This is my second Bela Tarr movie, and I think I'm getting the idea here. The plot, what of it there is, concerns a local barfly who has become obsessed with a singer in a band which plays some of the bars he frequents, he drags the singer and her husband into some poorly defined subterfuge involving the picking up of a 'package' for some bar owner. Something goes not quite right with the scheme and the main character ends up reporting one or more of the other characters to the local police, the end. The whole thing is set in an unremittingly bleak Hungarian town where it's either raining or night (or both), once again Tarr seems to set up an interesting premise, then takes it nowhere. Every single shot is a long tracking shot, I mean, every single God dammed shot, in the end, the repetitious and unimaginative nature of the shots becomes wearing. No character development is attempted, the main character bores various other random characters to death with sub Nietzschean rants which should appeal to angst ridden teens. The movie picks up a little in the latter half with a local dance, as other reviewers have noted, little effort is made to synchronize the actions of the 'band' with the music, the locals drink and party looking like extras from a Bruegel painting. In the end, the movie simply has no emotional resonance, one is in no doubt that this is an attempt at art, but it's firmly in the 'toilet in the Tate Modern' category. All technique, no heart.
