János is the town's paper deliverer and caretaker for the town's most acclaimed citizen, a music theorist. János is dewy-eyed and fascinated with how the world works and contains a spiritual wonderment. He keeps an astronomical poster by his bed, and in the first scene, he lectures the drunks at the bar about the rotation of the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun.
Every scene features János, and rarely does the camera linger far away from him. The audience gets a good sense of his curiosity when the citizens start ranting about a traveling circus that features a giant stuffed whale and the shadowy Prince, a demagogue who is rumored to possess magnetic powers that can rip trees out of the ground. The citizens take extra measures to safeguard their houses, but János is excited by all the commotion.
Randolph holds the weight of the film well. This isn't a character piece, with the pictures and the emotions they create being the true main character of the film, but Randolph gets the message across with his subtle aura of wisdom, loneliness and reflection. János is built up so that if anyone could make sense of the current events, it would be him.
When the circus arrives, it enters in a ridged, pieced together metal box. János is the not only the first in line to see the rotting whale, but the only one in line. János acclaims that the whale is the event of the century, but no one in the village will listen to his glowing review, for they fear what will happen when the Prince shows up and gives a speech to the growing audience. Many men from different parts of the country have gathered around the box to listen to the Prince, and when he gives his rabble-rousing speech, everything will change.
The increasing anxiety is created masterly by the directors' decision to compose the film with only 39 tracking shots. With the film being 145 minutes long, that is an incredibly small number of shots. To put it in perspective, film editor and sound designer Walter Murch stated that the standard movie contains an average of 5,000 cuts. The film's long and expertly choreographed shots allow the viewer to remain, unbroken, in the scene. The movement of the camera flows so smoothly that you don't notice that a there hasn't been a cut in the last five minutes. It's like watching a film without really blinking.
This realist approach to the film's sparse editing highlights the images that the Tarr, Hranitsky and cinematographer Patrick de Ranter have created. The air looks thin and frigid, like it will crack the skin of your hands. There is no warmth in the sunlight, and at nighttime, even the shadows have shadows. And when the chaos comes, you can feel the energy irrupt, but that, too, is cold. There is a sense that the town was in dire conditions even before the commotion with the circus.
The film takes its time to get to the action, and much of it takes place off-screen. Also, the ending may be a bit of a letdown for some, but Werchmeister Harmonies is a meditative, strange, and demanding look at how quickly widespread manipulation can sprout when the soil is right.
