# HETEROTOPIAS IN CINEMA /// Werckmeister Harmonies by Bela Tarr

Werckmeister Harmonies is the seventh movie of the brilliant Hungarian director Bela Tarr. One of the main characteristic of it, is that it is composed only by thirty nine shots (for a two hours movie).

The plot is set in a small village of Hungary which can already be considered as an heterotopia thanks to its remoteness and the extreme filtration of exchanges between the outside world and the village. In fact, the only foreign element is a strange circus troupe carrying a whale inside a truck and lead by an evocative character called The Prince. Just like in Lars van Trier's Dogville, the outside world seems barely to exist, or at least does not endure representation and when the main character wants to get away from his world, he is being chased by an helicopter which definitely recalls Francois Truffaut's Farenheit 451.
Anyway, the real heterotopia here is represents by an hospital which is being attacked at some point of the movie in a long shot visiting the entire building and observing a group of people beating up patients. The "real world" is taking over this "other space" until assailants meet the human in its nudity, in its fragility, in its pitifulness.