters are talking, I start to realize that I don't find these people that interesting. They may look interesting, as Tarr captures their essence in severe close-ups, but they never say anything interesting. The Man of London unwisely adds plot to the mix. Tarr's earlier films have a wonderful meandering quality, where it feels like he's just capturing people going about their lives. That is true here to an extent, but this one has a pretty clear plot structure, and one that's been told often before: a man finds a pile of money that belongs to crooks, and he pays for it. It's not plot driven by any means, but that skeletal plot is followed, and it makes the film less interesting than Tarr's other films. Also, Tilda Swinton shows up as the protagonist's wife in what amounts to a cameo (she has about five minutes of screen time in this 2 hour and 12 minute film), and it's pretty distracting. There's a cute little nod to Satantango at one point, where people in a bar dance like they did in that behemoth. Also, the little girl with the cat from Satantango shows up as the protagonist's daughter. It's weird, because she looks exactly the same, except she's a woman now. A very, very creepy woman. Who probably still kills cats when nobody's looking.