Werckmeister Harmonies

It is fascinating how some films with long takes display such intimacy, such as the works of Hou Hsiao-hsien, while others, such as Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men, create a vastness that is simultaneously cosmic and clear, each director layering the depth of their compositions over their framing. Still, few films are as affecting in their cinematic magnitude as Bela Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies (2000), as it alternately comments upon the inevitability of revolution for its world-weary patrons and the lingering repercussions that psychologically await them.

In a small Hungarian town, the natural order is thrown aside as foreigners, a circus bearing a dead whale, and an extreme frost blanket the once peaceful town. Gradually this disruption becomes more than just murmurs, shifting to a more rebellious insurgency that threatens violence and the promise of restoring quietude once more to the natural order. Meanwhile, Janos Valuska (Lars Rudolph) is the town's postman but also their idiot savant, and the film blurs whether or not the constellation of peace that he dreams about in the beginning can exist outside of his distinction of reality. As it stands, much of this film's core can be found in the title of author Laszlo Krasnahorkai's The Melancholy of Resistance, which serves as the basis for Werckmeister Harmonies. Order and resistance are twinned, and which wins out is a subjective decision that all of us must process for ourselves.

Everyone already knows about the film's composition (140 minutes in 39 separate shots), so what is fascinating is how these moments both stand alone and build to crescendo with the storming of a hospital, wherein angry rioters' violence exists as a counterpoint to the inertia that grounds so many of their lives. Still, the confrontation ends with something akin to a spiritual awakening, a moment of quiet repose and reflection in the midst of such unmistakable degradation and soullessness, and these are the counterpoints that give the film its endless power. The rioters come upon a helpless elderly man, and his simple resignation to his fate disturbs them similarly to the way it disturbs us. Here and elsewhere the film's score of piano and violins swell up, and Tarr uses it sparingly, but never less than effectively.

One of the singular gems of this decade, Werckmeister Harmonies is hypnotic in its structure, its story, its framing, and its contribution to the cinematic world. Thoroughly entrancing, it is a demanding view, but one where, if you surrender to it, you come out having witnessed a singular visionary at work.

Werckmeister Harmonies: 10/10

Double Indemnity

Access to a would-be lover is perhaps the most frequent reason for murder. That said, what do we then make of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944)? This is a film that obstinately suggests Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) could have immediate access to Mrs. Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) after their first meeting. Despite a warning from Mrs. Dietrichson that there’s a “speed limit in this state,” both knowingly enter into a flirtatious rapport. Still, if sexual attainment were the goal, adherence to the machinations of murder would not be necessary.

This, of course, gets at the heart of deception in film noir, since protagonists such as Neff follow the circumscribed machinations laid out in front of him as he heads toward the goal, making sure that every detail has “got to be perfect” and revealing that often such strict adherence to an ideal is more important than the goal itself. That is, in denying the goal itself (sexual union with Phyllis) Neff remains pure of any mundane reality of the sex. Here, Neff continually finds reasons to avoid the inevitable consummation of the sexual tryst with Mrs. Dietrichson, since the attainment of sex will destroy all that he desires and effectively defraud him of his very desire.

In this sense, he is unmistakably fetishistic, so that in not getting “it” he avoids any contamination of attainment. He becomes caught in his own artificiality, treasuring the appearance of superfluous details over the consummated act. In a Freudian reading of fantasies, Freud famously noted that the realization of a fantasy is often seen as a nightmare. In Double Indemnity that idea stands true, since the consummation of sex ruptures the ideal that Neff had been able to impose over all the details. While this can be more easily read as part of Mrs. Dietrichson’s calculating plan as femme fatale , there’s a fascination in examining Neff’s getting it as precisely tied to why the plan fails.

Ultimately, what all of the above is trying to say is that Double Indemnity is a fascinating case study in prolonging the attainment of what was always available, so a study of why Neff avoids immediate access is an interesting idea. So while the pitch-perfect mise en scene, dialogue, and performances are the immediate pleasure, think about the lingering pleasures, those that don’t desire to be consummated.

Double Indemnity: 10/10

Hollow Man

In one of the most spectacular displays of special effects, Paul Verhoeven crafts the otherwise muddled Hollow Man (2000). Despite the impeccable artistry devoted to rendering our lead Sebastian Caine (Kevin Bacon) invisible, the same craft cannot be attached to the script, which is alternately negligible to simply silly. In taking the classic trope of the scientist who ends up sacrificing his humanity for his obsessionality after becoming invisible (becoming a peeping tom, a rapist, and a murderer), Verhoeven takes a limitless philosophical concept and reduces it to frivolous fun and suspense. Unfortunately, there is no real character for the audience to attach itself to, so the whole affair becomes a meaningless one, lacking purpose or value.

Our seemingly surrogate protagonist becomes Linda McKay (Elisabeth Shue), ex-girlfriend of Caine’s and a fellow scientist now bedding another member of the research team. Yet because McKay demonstrates a conflicted attraction to her new beau while allowing Caine far too much leniency with her, she herself becomes as deluded as Caine. That is, any objective identification is derailed because her own actions damage credibility and therefore leave audiences devoid of reason.

The whole film seems to disregard intellectual logic, which is self-defeating for a film ostensibly concerning scientists. The animal trainer at the scientific hub is felt up in her sleep by Caine, awakens to find her shirt unbuttoned yet doesn’t mention this to anyone because… well, the film never concerns itself with answering these questions of logic. Verhoeven seems to have gotten caught up in taking care of the admittedly wonderful visual effects to predicate any concern with the script.

After a fascinating premise, this is a film that devolves and loses any intellectuality, substituting empty thrills and spectacle for story and development. This is a shame because this idea is indeed limitless, but the film neglects actual considerations for pointless wonder.

Hollow Man: 6/10

Business is Businss

Business is Business (1971) is Dutch director Paul Verhoeven’s very first full-length film, and it would be a discredit to his future work to not acknowledge that this film is largely a middling affair with mere glimpses into his later talent. Taken unto itself, though, this is a typical story about humanizing a prostitute and details the many struggles that one faces when tricking.

Blonde Greet (Ronnie Bierman) is a middle-aged prostitute who earns her fancy abode more through entertaining her clientele’s eccentricities than through any ravishing beauty. Enlisting the aid of her fellow prostitute Nel Muller, who is continually trying to avoid her violently physical live-in pimp, Greet provides the fetishes that these men’s fear alerting their wives to. Yet in the midst of this projected ideal, Greet faces disillusion as the one client she depended on to secure her escape finds himself unable to divorce his wife, fearing any reprehensible damage he might cause her. Thus, the film becomes an ode to decay as Greet comes to realize that this life she chose is in fact interminable, that she cannot simply marry out of it (this theme will be repeated in Verhoeven’s marginally better Katie Tippel).

So if the film details the corroded dreams of a desperate woman, why is that not engaging cinema? The answer lies largely in a script that neglects to consider any of the past history of Greet, which would offer some psychological foundation and provide an entry point into an understanding for her character. As it stands, we understand that she means to help her fellow prostitutes secure a better life for themselves, as she does with Nel, even if that security becomes belittling and monotonous. What Verhoeven does manage is to suggest that that same monotony is prevalent in Greet’s life, and that eventually her body will fail her and that her life will soon wither, since her life is directly linked with the currency of her body.

If you need to see every film about prostitution ever made, you might find something to enjoy here. There is a mild joy in the film’s unbridled carnality, but it’s there in Verhoeven’s stronger work as well, so better to appreciate a better film than this one. Largely, Business is Business suffers from a nondescript approach to the script and a tone that often slights the more serious themes of psychological and spiritual decay.

Business is Business: 4.5/10

Flesh + Blood

Flesh + Blood (1985). Ah, European sword epics dedicated to history anywhere between the 9th-16th century. Gotta love Paul Verhoeven’s specificity. Despite a storyline involving a dislocated king who betrays his medieval mercenaries, those same outcast mercenaries then preying on religious superstition in order to transplant themselves into glory and riches, the betrothed maiden to the prince who must manipulate the mercenary’s leader in order to survive, and the desperate son of the king working to find his betrothed, all of these elements fall away into superficiality, largely because Verhoeven alternates tonal arrangement far too often to ever craft a film that is anything more than intermittently entertaining.

Despite having a game Martin (Rutger Hauer) as the leader of the mercenary clan evolving and trying out the rule of monarchy, and thus subverting it, which is apparently Verhoeven’s critique, what ultimately makes this film worth a viewing is the treatment of Agnes (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Though she has promised herself to the prince via a mutually and faux-beautifully romantic eating of mandrake, after being unknowingly kidnapped and discovered she must win Martin over as his personal mistress rather than getting passed around and raped by all the mercenaries. While this opens up interesting issues of identity as she works to keep both Martin and the prince eternally devoted to her, securing herself safeguard no matter which victor wins, the film (and thus Verhoeven) problematically cloud this issue by conspiring to utilize a shrilling soundtrack that swells tenderly any time Agnes and Martin bed together, making Agnes out to be singularly focused on survival with Martin rather than focusing on her true duplicitous nature.

This type of indeterminacy is further undermined by the prince himself, who early on in the film regards his father as villainous and a traitor to those who won him back his castle, yet the son seemingly sheds this contempt for his father the very second he loses his betrothed, thereby repeating his father’s same contemptuous mannerisms in order to secure his betrothed. The film never dwells on this fact, nor does it show Agnes’ recognition or ramifications of this newfound character reversal, but instead cheerfully marches on, never really deciding whether or not the prince or Martin is a more virtuous character. While this allows Verhoeven an opportunity to claim that Agnes is the only character with true virtue, it’s simple-minded and lessens the complexity of character motivation.

That said, this film deserves props for a few rousing action scenes and a truly glorious moment where a dog infected with the plague is cut up and catapulted over a castle wall. That alone raises the grade a half point. Even so, though, this is one of Verhoeven’s weaker efforts and it is deservedly marginalized, despite ample Jennifer Jason Leigh nudity. After all, what film isn’t Leigh naked in any more?

Flesh + Blood: 5.5/10