The Man from London (2008)

The impeccable mise en scène and immaculate technique fail to capture Tarr’s trademark spiritual malaise, also missing the lassitude in the protagonists’ souls.

The 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.

As slow-moving, oppressive and icy as a winter fog, Tarr's noirish drama of temptation and guilt beguiles but also, frankly, bores.

But 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.

The Man from London is no conventional cop thriller. It's an arresting nightmare all the same.

Surrendering to the film's languid rhythms is pleasurable, even invigorating. To resist its forbidding pace and style is to deny oneself its rarefied rewards.

A 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.

You will find the film either desperately depressing or perversely hypnotic. Or you might find it both simultaneously.

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.

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.