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“All I ask is that you step with me into the boundlessness, where constancy, quietude and peace, infinite emptiness reign.”

Cast: Lars Rudolph, Peter Fitz, Hanna Schygulla
Original music by:Mihaly Vig
Cinematography by: Patrick de Ranter, Miklos Gurban, Erwin Lanzensberger, Gabor Medvigy, Emil Novak, Rob Tregenza
Directed by: Bela Tarr
Release Date: 1 February, 2001

Sensuous, Dark, Majestic, Allegoric, Mystical…. How do I even begin to describe this dream, this nightmare of a movie. The Hungarian auteur Bela Tarr has molded the language of cinema to create a profoundly humane and devastating masterpiece. It is a haunting tableau of visions both wondrous and terrible…

This simple story takes place in a small, unnamed European town in the grip of frosty winter. The events taking place over the course of one night and a day, which irrevocably transform the face of the town and the lives of its inhabitants, are seen through the unsullied eyes of the protagonist Janosh (Lars Rudolph). He personifies innocence in this fable of irrational fear, anarchy and disillusionment.

In the opening scene, Janosh directs an enactment of a solar eclipse in a pub with middle-aged, drunken patrons playing the sun, the moon and the earth. The deep sorrow and infinite darkness portrayed in this sketch act as a portent of things to come.

Janosh goes around performing his tasks during the rest of the night. He looks after his uncle Mr.Estzver, who has devoted his life to musical studies. Janosh picks up and delivers newspapers. Every person he meets on his path appears to be convinced of an impending apocalypse, about to descend on the town. They talk about a mysterious giant whale and a monstrous character called the ‘Prince’, who corrupts the hearts of men with his ‘godless’ speeches. They are due to arrive in the town as part of a traveling roadside show. And people’s hearts are filled with dread. An implacable sense of doom pervades the entire town.

The next morning, Janosh goes to the town square and sees the whale. Most people are apprehensive of this unknown creature and what terrors it might be bringing along. But Janos looks into the dead eyes of this creation of God and is awed and fascinated with child-like wonder.

Janosh’s aunt visits him and involves him in her grand plan of restoring order to the town society and administration. The town is already teetering on the edge of a deep descent into despair and chaos. Soon, the town is enveloped in a fury of mindless destruction and frenzy. Mobs come out onto the streets, pillaging, annihilating everything and everyone in their path.

But then an astounding sight stops the mob dead in its tracks. Two men (who are no longer individuals but mere shards of the faceless collective rage) tear down a curtain while rampaging through the hospital and behold a vision of human frailty, decrepitude and vulnerability.

All this time Janosh is looking on as a silent spectator, baffled and terrified by the violence a man is capable of wreaking on his fellow beings.

The movie is shot is pristine black and white. Light and shadow dance across the screen in endless long takes, reflecting the turmoil in the cosmos. The plaintive, elegiac score rises and falls in perfect harmony.

This is a uncompromising and slow movie, too slow for the short attention spans of most viewers today. But still I would recommend it as an essential watch for anyone willing to obtain a glimpse of transcendence through film.