The Man from London

...others find fascinating and beautiful. Yes, it's a Béla Tarr film, and as such, it will contain extremely long shots and a ponderous, deliberate storyline. If that's not your cup of tea, then why bother? Buy a ticket to the next Mission Impossible or Bourne Identity.

This film is Tarr's homage to the film noirs of old. Shot in shadowy, low-key black and white, the story concerns a murder, a recovered briefcase full of money, and a slow descent into despondence and guilt. Miroslav Krobot is wonderfully morose as Maloin, the dock worker who witnesses the murder and retrieves the money, and Tilda Swinton is superb as usual as his high-strung wife, but the real star of the film is the cinematography.

Again, like of all of Tarr's work, this is a stylized, demanding film. The first shot lasted nearly 15 minutes, but within that one shot, we bear witness, along with Maloin, to events that drive the narrative of the film. It's as if, perched high in his railway tower, he's seated alongside us in a theater box, watching a deadly play. For a filmmaker to place so much significance in its visual aesthetics, the camera work has to be expert, and cinematographer Fred Kelemen proves up to the task, painting everything in a brooding chiaroscuro. It truly is a mesmerising, strangely compelling, even somewhat alienating piece of work, and a treat for the viewer who can afford it the patience.

I hadn't seen a film by Bela Tarr before, and at first I was put off by the slow, deliberate style - the first scene took about 15 minutes and was agonizingly slow. The whole picture moved at the same lethargic pace and I thought it was remindful of an Ingmar Bergman film. I never felt comfortable with Bergman as I thought his style pretentious, but I got a different feeling from watching "The Man From London".

The slow pace, as in the languid opening shot, accentuates the prevailing mood of the film, and lends motivation (or lack of) to the protagonist Maloin. He is a simple man who has resigned himself to his fate, a boring, tedious existence as a night watchman with a shrewish wife (Tilda Swinton, in a role that is too small), until his life is turned upside down when he witnesses a murder from his watchtower. The picture is full of long, lingering closeups and long shots and the characters speak in the same deliberate manner as the pacing of the film.

I suppose if he had wanted to, Tarr could have edited out about 30 minutes of film to speed it up, but he would have ruined the overall effect of the picture, which exemplifies the predominant mental state of Maloin and the struggle with his conscience that has thrown his life into chaos. You have probably seen films you would like better but you have never seen one as offbeat or as memorable as "The Man From London". Serious movie fans ought to include this one in their respective film canons - it is very worth seeing will certainly throw your list into disarray.

If you are FRench ,first thing to bear in mind is that this is the second version of Georges Simenon's novel .This is not to say it's a "remake" for the two versions are as different as they can be.But it must be written that Henry Decoin's movie(1) was made in the darkest hour of the Occupation in 1943 ,and produced by the Continental ,a German firm ,so the writers had to deal with the censorship.What am I driving at?simply that at the time,there was no need to create a nightmarish atmosphere (although Decoin succeeded in doing so) for the nightmare was all around.

Compared to the "modern" version ,the old one may seem conventional (but please give it a try if you can ) .This one looks like a nightmare with its stark black and white ,its interminable fixed shots ,its lugubrious music -sometimes a simple accordion tune looks like Tangerine Dream or even Nico music - its actors whose performances are so overblown it's almost unbearable .The movie is very long and I must admit that ,If I did not know the plot,I would have got lost since the first reel.The lines are few and far between and it sometimes recalls films of the silent age this side of German Expressionismus.Bela Tarr refuses any suspense ,any show (the scene in the cabin by the sea is revealing:close shot on a padlock).The atmosphere is much more important than the detective story ;even the social comment which was present in Decoin's movie (If only my son could get into Ecole Polytechnique) gets totally lost in the treatment, deliberately so of course ;this man does not really want to get by ,his wife is a shrew ,his daughter is ugly and all the furs in the world can't change that .The characters melt into the background .

(1) "L'Homme De Londres"

In "The man from London" an ordinary civilian finds by accident a lot of money originating from a criminal transaction. We regularly find this story element in films, for example in "No country for old men" (Ethan and Joel Coen) from the same year.

How different do these two films elaborate on this basic ingredient. In "No country for old men" the "lucky" finder is being chased by a hit man and the emphasis is on action. In "The man from London" the finder is chased by his own guilty feelings and the emphasis is much more on internal psychological elements.

Needless to say that also in the Tarr film the finder ends up everything but lucky. The film has the usual Tarr elements as slowness, bleakness and beautiful images. Especially the first half hour has striking black and white imagery.

Watching this movie I realised that the mood of a Tarr movie has much in common with the mood of a Kaurismaki movie. Erika Bokk belongs to a Tarr movie just as much as Kati Outinen belongs to a Kaurismaki movie. Music from an accordian is indispensable for a Tarr movie just as much as the Finnish tango is for a Kaurismaki movie.

As beautiful as the images are so artificial and clumsy is the dialogue, especially the dialogue of the English inspector . This is in my opinion the main reason why "The man from London" does not for a single moment succeed in its attempt to be a neo noir Tarr style.

The night is quiet, shapes of faint, lifeless forms in the grim perimeters about, the streets lie black and steaming in these alien reaches of a city of curious architecture, much like yours perhaps. This is a world lying in wait, beset by a thing unknown.

When it finally comes it's the hull of a ship, a long vertical shot tracking across a vessel that looks like a bleached bone of a whale washed out on shore. The camera moves three times back and forth on its tracks, as though some kind of ritual must be performed for this to begin.

There's not much plot or story to speak of. A suitcase full of money. A crime committed. Smalltime crooks and an ordinary man in the wrong place the wrong time. The banality of a plot so unmistakeably familiar contrasted with intimate moments, people living some kind of life. Small bursts of life woven into a genre framework so frail and transparent as though to be nonexistent, a form of dramatic percussion to the wandering and the aimlessness. Staccato rhythms throughout the movie abet this, the passage of time. The thumps of a ball on a wall, sounds of billiard from an adjucent room, the slashes of a meat-cleaver, rhythms to which existence can dissipate.

Transfixing and hypnotic, this is the visual equivalent to the albums of drone artists Sunn0))) and their 14 minute monotonous drones. Mostly aural, Tarr's camera ferries us back and forth in these godless corridors, where our only bearing is time.

It doesn't come from anywhere nor goes, it's rather a mantra, whereby repeating it we can concentrate on the texture of the sound itself. And how it reverberates.