Will Heaven Fall Upon Us? A Béla Tarr Retrospective

Béla Tarr has been described as a “hopeful cynic” and “scatological mystic”, a filmmaker making dystopian fables on the fall of Communism. But his political critiques of a terminally corrupt regime refuse to be pinned down to a specific historical moment and, to the modern viewer, take on a metaphysical quality – a comment on inevitable entropy of all systems, biological, psychological, and social.

With the dream of Liberal democracy faltering, we are offered new utopian visions from the ideologues of Silicon Valley. New sublime objects, the modern equivalent of Werckmeister Harmonies’ miraculous whale, litter the contemporary landscape, whilst the reality of climate change produces ever more weather events akin to Tarr’s unremitting rain, wind and mud.

As Werckmeister Harmonies’ lead character Janos threatens when describing a total eclipse to a group of stupefied drunks, “Will heaven fall upon us?” Or is there hope?

Asked of one of his films at a film festival, "Where is the hope?" Tarr dryly retorted, "The hope is that you see this movie."