Piano Tuner of Earthquakes

[Scharphedin2]

The second feature length film by The Brothers Quay will be released on DVD on the 26th of June by Artificial Eye!

Having once seen the animated works of the Brothers Quay (most notably "The Street of Crocodiles" -- a 21 minute short film that reinvents more than adapts Bruno Schulz's absurdist novel as a nocturnal voyage through that neighborhood of Warsaw, where all things exotic can be bought and sold), or, their 1995 live feature INSTITUTE BENJAMENTA (from the novella "Jacob Von Gunten" by Robert Walser), there is no ever forgetting their peculiar and completely personal world of images.

I am curious to hear from forum members who have actually seen the Quays' new feature. It did not receive much notice upon initial release, and some of the brief words it did receive in passing were less than enthusiastic. Naturally, it is difficult for me to believe that THE PIANO TUNER OF EARTHQUAKES could be anything less than a small sensation...

[denti alligator]

Excellent news!! Thanks for reporting this!

Institute Benjamenta is one of my very favorite films, so I'm very curious to see the Quays' second live-action effort.

Question: that's just about two weeks from now. Why no sign of it as pre-order or at AE's site?

[Scharphedin2]

In fact I saw the info first on this forum's release calendar

However, now I have looked around for more information, and I found the following at play.com (a UK etailer that is usually reliable):

PIANO TUNER OF EARTHQUAKES

availability: Due for release on 26/06/2006
RRP: £19.99 You save: £5.00 (25%)

• Making 'The Piano Tuner Of Earthquakes'
• Portrait of Droz
• Portraitof Droz' deleted scene
• Theatrical trailer
• Image gallery
• Quay Brothers biography

The Piano Tuner Of Earthquakes is the breathtakingly beautiful second film from the brothers Quay.

On the eve of her wedding, the beautiful opera singer Malvina is mysteriously killed and abducted by the malevolent Dr. Droz. Felisberto, an innocent piano tuner, is summoned to Droz's secluded villa so that they can service his strange musical automatons. Little by little, Felisberto learns of the doctor's plan to stage a "diabolical opera" and of Malvina's macabre demise. as he secretly conspires to rescue her, Felisberto becomes trapped in the web of Droz's perverse universe...

There is a thumbnail of the cover, but I do not see any mention of Artificial Eye. AE did distribute the film for release in cinemas in the UK.

[Scharphedin2]

Denti: If INSTITUTE BENJAMENTA is one of your favorite films, did you ever see any of their animated shorts?

[John Cope]

I love the Quays, too, and have been looking forward to this. What I'm most interested in actually is to what degree this is an adaptation of Adolfo Bioy Casares' novel The Invention of Morel. Supposedly this is loosely adapted from that book and though I'm sure it is probably very loosely adapted I am quite intrigued as Morel is an absolutely brilliant piece of fiction. The descriptions I've read of the movie's plot are not similar to Casares' story but the themes and ideas may remain very much intact.

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

Shame that the AE disc doesn't include the short 'In Absentia'.
I saw this a few years back and it left me shaking and not just because of the thundering live Stockhausen score. I felt that it was one of the few films I had seen that had unremittlingly entered the mind of an insane person.
Incidentally I was sitting slap bang behind Werner Herzog in the audience so how's that for a double whammy.

What to you do/say in those situations? Luv your work Wern! Needless to say I remained in that screaming mode that men call silence.

[Scharphedin2]

You are right... I remember reading about "In Absentia" at the time when it was released, but then forgot about it as I never saw any notices that it would be playing around here, and no DVD release was ever announced.

In fact, aside from INSTITUTE BENJAMENTA, I have not really seen anything after the beginning of the '90s. The Kino release of their shorts covers the period from the early '80s to the early '90s (the DVD closely resembles the program of a retrospective that I saw in Chicago in the mid-'90s, although the retrospective included a couple of additional music videos that were not on the DVD). Surely the Brothers must have made other films in the ten years between INSTITUTE BENJAMENTA and PIANO TUNER OF EARTHQUAKES. Can anyone throw some light on the last 10 years of their work?

I noticed that there is a featurette on the DVD release of FRIDA entitled something like "The FX of Brothers Quay." Did they help out on this film?

[denti alligator]

Both Kino DVDs of the Quays' work seem to have gone out of print, so there may be something in the works new editions. Who knows.

[Scharphedin2]

Now that you mention it, I think I saw that Zeitgeist was announcing remastered editions of these two titles some time ago...

[denti alligator]

Has anyone ordered from Play.com? Are they reliable? Free shipping is appealing.

[tavernier]

Now that you mention it, I think I saw that Zeitgeist was announcing remastered editions of these two titles some time ago...

This film is opening Oct. 20 in NYC, with other cities to follow. It's being released by Zeitgeist, which "is planning a 2007 DVD release of shorts by the Quay Brothers, including re-mastered high-definition versions of such classics as Street of Crocodiles and films previously never before available in the U.S. on home video, including In Absentia," according to the press release.

[Scharphedin2]

Great news! Thanks for sharing this. Does the press release indicate a street date for the DVD(s)?

[tavernier]

Great news! Thanks for sharing this. Does the press release indicate a street date for the DVD(s)?

No, all the info in the press release is in my post. I didn't check the Zeitgeist website, however; there may be more info there.

[Scharphedin2]

Concerning the Artificial Eye release, I emailed them, and got this reply:

"June 26 is correct - our website will have it up very soon"

[Scharphedin2]

Specs now up at the Artificial Eye web site.

[filmghost]

Has anyone ordered from Play.com? Are they reliable? Free shipping is appealing.

Absolutely reliable! I have ordered hundreds of DVDs from them and never had any problems. Delivery is fast and safe. I don't know if they deliver in the USA though...

[Lino]

DVDTimes review

[Scharphedin2]

Thanks for the link, Myra. I think it is an excellent review that lifts just enough veils and sheets of gauze to give a first time viewer of the film an idea of what is going on, without ruining the experience for anyone with too much information, or, attempting to force too much of a personal interpretation on the film.

I can only reiterate that the DVD is very nice. Although it can be hard to judge based on the very quality of the images, the look of the film was solid and consistent throughout, and I am convinced that this is a strong and faithful transfer. The extras are also nice, particularly the extended interview feature – a real treat to hear this most elusive team of filmmakers discuss their work methods. Specifically, I was pleased to hear them talk about the decision to film in high definition video, as this was one aspect of the film that caused a raised eyebrow or two on my part, as I was watching the film.

Sleep would not come to me last night, so I decided to get up at around 1.30 AM and watch this film, and it may or may not have been the right thing to do. As I sit here now, with the wonderful, piercing sunlight streaming into my kitchen, I am at an almost complete loss as to what was dream last night, and what was the product of the Quay imagination. The principles of storytelling at work in the film, as in all the previous work of the brothers, are those of dreams. There is a clear story, but it constantly folds in upon itself, and chases down strange nocturnal corridors that lead only into new dreams, or, at best, into antechambers to the story proper, where fragments of other stories, or previous Quay films, momentarily flicker in the half light, and disappear before we can be exactly sure of what we have seen.

Early on in the film I was fairly sure that I had misunderstood something, and that in fact the piano tuner was Jonathan Harker on his way to Count Dracula's castle. There is a phrase spoken in voice-over at one point to the effect that ‘… I suddenly felt as if I had been here before…,' and then out of a clearing in the woods, Gottfried Benn becomes visible, here in the role of the sinister Doctor Droz, but in his ordering about of his identical looking servants, I was sure that we had arrived at the Institute Benjamenta once more. There are of course many parallels in the course of the film to The Phantom of the Opera, this I knew, and they did not come as a surprise. Then, the automata are introduced – Doctor Droz's intricate musical mechanisms that the piano tuner is commissioned to work on. These contraptions take the shape of big wooden boxes with a window in the front, and strange scenes playing themselves out endlessly within. And, yes, there inside the automata, we find the distilled animated works of the brothers Quay come to life once more within the framework of this new film.

Someone asked in a post earlier in the thread, about the extent to which the Quay Brothers follow Casares' novel. Having not read this novel, I could not tell you, although I would suspect that the relationship of book to film is approximately the same in this case, as the relationship between the works of Schulz and Walser to the Quay films that their books inspired.

In all honesty, it actually took me some time to become engulfed in this film. The combination of the acting, which initially appeared overly wooden, and the quality of the high definition video, which to me has this odd dual quality of looking more real than real and artificial at the same time, seemed like the thorns on a beautiful bush of flowers. Then of course the film got under way, and I followed like the young boy I was, when first the Quays dragged me down those streets of crocodiles with eyes and mouth agape. Remember in this dream that is our life, and that is the world of the brothers Quay, all things are made from yesterday's discarded papers and toys. All things here are of the world of artifice and the not entirely real, so too the stylized acting and hyper-real HD images. This latest film is in fact a reference catalogue to all that has gone before: those flimsy dream-realities perpetuated by corrugated machinations and unwinding spools of thread; those world-weary puppets whether made of porcelain, wood, or even flesh; that weird sensuality (or should we call it eroticism) that appears to have been extracted without anesthesia from the subconscious sea of all human longing; those forests of the unreal, whether represented by actual trees, or only suggested by a wall of songs and screams and other aural manifestations brought forth by an army of insects (and possibly a couple of stray somnambulists).

I am very open about my admiration for the work of the brother Quay. They have been part of my personal mythology for such a long time, and there are indeed certain images and moments from their films that it is difficult for me to conceive of living without. To viewers with a less intimate acquaintanceship with the work of the Quays, The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes may be a difficult door through which to enter their world, and I am not sure that I would be doing the Quays, or the new viewer, a service by recommending this specific film as the first exposure to their work. For those already initiated, however, the film will hardly disappoint.

[Scharphedin2]

I wrote, and asked Zeitgeist what their plans are for the Brothers Quay, and they very kindly wrote back, with some very exciting news that confirm Tavernier's post earlier in this thread.

Zeitgeist will indeed be releasing a new collection of Quay shorts around spring 2007 in the US and Canada - several of the titles to be included have never previously been released, amongst these In Absentia and Phantom Museum. All the films on the now out-of-print Kino DVD have been remastered by the BFI in hi-def, and in addition the Quays have done audio commentaries on some films for the first time, and a video interview. Zeitgeist and the BFI are working on other supplements as well, so this should be a nicely packed set for all the Quay fans out there.

The re-release of Institute Benjamenta is also in the works, and Piano Tuner will have a separate DVD release as well, after its US theatrical release in November. More details to come on both soon.

Thanks to Zeitgeist for being friendly and forthcoming in replying to my inquiry.

[manicsounds]

My disc kept freezing over and over in chapter 8 (the last) and disrupted my viewing experience. anyone else or just me?

[Scharphedin2]

manicsounds, I had no problems at all with mine, so it probably is just a pressing issue on your particular disc.

I noticed a post some time ago (I think in the Ludwig thread), where someone had problems playing a disc. He then ripped it to his computer, and was able to play the rest of the film. I thought I would mention it, because it sounded like a good solution, if you are excited about seeing the film, and may not be in a position to exchange it from one day to the next. I have no personal experience of doing this.

[MichaelB]

Zeitgeist will indeed be releasing a new collection of Quay shorts around spring 2007 in the US and Canada - several of the titles to be included have never previously been released, amongst these In Absentia and Phantom Museum. All the films on the now out-of-print Kino DVD have been remastered by the BFI in hi-def, and in addition the Quays have done audio commentaries on some films for the first time, and a video interview. Zeitgeist and the BFI are working on other supplements as well, so this should be a nicely packed set for all the Quay fans out there.

The BFI will be putting out its own release later in 2006 - full specs to be confirmed, but it will definitely include all the titles on the Kino disc in restored and remastered transfers personally supervised by the Quays (anamorphic where necessary) plus several previously unreleased titles plus a shedload of extras.

Sorry about the vagueness at present - I don't want to tread on anyone's toes by revealing too much at this stage, not least because things can still drop out (or, in one happy case, be added) at the last minute. But I don't think Quay fans are going to be too disappointed!

[Scharphedin2]

MichaelB, I appreciate the need to be prudent in what you disclose. Seeing the announcement from BFI, my immediate impression was that this is a collaboration between Zeitgeist and BFI. Do you know if this is the case? Or, is it possible that the releases by Zeitgeist and BFI will have different contents (at least in terms of extras)?

[MichaelB]

Literally everything I know about the Zeitgeist disc is contained in the paragraph you quoted above. They're clearly licensing some of the BFI extras, but I don't know whether they're going for all of them.

[John Cope]

What I kept trying to figure out as I watched this was why I like Lynch's work so much better. There is, obviously, a lot of similarity between Piano Tuner and Lynch's typical oblique narratives, even similarities in terms of style. Visually, though, the Quays' film owes more to Sokurov's filtered images or something like Maddin's Twilight of the Ice Nymphs. The relentless hermeticism is all their own, however, and I have to admit it tried my patience.

I don't want to "condemn" the Quays to the hinterlands of short film production for the rest of their lives but I do feel some kind of adjustment needs to be made to come to terms with feature length film work. I say that because my assessment of Piano Tuner is ultimately much the same as my assessment of their first live action film. They are both visually stunning and very effective in spates but what I emerged with in both instances was an hour and a half of haunting mood and floating signifiers that simply doesn't cohere. In this case, there are occasional Christian images and vague allusions to stock Freudian imagery or ideas but these things do not coalesce in a satisfying way. Still, I'm sure there are those who will disagree. But the amount of audience participation required to arrive at worthwhile emotional truths is simply out of balance with what we are provided. This is far from a model of clarity. And once again, there may be those who would argue that the story here is actually quite simple and they may be right (though I seriously doubt it); nonetheless, the aspects of the story which are confounding or vague or complicated are certainly not irrelevant to its telling and are, in fact, intrinsic to it.

Yes, I would have preferred a straight retelling of the Casares novel (though I knew it would never be that linear with the Quays and I don't know how "straight" any adaptation of that material could ever really be) as it was, at least, clear in communicating its themes and those themes were not lessened for it. The Casares material swims to the surface on occasion, like in the reference to seeing two suns, and the ultimate resolution of the piece seems to pivot on some kind of variation on the resolution of Invention of Morel. Still, part of what made that work so strong was that we were given a very real sense of the way in which human emotions were effected by the engagement with larger metaphysical ideas; that's a pretty rare and special thing. Piano Tuner can't pull that off because we never have enough of a sense of what's going on. The drama is melancholic, sure, and is grounded on its own particular dream logic but all of that, and the source from which the melancholy comes, is so remote and inaccessible as to make it essentially a futile effort. Maybe that's why Lynch's work is more effective for me--he rarely gets as lost in his own reveries. The essence of Lynch's best work and his motivation is something which is palpably communicated to his audience and is no less personal or multivalent for that seeming concession.

The Quays are brilliant artists who can summon up very real approximations of the dream state without ever seeming willful or intentionally inscrutable or coy. But they may need to cut their natural instincts with a greater regard for those not directly in the know.