The Man from London (2007)

A lot of fun.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I like Simenon as an author and Tarr as a director, so an adaptation of a Simenon novel by Tarr raised my interest. Tarr has resumed his Ars Poetica with the two words "human dignity", and in this he resembles Simenon, who also portrays with compassion even his most wretched characters. I think Simenon would have liked this film of Tarr, as he was fond of plastic scenes, and strove for plastic descriptions. I do not know what Simenon might have said of the slow pace of the film or the reduced plot. There is a slowness to his books also, but also many action, dialog, tension, humor etc. As for me, the slowness annoyed me a bit, as in all films of Tarr, yet I was watching it on the video and jumped the scenes I found boring. The overall effect of the film was good and it was lasting as well.

This is a great film to watch if you have a short amount of time to live. You will feel like you've been watching for an eternity!! OK that's not entirely accurate. You may also enjoy it if you need help sleeping. The film opens with a beautiful shot of a seaside railway and takes the next 8 minutes showing zZZzZzZzZzzzZzZz. I loved the artsy vibe this film has but the long drawn out shots get old very fast. If you're a fan of things happening in movies, then you probably won't like this one. I appreciate the artistry of the film but that doesn't mean anything actually happens in it. After 34 minutes there weren't more than 10 to 15 lines of dialogue. I give this film an A+ if it was going for a pretentious coffee house artsy hipster vibe. Who knows, this might be right up your alley, it just wasn't for me.

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"

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.