The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes
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Movie Reviews of The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes
Movie Review: Excellent film, but avoid the Zeitgeist release...
Summary: 3 Stars
Along with the majority of reviewers here, I found The Piano Tuner Of Earthquakes to be an immensely enjoyable film. Combining all the signature elements that we've come to expect (and love) from the Quays, with an almost Greenaway-esque sense of narrative. Anyone with an interest in the surreal, lyrical or poetic would do well to track this film down.
Seeing as many other reviews have gone into great depth with the film's content, I'll skip right to the point. This film has received two major DVD releases; one in the States via Zeitgeist (featured here), and one in the UK via Artificial Eye. Given the special features on the two DVDs are relatively similar, one would think that the prints would be sourced from the same materials.
I'm not exactly sure what happened, but the Zeitgeist print is noticeably darker and murkier than the Artificial Eye release. Not just a little bit, either. Scenes that shine with light and detail in the UK edition are barely visible in the US release - some scenes are a struggle to make out at all. I'm genuinely surprised that no one else has raised this issue in their reviews here. Granted many may not have had the chance to compare prints, but it was the sheer dullness of the Zeitgeist print that moved me to seek out the UK version.. And I'm very glad I did.
If you've already purchased the Zeitgeist release and are happy with it, there's probably no need to ditch it for the Artificial Eye copy. But if you haven't bought a copy yet, or have been thinking similar things to me with regard to the quality of the print, seek out the UK edition. I think you'll be surprised by the difference.
NOTE: The UK release also contains a 5.1 track and a deleted scene, neither of which are available on the release featured here.
Movie Review: An Alternative Tuning
Summary: 5 Stars
The Quay brothers are probably best known for their work in pop music videos, and it is a bit ironic that their contribution to Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer is simultaneously their most-viewed endeavor and the one they themselves are least satisfied with. "The Piano Player of Earthquakes" is an avant-gard film of great sensitivity, creativity and innovation. Despite their mastery of computer and model-generated animation, they remain emotive artists fully-cognitive of the history of cinema, which expresses itself in everything from the props, the lighting, the stylized dialogue, the costumes, and the wonderful animation. The Quay brothers remain brilliant and at the top of their form.
A word of warning: this is NOT a "Hollywood" film and the plot is not linear; at times the visual operates independent of the dialogue. I found this intriguing and engaged me to actively follow along using all of my senses. I turned off the little voice in my head that asked, "Why did he say that? Where is this going?" and enjoyed watching this film. If you always watch the bloated Hollywood type film you might not enjoy this work but then again, why not see something different? Why not expand your idea of what makes for brilliant cinema and see something which is unique? In "Piano Tuner of Earthquakes" there is a delicate balance between visual art, (excellent) acting, poetic dialogue and haunting, evocative music.
The interview with the Quay brothers is a great bonus on this DVD. I learned a lot about the problems they faced and overcame in making this film, as well as insight into their individual contributions, which has puzzled me because they are of course identical twins and know each other so well -- completing each other's sentences. They are great artists who have fearlessly continued to make engaging filmic art. "The Piano Player of Earthquakes."
Movie Review: Baffling pageant
Summary: 4 Stars
This movie demands to be seen more than once. Its surrealism, its involuted logic, and the play between the scenes and the action set in them all hold details that don't reveal themselves fully in the first viewing.
It starts with a piano tuner being called, but not to tune a piano. Instead, Felisberto is to make the final adjustments to Dr. Droz's automata, like dioramas that act out scenes with inaccessible meanings. The distinction between manufactured images and human vitality quickly breaks down, given the robot-like gardners and the mysterious thoughts implanted into his dreams and perhaps his waking mind. The two women at this isolated villa are equally mysterious. Seductive Assumpta seems to be at his elbow at every moment, but Malvina creates a deeper question. Felisberto always sees her silent, passive, and veiled, with some sense that she's covered the way a piece of furniture might be when not in use - which leaves unanswered what her use is to be.
Color, except for one sanguine spot, is so subdued that it borders on monochrome. The startling artifacts of the Brothers Quay, including a boat rowed by disembodied hands, add to this movie's mysterious air. If you're one who demands easy meanings (or any meanings) from a movie, this might leave you cold. Once you settle into its pace and accept that much remains hidden, you might share in its deliciously eerie chill. I recommend this movie to anyone who delights in visual symbols without necessarily needing to know what is symbolized.
-- wiredweird
Movie Review: a dream.perfect...
Summary: 5 Stars
It is difficult enough to describe a dream, even more to understand it. The feeling though, after the dream is over, is something more easy to deal with. This could be a good point to start ( to try ) to describe this work of art. After the film is over, and you lay relaxed trying to understand what happened, more mesmerized than awake, the feeling emerging from this film surrounds you like a scent smelt long ago. It doesn't settle down, but what happens is , it collapses inside of you and in the end reaches deep subconscious levels, where it awakens other long forgotten emotions, that you know they are yours but you are not really sure how to handle them. And thus, as in the beginning you remain laying down, relaxed with a new scent around you, trapped in the kaleidoscopic world the Quays made for you. This world, carefully built of symbols, is in every part of it and also as a whole, a threshold from which we can proceed to a higher level of existence where every object can easily be associated to the flow of your blood, or an automaton is the reason your heart beats. It is a world where logic is a ghost-like presence, and everything moves and happens through emotions automatically, automatons that give life to new automatons, until even death becomes just another automaton that gives birth to a new dream. The feeling of loss was never sweeter or more necessary...Movie Review: Beauty and the dreams
Summary: 5 Stars
What an amazing movie - so strange, so romantic, so beautiful, so different, so dreamy, so delicate, so imaginative. This is a film that should be seen if only because it is one of the most beautifully shot films of the last several years. Praised to the high heaven "Pan's Labyrinth" simply pales and disappears in comparison. The Brothers Quay are the visual masters with astounding talents for capturing dreams and transferring them to the screen in the most hypnotizing ways imaginable. We may not be able to always understand the meaning of a dream by trying to interpret its objects but it would not stop us from feeling the beauty and magic of the film. There is a story of course, a fairytale about an evil doctor who abducts a beautiful opera singer with a magnificent voice whom he wants to transform into a mechanical singing device and a piano tuner of earthquakes who falls in love with her and tries to save her but every image and every sound of the movie are the story themselves. Everyone who feels at home in the worlds of David Lynch or Peter Greenaway, Luis Bunuel or Jan Svankmajer, Guy Maddin or the Brothers Polish; who is impressed by Georges Franju's "Les Yeux sans visage", Jean Cocteau's "Belle et la b?te" (1946), by both Patrick Susskind's and Tom Tykwer's "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" (2006), and by dark romantic fairy tales of E.T. A. Hoffmann, should see and listen to "The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes", the film which charm starts with its title.
Excellent , or according to my own grading system, a visual and sound masterpiece, I wish I'd seen it in the theater.
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