The impeccable mise en scène and immaculate technique fail to capture Tarr’s trademark spiritual malaise, also missing the lassitude in the protagonists’ souls.
Comment
12/12/08
The Man from London (2008)
63
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:24
Fresh:15
Rotten:9
Average Rating:5.7/10
Consensus: Outrageously stylized and conceptually demanding film from art-house favourite Bela Tarr.
Theatrical Release:12-12-2008
Reviews for The Man from London
Top CriticThe Man from London’ lacks the grandiose ‘cosmic’ intimations of the director’s past work, and though it contains many moments of sublime cinematic choreography, this is finally good Tarr, but not great Tarr.
12/12/08
Top CriticAs slow-moving, oppressive and icy as a winter fog, Tarr's noirish drama of temptation and guilt beguiles but also, frankly, bores.
12/12/08
Top CriticBut ultimately the pace is deadly. Tectonic drift moves faster. The dialogue is delivered in a way that suggests that somebody added a load of extra full stops.
12/12/08
Top CriticThe Man from London is no conventional cop thriller. It's an arresting nightmare all the same.
12/12/08
Top CriticSurrendering to the film's languid rhythms is pleasurable, even invigorating. To resist its forbidding pace and style is to deny oneself its rarefied rewards.
12/12/08
Top CriticA lugubrious pace, shots that hang... and hang... and hang... long after most other directors would call "Cut", and scant dialogue but a surplus of portentous close-ups make the film a somnambulant chore.
12/12/08
You will find the film either desperately depressing or perversely hypnotic. Or you might find it both simultaneously.
12/12/08
It is almost an anti-mystery, our meagre clue to the protagonist's feelings of guilt legible in the contours of Krobot's mournful mid-European face: only Bruno Ganz, one feels, could out-gloom him.
12/12/08
As uncompromising as all his work and, though beautifully and often breathtakingly shot by fellow director Fred Keleman, is definitely not for the faint-hearted.
12/12/08
Despite its conventional-sounding plot, this is strictly for hardcore arthouse fans and the film's aesthetic rewards don't really justify its lengthy running time.
12/12/08
The Man From London bears all the trademarks of Tarr's recent films: dense chiaroscuro, sparely deployed dialogue, a vividly evoked locale, and fluidly wandering camera movements drawn out over hypnotically extended takes.
05/24/07
The Man From London, directed by Bela Tarr, is an outrageously stylized, conceptually demanding film.
09/22/08
Top CriticTarr struggles to adapt to an outmoded genre and, in the end, produces his least personal work to date.
09/17/08
I loved it, but it'll be some weeks before I can make heads or tails of it.
06/07/08
The Man from London, however comprehensible and demystified, is housed in a world of nonetheless pure, enveloping ambiance -- and it is by this measure that its merits are clearest.
10/23/07
The Man From London is the latest example of an utterly distinctive vision, baleful and radiant, as voluptuous as it is bleak.
10/22/07
Feels like no other film that you've seen before. It's cerebral and lugubrious, yet simple as a fairy tale.
10/05/07
The Third Man on Ambien -- will dazzle the faithful and bore the stuffing out of everyone else.
10/04/07
Béla Tarr is not at his best in The Man from London.
09/22/07
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