The PianoTuner of EarthQuakes (2005) Reviews

• Beautiful to look, difficult to enjoy

  alexfnm2005-09-22

  I watched this film in the Athens Film Festival, having just watched "Institute Benjamenta" a few days earlier. The effect both of these films had on me was quite similar - as movies they were incredibly dull and boring, but as visual experiences incredibly beautiful. The main problem is that the Quays are mostly animators, and most of their work has been short films. If I'm not terribly mistaken, these are their only full length movies. They have beautiful images in their minds and an amazing talent to materialize them, but not the ability (or perhaps the desire) to transform them into a watchable 2-hour movie. The brothers were also present at the screening of the film. They admitted they were quite disappointed with the end result of the "Piano Tuner...", mostly because they had been forced to direct it with limited funds and in a shorter time than what they would have wanted. Because of the above problems, they had to film it in Liepzig instead of Portugal, and they had to wrap it up about a week earlier than it had originally been agreed. Also, they weren't afraid to admit that they have never been able to finance a full-length animation movie, so they thought that a "regular" film would be a good excuse to squeeze some of their own animations in. Indeed, there is a puppet showing up regularly in the film that does not really have anything to do with the happenings. All in all, both these films make excellent memories when you recollect them some time after the screening. You have, however to put up with the actual screening. If these phenomenally talented guys could find themselves a sharp screenwriter, and most importantly, some better financing, they could easily create some timeless masterpieces.

• Piano Tuner of Earthquakes will infect your aesthetic life forever.

  binduesque2007-01-14

  There are some writers (Kafka, Haruki Murakami), some musicians (Monk, Trane, Beethoven), some artists (Max Ernst) and some directors (The Brothers Quay and possibly David Lynch) whose work never disappoints me. I don't care if a movie makes sense or not. In fact, I prefer dream logic to real logic (forget about Hollywood logic!). The Piano Tuner draws you into a world you cannot forget. The alternately subtle and dramatic lighting choices the directors/cinematographers made were compelling. The fact that the protagonist looks a bit like Kafka and has a similar predeliction for dreams and a similar love life happened to resonate for me. True surrealism did not die out in the Thirties, but what passes for surrealism these days is generally anything that is "weird" or "fantastical." The Brothers Quay have put together a movie that the classic surrealists (and today's surrealists!) would have loved is an accomplishment of which the Brothers Quay should be proud. Any movie that changes the way I look at the world when I walk out of theater rates ten quivering mechanical thumbs up for me.

• Beauty and the dreams

  G_a_l_i_n_a2007-08-16

  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 bête" (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 , and according to my own grading system, a visual and sound masterpiece, I wish I'd seen it in the theater

• the fissure king..

  nikhil71792007-03-05

  PTOE is a sumptuous, seven course feast for the senses. Nic Knowland's HD cinematography is wonderfully rich and textural. The sound design is eerie and extremely effective. The art direction is equally fantastic. Amira Cesar is endowed with an ethereal, otherworldly beauty and is perfectly cast in the film. As is Gottfried John who delights as the diabolical Dr. Droz. The Quays have succeeded yet again in creating a strangely compelling parallel universe, falling somewhere between German Expressionism and Kafkaesque Surrealism. The twins have generally been tagged as image-makers rather than story-tellers. That is not necessarily true, as each picture says a thousand words. If you approach PTOE on a purely sensory level - you will be in for a spellbinding ride in which time will cease to exist. If you approach it as a conventional narrative, you will instead find yourself looking constantly at your watch. Alice or the white rabbit - it's really your choice.

• Enchanting, but tedious

  swagner20012006-11-20

  Anyone who has seen a Brothers Quay film realizes that narrative is irrelevant, and image is everything. Clock-like 19th century mechanisms appear as a regular motif. By creating an anachronistic, scientific wonder their films derive their greatest strength. The basic plot of THE PIANO TUNER OF EARTHQUAKES could have been lifted right out of a story by German fantasy writer and composer E.T.A. Hoffmann. It concerns a piano tuner who travels to a distant estate, owned by an elusive doctor. This doctor owns a number of clock-like mechanisms (automatons, he calls them) which will be used to create a grand opera. He requests the tuner to get the automatons in perfect-pitch working order. There's a subplot involving a beautiful opera singer whose life may be threatened by performing in the doctor's upcoming production. PIANO TUNER OF EARTHQUAKES was shot in color, on High Definition video. Most of the daytime shots are enveloped in a haze. The color seems muted. Many composite shots with painted backgrounds are used. There's an ethereal feeling to the images. The worst parts of the film are where the narrative is forcefully injected. Some story bit is clarified, and that tactic makes it seem like a cheap, thoughtless movie. Only when sound effects, music, and visuals are used, with no dialog, the emotional effect is stunning. This is NOT an easy movie to watch. Watching this is about as fun as listening to a piece of music by Schoenberg or Webern. However, fun or entertainment isn't the point. This film questions convention. Stop-motion animation shots, for which the Brothers Quay are best known, are used sparingly. The music often seems inappropriate, very 1940's Hollywood sounding - and quite frankly, I found it distracting; it made everything seem more artificial than perhaps intended. Overall, THE PIANO TUNER OF EARTHQUAKES gives one the impression of a moving-photograph gallery. And photographs are usually viewed best when you are not told what to think of them, but instead, are allowed to let your mind wander free from conventional thought, and dream a picture's story for yourself.