One of the major achievements of twenty-first-century cinema thus far, Béla Tarr's mesmeric parable of societal collapse is an enigma of transcendent visual, philosophical, and mystical resonance. Adapted from a novel by the celebrated writer and frequent Tarr collaborator László Krasznahorkai, Werckmeister Harmonies unfolds in an unknown era in an unnamed village, where, one day, a mysterious circus - complete with an enormous stuffed whale and a shadowy, demagogue-like figure known as the Prince - arrives and appears to awaken a kind of madness in the citizens, which builds inexorably toward violence and destruction. In thirty-nine of his signature long takes, engraved in ghostly black and white, Tarr conjures an apocalyptic vision of dreamlike dread and fathomless beauty.

GENRE: Drama
MPAA RATING: No Rating
RUN TIME: 2h 25m
RELEASE DATE: January 01, 2001
STARRING: Peter Fritz, Lars Rudolph, Hanna Schygulla, Janos Derzsi, Djoko Rosic
DIRECTOR(S): Agnes Hranitzky
PRODUCER(S): Franz Goess, Paul Saadoun, Miklos Szita, Joachim Von Vietinghoff
WRITER(S): Bela Tarr, Laszlo Krasznahorkai
STUDIO: Janus Films