Tarr arrange the contemplative pace with a refined aesthetic that, in its formal register, drives oppressive atmospheres and a gloomy existentialism, but whose narrative core weakens the experience with one-dimensional characters. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 6/10 | Apr 8, 2024

Tarr makes it easy for viewers to get lost in his beautifully bleak world and lose track of time, but the subject of guilt that so dominates this film seems relatively minor compared with the director’s usual preoccupation with the eclipse of humanity.

| Apr 22, 2023

Characters move and talk in slow motion, to no particular effect. If the approach is aimed at getting beneath the surface of reality, it fails.

| Feb 13, 2021

The camera is quintessential Tarr: hovering in anticipation of things that won't happen, tracking like a private eye tailing a perp, and imbuing the black-and-white image with a caustic malaise no other director comes near to achieving.

| Jun 17, 2013

A unique metaphysical arty film noir.

| Original Score: B | Jan 13, 2011

The mere fact of Hungarian auteur Bla Tarr continuing to direct films without making the smallest concession to popular fashion is a cause for celebration.

| Aug 29, 2010

In lieu of a story, Tarr evokes the beauty of cinematic form and the exhilaration of simply watching.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 13, 2010

Survive the opening five minutes of his realist/fabulist noir - an unrelentingly slow pan up the side of an industrial ship - without chewing your seat or howling and you'll find plenty to stroke your chin over.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 12, 2008

The impeccable mise en scne and immaculate technique fail to capture Tarr's trademark spiritual malaise, also missing the lassitude in the protagonists' souls.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 12, 2008

The Man from London' lacks the grandiose 'cosmic' intimations of the director's past work, and though it contains many moments of sublime cinematic choreography, this is finally good Tarr, but not great Tarr.

| Original Score: 3/6 | Dec 12, 2008

But ultimately the pace is deadly. Tectonic drift moves faster. The dialogue is delivered in a way that suggests that somebody added a load of extra full stops.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 12, 2008

The Man from London is no conventional cop thriller. It's an arresting nightmare all the same.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 12, 2008

Surrendering to the film's languid rhythms is pleasurable, even invigorating. To resist its forbidding pace and style is to deny oneself its rarefied rewards.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 12, 2008

A lugubrious pace, shots that hang... and hang... and hang... long after most other directors would call "Cut", and scant dialogue but a surplus of portentous close-ups make the film a somnambulant chore.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 12, 2008

You will find the film either desperately depressing or perversely hypnotic. Or you might find it both simultaneously.

| Dec 12, 2008

It is almost an anti-mystery, our meagre clue to the protagonist's feelings of guilt legible in the contours of Krobot's mournful mid-European face: only Bruno Ganz, one feels, could out-gloom him.

| Dec 12, 2008

As uncompromising as all his work and, though beautifully and often breathtakingly shot by fellow director Fred Keleman, is definitely not for the faint-hearted.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 12, 2008

Despite its conventional-sounding plot, this is strictly for hardcore arthouse fans and the film's aesthetic rewards don't really justify its lengthy running time.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 12, 2008

The Man From London, directed by Bela Tarr, is an outrageously stylized, conceptually demanding film.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 22, 2008

Tarr struggles to adapt to an outmoded genre and, in the end, produces his least personal work to date.

| Sep 17, 2008