Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		5.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.0

Werckmeister Harmonies 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov April 25, 2024

Bela Tarr's "Werckmeister Harmonies" (2000) arrives on 4K Blu-ray courtesy of Criterion. The supplemental features on the release include an exclusive new program with Bela Tarr; the director's first feature film; and promotional trailer. In Hungarian, with optional English subtitles for the main feature. Region-Free.

It is impossible to tell who might have been the first person to declare that music has a unique bond with the universe. There are different reasons for this, but the most obvious one is that over the centuries different cultures have understood music differently. They have created and utilized music differently as well.

In the West, the first documented academic description of this unique bond is credited to German music theorist, organist, and composer Andreas Werckmeister, who lived during the Baroque era. Werckmeister promoted equal temperament, a concept of harmonic organization/tuning that breaks down the octave into twelve equally spaced parts, which has been used to give structure to Western music for centuries. Werckmeiter also promoted the idea that equal temperament was reflective of a much bigger cosmic order. (The crucial flaw in Werckmeister’s assumption is that all people understood music equally. In the West, for instance, most people do not define an arrangement of dissonant harmonies as music. In the East, many people do).

Bela Tarr’s film Werckmeister Harmonies is an elaborate cinematic test of equal temperament and its relationship with the bigger cosmic order. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is structured as a Baroque piece -- it has various dissonant themes, plenty of ornamentation, and complex rhythmic movement. In other words, it is a film that demands concentration because it continuously evolves in various areas and ways.

All of the events in Werckmeister Harmonies take place in a small town somewhere in post-communist Hungary and are seen primarily through the eyes of Janos Valuska (Lars Rudolph), a middle-aged bachelor who makes ends meet as a mailman. The town has been effectively abandoned by the central government and left to survive on its own -- its roads are terrible, most of its lamp posts have stopped working, and most of its food supply is rationed and distributed with coupons -- and as a result no one that lives there is optimistic about the future. Most prime-age men have become heavy drinkers, and the women have stopped confronting them because there is nothing else to do.

But when a traveling circus arrives in town, the status quo is disrupted -- everything bad becomes worse and then everyone goes insane. What triggers the change is an exhibition of a massive dead whale, which for some inexplicable reason angers most men and quickly transforms them into violent thugs. As tensions rise, brawls break out, and the town’s social fabric disintegrates, Janos observes from afar, struggling to understand the antagonistic forces that appear to be on course to permanently reshape his reality.

Tarr plays with a variety of different themes to illustrate that good and bad, social structure, and the cycle of existence are interconnected, but belong to a larger system. What is the larger system? Tarr does not spell it out, but like Werckmeister implies that there is a cosmic order where everything, including the mayhem that is trasnforming the provincial town, is fitted in equal temperament.

Werckmeister Harmonies is a long film that digs very deep. It feels a lot like a religious film that seeks answers to several old questions about the grand order of things and the human mind’s ability to grasp the truth that emerges from them, but without the classic limitations on scope and imagination that religion introduces. It is also very effective as an allegory of Hungary’s communist past and the collapse of the utopia its rulers protected until the early 1990s. In fact, replacing only the massive dead whale with a big and decomposing bear -- the classic metaphor for Russia and the Revolution -- would have made it absolutely impossible not to see it as yet another carefully constructed political film from the former Soviet Bloc.

Werckmeister Harmonies 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Criterion's release of Werckmeister Harmonies is a 4K Blu-ray/Blu-ray combo pack. The 4K Blu-ray is Region-Free. However, the Blu-ray is Region-A "locked".

Please note that some of the screencaptures that appear with this article are taken from the 4K Blu-ray and downscaled to 1080p. Therefore, they do not accurately reflect the quality of the 4K content on the 4K Blu-ray disc.

Screencaptures #1-21 are from the Blu-ray.
Screencaptures #25-35 are from the 4K Blu-ray.

The following text appears inside the leaflet that is provided with this release:

"Supervised and approved by director Bela Tarr, the new master presented here was created from the 35mm original camera negative, which was scanned and restored in 4K resolution by the National Film Institute Hungary and Cinegrell. The original monaural soundtrack was remastered from the 35mm original soundtrack negative.

Colorist: Robert Libel, NFI Filmlab, Budapest, Hungary.
Audio consultant: Gyorgy Kovacs."

The 4K makeover looks absolutely stunning in native 4K and 1080p. The native 4K presentation is not graded with HDR or Dolby Vision, and to be honest, I do not think that it could have looked any better. Delineation, clarity, depth, contrast and sharpness are spectacular. Fluidity is superb as well. I went back and forth between the native 4K and 1080p presentations multiple times in various areas and could not see any drastic discrepancies in the dynamic range of their visuals. In a few spots where light is captured in a very particular manner the native 4K presentation produces marginally richer visuals, but I do not think that this makes the 1080p presentation less impressive. Both presentations look stunning even on a very big screen. Image stability is great. I did not see any age-related imperfions to report.

Werckmeister Harmonies 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one standard audio track on this release: Hungarian LPCM 1.0. Optional English subtitles are provided for the main feature.

Even though the film does benefit from a good music soundtrack, dynamic intensity is unimpressive. However, there are some interesting dynamic nuances. The dialog is very clear, clean, and easy to follow. Some unevenness is present, but it is entirely inherited. There are no encoding issues to report.

Werckmeister Harmonies 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

4K BLU-RAY DISC

• Bonus Features - there are no bonus features on the disc.

BLU-RAY DISC

• Interview with Bela Tarr - in this exclusive new program, Bela Tarr discusses the early stages of his career in communist Hungary and the evolution of his work with critic Scott Foundas. The program was produced for Criterion in 2023. In English, not subtitled. (22 min).

• Family Nest - presented here is Bela Tarr's directorial debut, Family Nest, which was released in 1979. Fully restored. In Hungarian, with English subtitles. Dolby digital 1.0. 1080p. (96 min).

• Trailer - presented here is promotional trailer for the recent 4K restoration of Werckmeister Harmonies. In Hungarian, with English subtitles. (2 min).

• Leaflet - an illustrated leaflet featuring critic Dennis Lim's essay "Dark Side of the Earth" and technical credits.

Werckmeister Harmonies 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Music and math have a lot in common. For example, they rationalize and utilize order and structure in identical ways. How? In both, action and reaction are interconnected, and precision is of utmost importance. They rationalize and utilize variation and improvisation in very similar ways as well. So, if math can help people ponder the grand order of things and the cosmic forces that enable its existence, can music do it, too? During the Baroque era, German music theorist, organist, and composer Andreas Werckmeister promoted an interesting concept of harmonic organization called equal temperament, which still effectively defines how music is understood and created in the West. Werckmeister also believed that equal temperament was reflective of a much bigger cosmic order. Bela Tarr's film is a unique, very ambitious cinematic test of equal temperament that offers plenty of food for thought. It won't be everyone's cup of tea because it plays with a lot of very complex themes and does not produce any earth-shattering truths, but viewing it is unquestionably a special experience. Criterion's combo pack introduces a fabulous new 4K restoration of Tarr's film that looks great in native 4K and 1080p. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.