The very first image filling up the screen in Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky's Werkmeister Harmonies is a crackling fire. It's poked and prodded enough to keep the light flickering while this domicile shuts down for the evening. Before everyone departs, János Valuska (Lars Rudolph) is encouraged to put on a show. Put on the spot, Valuska conjures up a storyline involving the solar system. Various patrons are then assigned roles as the sun, planets, and stars. Both the fire and this performance are captured in a single extended take, as is customary for Tarr's works. The Satantango mastermind loves his lengthy unblinking shots!
This single opening image establishes that control is a key theme in Werkmeister Harmonies. After all, Tarr and Hranitzsky begin the production with displays of human beings trying to control the natural elements and other people. Valuska’s eventually dwindling performance reflects how futile that can be. Yet humanity keeps trying to control everything. It’s one of our worst impulses. Such dark proclivities define Werkmeister Harmonies. Tarr’s trademark despair-ridden air is informed by a key line dropped late in the runtime: “he who is afraid know nothing.”
The next day, Valuska goes about his rounds in his small Hungarian town, a place already dripping with apocalyptic dread. Surrogate father figure György Eszter (Peter Fritz) is the primary focus of Valuska's entire existence, as is delivering newspapers. While doing his rounds, Valuska discovers a circus has come to the town. This event promises folks a glimpse at a massive whale and a performer known as "The Prince." His neighbors begin whispering about how terrifying the folks in this operation are. Meanwhile, growing resentment towards this town’s shortcomings has left the populace vulnerable to exploitation. Everyone’s looking for a scapegoat. “The Prince” can give them one through his rhetoric.
Werkmeister Harmonies' most terrifying sequences depict how often people in compromised positions seek hierarchal power rather than equality. They yearn for the opportunity to feel superior to somebody, especially if that somebody can also be the source of all their anguish. It’s interesting, then, that Valuska is an exception to this rule. As he gazes upon the gigantic whale at this circus, he revels in knowing his smallness in the world. Valuska stands awestruck at the recognition that he is but a speck in the cosmos compared to this enormous water-bound beast. Valuska is comfortable with reality. The most vicious, violent souls in Werkmeister Harmonies, meanwhile, are not.
These ideas are communicated through incredibly striking imagery oozing pain and anguish. Werkmeister Harmonies isn’t a film about a utopia crumbling into despair. Instead, it concerns an already decaying landscape that is succumbing further into turmoil. Meanwhile, the unhurried visual sensibilities let the monotony of Valuska’s ordinary world resonate as especially tangible. There are no traditional editing impulses diluting how long we watch Valuska tuck an old man into bed or try to corral small children, It’s like we’re in the same room as these characters, watching actions unfold in real-time. Werkmeister Harmonies and its inescapable sorrow resonate extra vividly within Tarr’s trademark visual style.
Committing to that devastatingly haunting atmosphere leads to a grueling sequence depicting mob violence enacted on the defenseless patients of a mental hospital. This is a manifestation of people succumbing to group-oriented violence as only Bella Tarr could imagine it. Pitchforks and torches in hand, this mob does not scream, bellow, or chant as they march to their destination. They move in an ominously silent fashion. Once they arrive at that hospital, the eerie subdued audio persists. As they fling people out of beds and beat human beings over the head, no screams emerge from their victims.
We hear the clanging of metal beds and doors smashing open. However, noises from the oppressed and even the sound of objects hitting people are absent. It’s a fascinating audio detail offering a counterpoint to the default visual style of Werkmeister Harmonies. The unbroken shots ensure we never miss a beat of somebody walking away. Meanwhile, removing very specific sounds from this set piece ensures we’re (intentionally) not getting the full picture of this mayhem. There’s an incompleteness here that, since it’s so incongruous with the rest of Harmonies, chills your bones.
Werkmeister Harmonies establishes a very specific filmmaking rhythm familiar to veterans of other Bella Tarr films. However, its ability to subtly subvert (albeit briefly) those standards is equally impressive. Also recognizable to those who’ve braved Satantango is Tarr’s commitment to a grim view of the world. Within Harmonies, that bleakness manifests by rendering humanity's darkness as having a gravitational pull that can take in the innocent. That whale didn’t ask to get plucked from the ocean. Was his greatest wish to be displayed for human beings to gawk at?
Similarly, in the third, Valuska is urged to leave the town after his name appears on a list held by rioters. "But I didn't do anything?" Valuska inquires, still believing that there may be a flicker of order in this world. Never again will he return to the monotonous routine defining his day-to-day existence. Now he’s on the run from the military. He didn’t ask for this outcome. Neither did the victims of these rioters, like those hospital patients brutalized within inches of their lives or a pair of women gruesomely sexually abused by this mob. The impact zone of fascistic and grotesque behavior is tremendous.
What’s left after all this mayhem? Werkmeister Harmonies displays this outcome in a final scene showing György wandering around a decimated town square, completely empty save for that whale. The world looks even worse than it did before. The monochromatic color scheme remains. Problems in the town persist. All that’s changed is that innocent lives now have broken bones and trauma to grapple with. Giving in to fearmongering and rage displaced at nobody leaves an aching pain that only Bella Tarr’s dour filmmaking can properly communicate. With his distinctively unhurried visual style, viewers are trapped within dour realities all too recognizable in our reality.
The townsfolk of Werkmeister Harmonies just getting mad at other members of the proletariat, all while “The Prince” reaps the financial benefits of keeping them locked in fear, inevitably reminding me of America’s modern political scenario. Donald Trump's most recent presidential blitzkrieg was built on a phenomenon known as "a campaign of fear", after all. But it also evoked the global stoking of xenophobia over immigrants that exists all over the planet. Whether it’s 2024 or 1824, human beings procure great power by telling working-class people that their greatest enemies are equivalents to postal workers and mental hospital patients, like immigrants, communists, or people protesting for human rights. Pay no attention to Elon Musk! Your real enemy is your neighbor, they’re the reason for your pain and suffering!
When I watched the Masaki Kobayashi masterpiece Harakiri for the first time back in April 2020, I was struck by the relevancy of its grim conclusion where a challenger of the status quo is smeared to ensure the continuation of a corrupt institution. Watching right-wing pundits and politicians demonize vaccines and doctors at the dawn of COVID-19 echoed what the Iyi clan did in this Edo period piece. There’s a similar germane quality to Werkmeister Harmonies in its depiction of humanity grappling for unobtainable control and the horrifying consequences of fearmongering.
That’s a tragic testament to how much history repeats itself. We promise to not turn a blind eye to the next genocide and then Westerners demonize Palestine. We talk about how “brave” Martin Luther King Jr. was while cheering on the passing of legislation stripping trans people of rights. These traits fester in humanity, which means works like Harakiri and Werkmeister Harmonies will always be necessary. Then again, Tarr and Hranitzky's filmmaking is striking enough on its own terms to warrant eternal discussion. From the very first image of that crackling fire to the closing shot of a whale lingering in a wrecked town square, Werkmeister Harmonies instills an unforgettably chilling atmosphere.