00:32Tarr’s long takes are defined not by duration but by exceeding the audience’s patience.

01:41The camera movement’s independence.

03:06Among Chinese-language directors, Tsai Ming-liang’s long takes are the closest.

07:45Tarr’s long takes are not translations of Krasznahorkai’s long sentences.

10:34Long takes and walking, and a reading of the mob’s attack on the hospital.

14:14Why Werckmeister Harmonies is a masterpiece.

17:46Three East European auteurs compared: Krzysztof Kieślowski, Emir Kusturica, and Béla Tarr.

24:26Werckmeister Harmonies rebuilds the coordinate system.

28:07Chinese dreamcore and hauntology.

 

Ah Wu: Tarr’s long takes follow their own temporal logic. The key is how they present time so viewers observe a complete process.

Lao Ma: Calm yet alienated—the complex feeling of hope and despair Tarr seeks.

Ah Wu: Tarr’s walking scenes recall Antonioni, but Antonioni’s boredom expresses the modern middle class’s spiritual crisis, whereas Tarr’s expresses the continuing decay of cosmic order.

Lao Ma: It is entirely valid to read Werckmeister Harmonies as a political allegory of the post–Cold War period.

Ah Wu: World cinema underwent a great revival from the late 1990s. Werckmeister Harmonies may not be its most celebrated film, but it unquestionably deserves remembrance.

Lao Ma: Facing post-communist Eastern Europe’s complex predicament, the film builds a new coordinate system in which no position is correct and every position has problems.