The man from London (2007)

I regard Béla Tarr as one of the most interesting contemporary directors. The 7 ½-hour long Sátántangó is a mysterious exploration of greed and decay - and so is the marvellous Werckmeister harmóniák. These themes are not discarded. In The man from London, he re-builds the world of gloom and shadows for which he is known. Somehow, it makes perfect sense that the present film, shot in dazzling monochrome, is a take on 40's film noir. The cynism and alienation is there, for sure, along with disquieting moments of fear and paranoia.

The story is of a familiar kind: a railroad worker called Maloin (with a standard noir-ish haggard face) witnesses a possible murder in an anonymous dock area. A briefcase is dropped into the water. Maloin retrieves the briefcase, in which there is money. Some time into the film, we find out that Maloin gains knowledge of who murdered the man, and that a detective (whose talks more slowly than any actor heard on film - ever) is looking into the case... But this would not be a Béla Tarr film if the story was the primary source of interest.

Once again, Tarr challenges his audience with long takes and stunning camera work. The scenes from Maloin's watch tower are simply stunning. The movement of the camera, the play with light and shadow, evoke a truly eerie atmosphere. The sudden moments of humor (mainly represented by nods to the noir genre) work to great effect. And the last 25 minutes of the film, which contains a longish take of the murderer's wife that (as my sister said) is on a par with a Carl Dreyer moment, ties the film together in a beautiful way. But there are some problems. Tilda Swinton is a great actor, but her character in this film is bizarre in the wrong way and does not work in the context. The rest of the actors (especially Ági Szirtes as Brown's wife) are very good. Another problem concerns the role of the images. In Tarr's other work, I have never felt that there was a gap between the meticulous composition of the images and the few strands of "story". His images encourage me to contemplate over what I see, what is it I see? But in A man from London, there is not the same sense of mystery or wonder, even though that is what he seems to aim at. The question "what did I see?" is posed differently, in a more conventional way. On some moments, the images lapse into being just ... stunning - in the desolated and dreadful way that has come to be the Tarr trademark. It's just that most images lack the depth of his previous work. Disappointed? Yes, maybe a little.