From the very first image of that crackling fire to the closing shot of a whale lingering in a wrecked town square, Werkmeister Harmonies instills an unforgettably chilling atmosphere.

| Jan 7, 2025

Béla Tarr and co-director Ágnes Hranitzky choose to insinuate more than they directly reveal, keeping the mystique constant throughout.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Oct 1, 2024

Re-released as part of Curzon’s upcoming Béla Tarr season, Werckmeister Harmonies is a haunting, unforgettable film about the inevitability of a social apocalypse.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 3, 2024

Everything is both concrete and symbolic, literal and figurative, which means that the film itself will mean different things to different viewers.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 3, 2024

“Werckmeister Harmonies” is subtle and gradual in the way that the unsettling atmosphere becomes undeniable. It feels like the merging of a Biblical and political apocalypse with the whale seemingly evoking references of a Leviathan

| May 11, 2024

Tarr continues his magistral collaboration with Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai, who wrote Sátántangó as well as the source of this film.

| May 2, 2024

While he doesn’t provide what we might call “narrative beats,” his approach to storytelling is quite classical...

| Apr 24, 2024

Werckmeister Harmonies may leave some perplexed by its peculiarity and ambiguous plot, but those viewers who are open to its dreamlike tone will find themselves treated to an intriguing experience.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 15, 2024

“Werckmeister Harmonies” presents itself as a cosmic vision of creaturely vulnerability to the inescapable atrocities that come with time.

| Mar 31, 2024

Werckmeister Harmonies is a formalist ritual, its black-and-white long takes effective in their cumulative power.

| Nov 22, 2023

Opens with an extended traveling shot...orchestrated dance of figures and camera in a small-town hard-drinking old man’s bar, that... follows the characters as they attempt to describe the creation of the world through the dance of the camera.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Sep 11, 2023

Near apocalyptic at times and, in one scene, hauntingly reminiscent of the village mob out with torches in a mad search for Frankenstein’s monster, the film is also imbued with deft touches of Fellini-esque absurdity.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 25, 2023

The evasiveness of Werckmeister Harmonies is a political gesture in itself. The film’s refusal to be pinned down is a rejection of the conformist mentality it condemns.

| Aug 24, 2023

Watching it again now, it seemed hypnotic, and even relatively tight in (admittedly ambiguous) narrative terms.

| Jul 6, 2023

Mesmerizing, haunting, deeply moving.

| Jun 29, 2023

A reverie as oddly alluring as it is subtly disquieting...

| May 31, 2023

I will admit the pace of the film was a little slow for me but overall I liked the story and the slow evolution of the unrest in the city...

| Apr 1, 2021

"Fantasztikus!"

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 18, 2019

Densely symbolic, yet never inaccessible, this is artistically unique and overwhelmingly powerful.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 21, 2014

This is as challenging as movies come, alluding to everything from philosopher Thomas Hobbes to the history of Western music. But compared with Tarr's legendary Stantngo... it's almost a quickie.

| Original Score: 4/4 | May 21, 2014