Béla Tarr | 2hr 19min
Standing atop a weather-beaten watchtower in the French coastal town of Dieppe, railway switchman Maloin peers through dirty, smeared windows, observing the ferry port and train station below. This is a world he only ever engages with from a distance, pulling levers to redirect trains he never rides, and only reacting with vague interest when an isolated scuffle between strangers ends with a drowning. Why should he feel guilty for stealing the briefcase of money left behind in the aftermath, especially when he had nothing to do with the crime itself? This murder is irrelevant to his dull, mundane life – he is merely a peripheral figure capitalising on what has already taken place.
Right from the opening 14-minute shot which precedes this bleak chain of events though, The Man from London has already declared its moral and aesthetic detachment. Béla Tarr’s camera only moves laterally along the watchtower’s windows, yet the probing scrutiny of its zoom lens covers a vast expanse of the sombre exterior setting. After tilting up the bow of a monolithic ferry at a glacial pace, passing shadows of steel beams across the frame, it settles on two men aboard the deck. We barely make out their British accents above the churn of rolling waves, and as one passes the mysterious briefcase to the other, we surmise some illicit exchange unfolding just out of reach.
Still the camera continues to pan over to the right, where rain-slicked concrete reflects harsh industrial lights, and faceless silhouettes listlessly board a stationary train. In due course, Tarr pulls back just enough to reveal Maloin lighting a cigarette in grim close-up, his features fixed in dour resolve. Turning back to the window, the story of the briefcase continues as it is tossed from the ferry into the water and fished out by another man on the dockside, thus ending the first chapter of its impersonal trajectory. It is a monumentally controlled opening shot that Tarr conducts here, and not long after Maloin descends his watchtower to steal the abandoned briefcase from the drowned victim, The Man from London fully settles into its drab, observational fatalism.
This sombre detour into genre may not approach the formal transcendence of Tarr’s masterpieces, yet its murky crime narrative may very well be his strongest – or at least, his most straightforward. The plot itself could have easily sat comfortably within a 1940s noir starring Robert Mitchum or Fred MacMurray, and indeed, its literary source material had previously received a French screen adaptation several decades earlier. In Tarr’s ascetic hands though, sensationalist thrills are entirely drained from this lifeless setting, where time moves like a stagnant stream. Violence does not belong to these damp, work-worn streets, but rather arrives from abroad as a faint disturbance, passing through the town’s shadows to erode its meagre sense of order.
So too does the investigation ushered in by the British inspector Morrison feel like an intrusion here, imposing procedural formality upon a weary community that barely comprehends the crime unfolding in its midst. Although Tarr spends much time admiring the seaport’s imposing architecture of historic facades, dilapidated alleyways, and industrial docklands, the local tavern is where we meet many of the locals, inhabiting this space as fixtures of its dim interior. There, meandering conversations drift lazily between patrons and the barkeep, who Maloin often joins in games of chess. By the pool table, stumbling drunks perform party tricks and senselessly dance to the accordionist’s cyclical tune, all while Tarr’s camera watches on in long, hypnotic takes.
It is also here where Morrison begins his interrogation of the townspeople, specifically narrowing in on Brown – the killer who fled the scene before he could retrieve the stolen money. If he can return the £55,000, then Morrison is even prepared to offer him a reward, though this is hardly feasible. Unbeknownst to anyone else, the cash sits with the railway switchman, and as the camera drifts across the tavern to find him eavesdropping on every word, he realises just how precarious his position has become.
Tarr’s characters rarely possess the emotional vocabulary to openly express their anxieties, so as guilt settles over Maloin, it manifests instead through brief, uncharacteristic outbursts. Frustrated by the local butcher’s exploitation of his daughter Henriette’s labour, he provokes a physical altercation, rupturing the town’s shallow civility with his pent-up resentment. Tilda Swinton may be the only famous face in The Man from London, yet she fits effortlessly into Tarr’s desolate world as the wife who must bear the brunt of Maloin’s agitation, battling his volatility with a forlorn sternness. After he lashes out at Henriette for placing her elbows on the table, she steps in to intercept his fury, redirecting it towards herself. Later when he impulsively purchases Henriette an expensive mink stole, his wife again must temper his behaviour, though this time as the one to disappoint their daughter and return the item.
Even when Tarr’s camera lingers on Maloin’s back in bars and streets, we can see the tightness gather in his hunched posture, physically compressing him inwards. While darkness engulfs this town, blending the inky water with the night sky, he too sinks deeper into the same mundane oblivion. It is only inevitable that Morrison should eventually approach him in his watchtower for questioning, and as Tarr’s camera shifts from tight close-ups of their faces to the police’s recovery of the drowned body outside, the distance between crime and guilty witness narrows.
The moment that Henriette comes running home one day to inform Maloin of a man hiding in their seaside hut, this slow-moving collision is effectively sealed. “Brown?” he murmurs at the entrance before walking through – and in the interceding 90 seconds, Tarr holds his camera on the rough, weather-beaten door. Only the slow, rhythmic tide fills the silence, wearing away at our patience and composure, until Maloin finally emerges in mute shock. He has killed Brown, he confesses to Morrison, who decides the murder was committed in self-defence – though Tarr’s ambiguous ellipsis keeps whatever transpired inside that hut deliberately unknowable.
Taking the opportunity to return the stolen briefcase as well, Maloin is effectively absolved of any real consequence, restoring the uneasy equilibrium of his monotonous life. It is not his face that Tarr’s lens rests upon in the closing shot though, but that of Brown’s grieving wife, gazing off into the distance as though she has stepped outside herself altogether. Only by numbing oneself to the amoral emptiness of this barren, urban wasteland can one hope to endure its bleakness, and as The Man from London fixates upon her hollow stare, we too are left gazing into the same dehumanising void.
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