Birthday of the Werckmeister Harmonies
On May 14, 2000, at the Cannes International Film Festival, the premiere of the film "Werckmeister harmóniák (Werckmeister Harmonies)" by Hungarian film directors Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky took place.
Despite the fact that the film was considered a participant in the Cannes Film Festival, it was not nominated for the main award of the festival - the Palme d'Or. Although the nominees were as many as 23. But this film participated in the so-called “Directors' Fortnight”, in which films, which are usually called arthouse films, usually take part. The participation of the film "Werckmeister Harmonies" in the Berlin International Film Festival, where the film also did not receive any nomination, but was awarded the reading jury of the Berliner Zeitung newspaper, boiled down to about the same.
Despite the rather cool attitude to the film by Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky from the colleagues in the cinema industry, film critics in Western countries, especially in the USA, took it with a bang. According to the Rotten Tomatoes website, 98% of reviews on the film by American film critics are purely positive. The film critic Lawrence Van Gelder, senior editor of the New York Times ' Art and Leisure weekly, described the film in this way: "Mysterious, poetic and allusive, "The Werckmeister Harmonies" beckons filmgoers who complain of the vapidity of Hollywood movie making and yearn for a film to ponder and debate."
Roger Ebert rated the film 4 stars out of four possible and included it in the list of "Great Movies". In his review of a film entitled "A haunting film about a haunted village", he wrote: "Bela Tarr's "Werckmeister Harmonies" (2000) is maddening if you are not in sympathy with it, mesmerizing if you are. If you have not walked out after 20 or 30 minutes, you will thereafter not be able to move from your seat."
However, the praise of the film by Western film critics, judging by the data on admissions and box office, did not have the desired result. Unfortunately, full details of the box office of the film are not published. We have to judge by indirect evidence. It is known that the budget of the film was 10 million French francs. At the 2000 exchange rate, this amount is equivalent to approximately $ 1.6 million. At the same time, fees in the United States amounted to 25,461 dollars. No other box office data. It is known that the film was shown in almost all countries of Europe. It is known that in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and France, 14,462 viewers watched the film totally. A comparison of all these figures leads to an unambiguous conclusion: the film failed at the box office. Moreover, it failed not only outside of Hungary, but also in Hungary itself, where 10,653 people, or 0.1% of the population, watched it.
It would seem that the main theme of the film - the general decline in the conditions of the communist regime, the atmosphere of fear, hatred and madness, the feeling of impending disaster - was supposed to attract the masses of moviegoers to cinemas. But, apparently, not 10 years after the fall of the communist regime in Hungary. Probably, if this film was shot 15-20 years earlier, it would have enjoyed massive and well-deserved success. But, as they say, a good spoon for dinner, and an egg for Christ's Day.
However, those moviegoers who, if you recall the words of Ebert, did not leave the session half an hour after the start, highly appreciated the work of Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky. 72% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users gave this film a rating of 8 to 10.
Based on the foregoing, the rating of the film "Werckmeister Harmonies" according to FilmGourmand is 8.081, which makes it 602nd in the Golden Thousand.
