The Man From London
| 14 Aug 2007
The Hungarian Béla Tarr is known as a difficult film-maker by those handful of people who know of him at all. His most famous film, Sátántangó, is more than seven hours long, and not a lot happens. His new film, The Man From London, is much shorter and more eventful, but you couldn't call it easy-going. It is shot in stark Eastern Bloc monochrome, its score uses and re-uses the same five notes, it contains no cutting within scenes, and its dialogue trades in discomfiting quotidian menace - in the way of Pinter, but even more sullen. The film requires continuous attentiveness and Job-like patience from the viewer. But such hardships are amply rewarded by its accretion of small pleasures.
The film takes its title and some key details from Georges Simenon's novel of the same name, but it resists its opportunities for straightforward thrills. Instead of foregrounding the tale of a mysterious out-of-towner who kills his friend for their shared loot, it concentrates on the daily miseries of the railway station employee who witnessed it. Tarr observes the man with surgical precision and detachment, often for minutes at a time. Occasionally, a police inspector questions someone. Otherwise, we are with the man. He argues with his wife and daughter, plays checkers, trudges about, or just stares glumly out of the window. Tarr is courageous almost to the point of being foolhardy; at every turn he shuns the easy option. The result is a restrained film, dry and droll throughout, and at times oddly thrilling.
The film takes its title and some key details from Georges Simenon's novel of the same name, but it resists its opportunities for straightforward thrills. Instead of foregrounding the tale of a mysterious out-of-towner who kills his friend for their shared loot, it concentrates on the daily miseries of the railway station employee who witnessed it. Tarr observes the man with surgical precision and detachment, often for minutes at a time. Occasionally, a police inspector questions someone. Otherwise, we are with the man. He argues with his wife and daughter, plays checkers, trudges about, or just stares glumly out of the window. Tarr is courageous almost to the point of being foolhardy; at every turn he shuns the easy option. The result is a restrained film, dry and droll throughout, and at times oddly thrilling.