THE MAN FROM LONDON d: Béla Tarr

A londoni férfi / The Man from London (2007)
Direction: Béla Tarr
Screenplay: Béla Tarr and László Krasznahorkai; from Georges Simenon’s novel
Cast: Miroslav Krobot, Tilda Swinton, Ági Szirtes, János Derzsi, Erika Bók, István Lénárt
 

 

By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
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 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 as such. While there are artworks for which the opening plaint is valid, far more often the correct plaint is [...]

THE MAN FROM LONDON Review II

THE MAN FROM LONDON: Part I
From Satantango, Tarr does the almost inverse of what he did with the Damnation sequence, taking several great scenes of people at a bar, and invoking a similar scene in a pool hall in The Man from London. But unlike a similar single scene in Werckmeister Harmonies, which illuminates the lead character’s inner self, the sequence in The Man from London plays as a sort of grotesque bit, tossed in just for shock value.
In Satantango, the bar scenes play out much longer; one scene, in particular, is shown from two different perspectives at two different points in the film. This causes a parallax that is absent in the pool hall scene, which also fails [...]