by LF

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes

The mind-bending films of The Brothers Quay are keeping surrealism alive in the 21st century. Known primarily for their exquisite short animations, The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes is the second feature film to emerge from their atelier of antiquated machines, formal attire, asylums, unfulfilled lust and near death experiences. Tense with unfulfilled desires, the world of the Brothers Quay is too repressed to be a dreamworld. It is an afterworld, an eternity in limbo.

The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes begins with a death. A beautiful young opera singer faints away on stage in the middle of an aria. Her stalker, a psychiatrist resurrects her on his island asylum. A piano tuner is arrives at the asylum to fine-tune the doctor’s mechanical tableaus and rest of the story unfolds from his point of view. Although the dialogue is deliberately theatrical, Gottfried John (a staple from Fassbinder’s films) and Asumpta Serna as the housekeeper bring it to life.

No doubt, there was a great film lurking in the rushes but it never emerges. Its impact is undermined by awkward pacing and murky cinematography that captures the somber tone but often fails to guide the viewer through the disorienting scenes. Overall the film is too restrained. The promise of grotesque sex acts peters out into nothing. Perhaps, it is a little too sentimental and not freakish or stylized enough to deliver the perversions and chills that regularly transport today’s moviegoers.

Previous Films Nocturna Artificialia (1979)

• Punch And Judy (Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy) (1980)
• Ein Brudermord (1981)
• The Eternal Day Of Michel de Ghelderode (1981)
• Stravinsky - The Paris Years (1983)
• Leos Janacek: Intimate Excursions (1983)
• The Cabinet of Jan Sˇvankmajer (1984)
• The Epic Of Gilgamesh (1985) Aka The Unnameable Little Broom
• Street Of Crocodiles (1986)
• Stille Nacht I: Dramolet (1988)
• Rehearsals For Extinct Anatomies (1988)
• Ex-Voto/The Pond (1989)
• The Comb (From The Museum Of Sleep) (1990)
• De Artificiali Perspectiva, or Anamorphosis (1991)
• The Calligrapher (1991)
• Stille Nacht II: Are We Still Married (1991)
• Long Way Down (Look What The Cat Drug In) (1992)
• Stille Nacht III: Tales From The Vienna Woods (1992)
• Stille Nacht IV: Can't Go Wrong Without You (1993)
• Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life (1995)
• In Absentia (2000)
• The Sandman (2000)
• Duet (2000)
• The Phantom Museum: Random Forays Into the Vaults of Sir Henry Wellcome's Medical Collection (2003)
• The Piano Tuner Of Earthquakes (2004)

-- AnarchistU - 11 Apr 2006