The Cinematheque

The magisterial, eerily apocalyptic films of ​“slow cinema” godhead Béla Tarr have guaranteed the retired (though not inactive) Hungarian master a pantheonic place beside fellow movie metaphysicians like Tarkovsky, Angelopoulos, and Sokurov. Inglorious by comparison are the directorial works of collaborator György Fehér, a producer on Sátántangó and dialogue writer on Werckmeister Harmonies. His virtually forgotten debut feature Twilight, for which Tarr was a consultant, is as haunting as anything found in his countryman’s cast-iron oeuvre. Indeed, you’d be forgiven for thinking it is a Tarr picture, so kindred is its devotion to a Tarr-like coagulation of time and doomsday vision of humanity edging toward oblivion.

“I See a Darkness” presents Fehér’s tremendous first film, never before released in North America, alongside Tarr’s aforementioned Werckmeister Harmonies, one of the milestones of modern cinema. Both arrive in stunning new restorations.