Werckmeister Harmonies

Named by none other than Susan Sontag as one of the few contemporary filmmakers who matter, Hungarian auteur Béla Tarr is the perfect director for those who like their cinema long and hard. His 1994 magnum opus SATANTANGO runs a whopping seven-and-a-half hours, and while this bleak, black-and-white fable is far more accessible, it's still fairly intense going; it runs a mere 145 minutes, but consists of only 45 shots. The setting is a frozen Hungarian village that seems to be teetering on the edge of an apocalypse: There's a severe coal shortage, the electricity's out, headstones have vanished from the cemetery and entire families have simply disappeared. The cr...