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Dark visions through the eyes of a witness
THE MAN FROM LONDON
Directed by Béla Tarr
Certificate 12a
THIS is a brilliant piece of film noir and will haunt you long after the final credits roll.
Starring Miroslav Krobot and Tilda Swinton, it tells the story of a robbery – and the attempts of a well spoken English detective trying to find out what happened to the loot.
Our hero, Maloin, works nights, sitting in an elevated glass signal box overlooking a non-descript port in northern France. His is a simple existence: he watches the ships come and go, the tide come in and recede. The days are marked by the rhythm of the sea, and makes him only too aware of his own gradual ageing. His only passion is his daughter, Henriette.
One evening, he witnesses a murder – and when he goes to investigate, he retrieves with a boat hook a battered suitcase stuffed with cash.
Instead of it offering new opportunities, he is left confronting new questions of crime and punishment, innocence and complicity.
This beautiful film works not so much for the script, which is excellent, the cast, who are superb, or the plot, which is marvellous, but for the whole manner in which it is made.
Each monochrome shot looks like it was framed by Cartier-Bresson. Every vista lingers beautifully – it takes time to work through – make sure you are sitting comfortably – but every scene is so nicely placed, it would be a shame to rush.
You see things from the protagonists point of view: instead of watching Maloin in his glass tower surveying the scene, the camera shot becomes his eyes.
The sound is also wonderful – the whistle of the train, the creak of the patent leather shoes, the gabble of the conversation in the back-ground, the click of snooker balls being aimlessly cued around the table. Throw in plenty of mournful accordion music and you will leave the cinema feeling strangely moved.
Director Béla Tarr, a professor at Berlin University, was once a shipyard handyman and porter and he draws on this experience to portray the drudge of a menial day’s labour.
But, above all, The Man From London is like nothing else I have seen in the cinema this year, and its originality means whether you like it or yawn through it, it’s clever film-making. |
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