Werckmeister Harmonies - Béla Tarr

Werckmeister Harmonies must be the movie with the fewest shots I’ve ever seen. The monochrome frames and excessive long paced shots, that the movie is famous for, are contrary to the regular Hollywood movies nowadays. Béla Tarr, as a consummate director, arranges the settings, the music and the pictures in a perfect way. What fascinate me most are the paced shots used in the entire film.

Generally, long paced shots appear no more than 5 times in a movie, which are assembled by montage for the main part. A director usually prefers using montage to paced shot because the former is regarded to be more dramatic and efficient, while the latter is boring. But this movie makes me ponder over the use of long paced shot all over again. As said in Martin Jay’s Scopic Regimes of Modernity, our vision is dynamic, jumping from one focal point to another. It follows the logic of the Gaze rather than the Glance. So the montage is more like the Glance while the paced shot like the Gaze. Why Béla Tarr choose the way of looking which is not coherent with our vision habit? In my opinion, it is because the camera takes the place of our eyes when we are in front of the screen, and that makes the Gaze possible. These long paced shots in Werckmeister Harmonies display the process of the story in an unrealistic way for the audience, who were indelibly impressed by the uncommon experience. From this point of view, the long paced shot is more fantastic.

What’s more, there are still three details in my mind. Firstly, as the leading role walking down the road for nearly 200 meters, the camera keeps on focusing on him with the same focal length and perspective without any omitting. It does show the distance sincerely. Secondly, the overall view of the crowed square is not revealed by Wide-Angle or bird-eye, but by the paced shot following the actor’s track, and that makes the understanding of the environment more limpid. Finally, when the actor steps into the track, the shot will continues focusing on the face of the container, and that strengthens the suspense.

However, these methods of presenting could work only with moving pictures, but how to translate them into a picture’s way?