Will Heaven Fall Upon Us? A Béla Tarr Retrospective
Fri 2 - Sun 25 Aug
Retrospective celebrating the great Hungarian filmmaker, Béla Tarr - described as “hopeful cynic” and “scatological mystic”, a filmmaker making dystopian fables on the fall of Communism.
But Tarr's 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 the inevitable uncertainty 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."
Upcoming screenings in this season
Werckmeister Harmonies
classified 12A S Will Heaven Fall Upon Us?How do you follow up a film as monumentally haunting as Sátántangó (1994)? For Béla Tarr, the only option was to continue down the same dark path.
The Turin Horse
classified 15 S Will Heaven Fall Upon Us?Raw, compelling and emotionally devastating, Béla Tarr's final film is a daringly original and vivid work of artistically precise filmmaking that has left audiences the world over gasping for breath.
The Man From London
classified 12A S Will Heaven Fall Upon Us?Béla Tarr's unsettling, sometimes absurd, sometimes striking The Man From London - based on a novel by crime author Georges Simenon - is a film about desire; indestructible longing for a life of freedom and happiness; and illusions never to be realised.
Sátántangó
classified 15 S Will Heaven Fall Upon Us?A monumental work of contemporary cinema, Hungarian auteur Béla Tarr’s seminal seven-and-a-half hour masterpiece is back on our screens with this stunning new 4K restoration.