Pre-title, a threadbare kitchen is glaringly lit by a naked lightbulb. In the foreground, two men sit facing each other at table. On the left, the older man, light shining off his naked brow, silently faces down the younger man, who, underneath a hat, is submerged in darkness. The man on the right is under […]

“[W]e don’t translate literature into film; rather, we translate literature back into life.” — Béla Tarr, discussing his film from Georges Simenon’s L’homme de Londres A londoni férfi, in French and English, involves a wee-hours fight between two men on a dock that ends in a drowning death—and the loss of the case in which […]

Béla Tarr’s Öszi almanach is beautifully crafted, but it is so unpleasant, so nasty and pessimistic, I ended up hating it. The entire action, much of which consists of intimate two-person conversations and (verbal, physical) confrontations, unfolds in Hédi’s flat—an intricately detailed, occasionally mysterious, half-expressionistic space. Hédi (Hédi Temessy, impressive), who is about sixty, lives […]

The following is one of the entries from my 100 Greatest Films from the Soviet Union, Russia, Ukraine and Eastern Europe list, which I invite you to visit on this site if you haven’t already done so. — Dennis Highlighted by his curve-around narrative form and long takes, but not imbued with his later Euro-lyricism, […]

The following is one of the entries from my 100 Greatest Films from the Soviet Union, Russia, Ukraine and Eastern Europe list, which I invite you to visit on this site if you haven’t already done so. — Dennis The doctor in Béla Tarr’s 7¼-hour Satan’s Tango, from László Krasznahorkai’s novel, sits and observes the […]