Werckmeister Harmóniák - English subtitled
When a circus arrives in a small Hungarian town, the population falls under the spell of a mysterious ‘prince’ who drags the town into a collective destructive frenzy.
The residents of the provincial town marvel at the circus’s main attractions, such as the stuffed skeleton of a whale and a mysterious ‘prince’ who, like a true demagogue, tries to control the population. Some inhabitants lose their grip on events, others try to make a buck from the disorder that follows.
With WERCKMEISTER HARMÓNIÁK, Béla Tarr completed the trilogy that also includes DAMNATION (1988) and SÁTÁNTANGÓ (1994). Once again, Tarr collaborated with Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai, who has been tipped for several years as a possible winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. All three films can be interpreted as a commentary on the fragility of human civilisation. The veneer of civilisation is wafer thin and it takes little to bring out animal instincts in humans. When fear and irrationality take over from reason, humanity is riled up by questionable leaders.