With The Man from London's gorgeously composed long takes, moody black-and-white cinematography, slow and determined (deterministic?) pace, and hypnotic score, it is obvious we are back in the hands of master Béla Tarr, the Hungarian who stunned serious cinemagoers around the world with Sátántangó in 1994, and then followed that up with the equally mesmerizing Werckmeister Harmonies in 2000. Here, he and regular collaborator László Krasznahorkai adapt a noirish novel from Georges Simenon about a seaside railway switchman who finds his life turned upside-down when he witnesses a murder, recovers a suitcase full of cash and then, rather unadvisedly, decides to keep it.

While Tarr is nominally engaged in a narrative--the eponymous man from London is a gangster who comes to find out what happened to his money--he is, as always, more concerned with the aesthetics of film form and the lack of spiritual values in a godless universe than he is with story. Shooting on the island of Corsica--which immensely contributes to the otherworldly feel of the film--and using cinematographer Fred Keleman, whose talent for capturing the darker shades of grey and black is unsurpassed, Tarr creates a timeless nightmare replete with his characteristic weathered faces, monologues and virtuoso set pieces. Perhaps an acquired taste for some, Tarr remains one of the few iconoclastic cinema visionaries, and for this, cinephiles should be grateful.

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