User Reviews

I watched this film in the Athens Film Festival, having just watched "Institute Benjamenta" a few days earlier. The effect both of these films had on me was quite similar - as movies they were incredibly dull and boring, but as visual experiences incredibly beautiful. The main problem is that the Quays are mostly animators, and most of their work has been short films. If I'm not terribly mistaken, these are their only full length movies. They have beautiful images in their minds and an amazing talent to materialize them, but not the ability (or perhaps the desire) to transform them into a watchable 2-hour movie.

The brothers were also present at the screening of the film. They admitted they were quite disappointed with the end result of the "Piano Tuner...", mostly because they had been forced to direct it with limited funds and in a shorter time than what they would have wanted. Because of the above problems, they had to film it in Liepzig instead of Portugal, and they had to wrap it up about a week earlier than it had originally been agreed. Also, they weren't afraid to admit that they have never been able to finance a full-length animation movie, so they thought that a "regular" film would be a good excuse to squeeze some of their own animations in. Indeed, there is a puppet showing up regularly in the film that does not really have anything to do with the happenings.

All in all, both these films make excellent memories when you recollect them some time after the screening. You have, however to put up with the actual screening. If these phenomenally talented guys could find themselves a sharp screenwriter, and most importantly, some better financing, they could easily create some timeless masterpieces.

PTOE is a sumptuous, seven course feast for the senses.

Nic Knowland's HD cinematography is wonderfully rich and textural. The sound design is eerie and extremely effective.

The art direction is equally fantastic.

Amira Cesar is endowed with an ethereal, otherworldly beauty and is perfectly cast in the film. As is Gottfried John who delights as the diabolical Dr. Droz.

The Quays have succeeded yet again in creating a strangely compelling parallel universe, falling somewhere between German Expressionism and Kafkaesque Surrealism.

The twins have generally been tagged as image-makers rather than story-tellers. That is not necessarily true, as each picture says a thousand words.

If you approach PTOE on a purely sensory level - you will be in for a spellbinding ride in which time will cease to exist. If you approach it as a conventional narrative, you will instead find yourself looking constantly at your watch.

Alice or the white rabbit - it's really your choice.

The credits rolled and I sat staring, the afterimage of a burning white face and bench buried in the snow still resonating in my eyes. I was sure if I was blown away, confused, enraged or all three. The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes is riddled with problems: the unnecessarily overbearing voice-over exposition during the first forty minutes, the thin plot lines in the opening five minutes. The Quay Brothers seem to not be entirely sure what this film is about, I don't get the sense that there was a mastermind behind this warped world, like I do while watching Mulholland Drive.

That said, it is a very interesting film and, if for no other reason, this is a film that should be seen for being one of the most beautifully shot films of the last five years. The dried color palette, the hazy, dream-like quality of the main character's POV and the stop motion animation all combine to create a film rich in texture and beauty. It seems that The Brothers Quay, though maybe not the most talented of writers (this, I believe being only their second feature length as compared to stacks of rich short films), they are certainly masters of the medium visually. It's an intense, droning, paced film. It's slow and garbled. But it's beautiful.

That the final result of the Piano Tuner of Earthquakes is not really a great movie is a given when taking into account that the style of which the Quay Brothers have gone to almost perfectionist lengths to attain is always leaping ahead in strength when compared to the dialog or the performances. The story itself is meant as a pin-point line for the Quays to relay their staggering mix of mediums. After an opera singer, Malvina, dies during a performance (though not really 'dead' but captured by Doctor Droz, the not-quite-Phantom of the Opera of the story), a mild-mannered piano tuner who is sent out to Droz's estate, but not to fix pianos. Rather, he's sent to fix an automaton, and soon discovers what is going to really happen- the staging of a crazy, other-wordily 'opera' with Malvina, and decides he has to save her. The Quays' choices in actors- Cesar Saracho as Felisberto; Gottfried John as Doctor Droz; Amira Casar as the helpless lady of the film, Malvina; and Assumpta Sera as Droz's caretaker/sometimes seducer of Felisberto- are more based on their appearances and movements in scenes than really for ability in speech and emotion. Not that they don't have a moment or two when they get to connect with the poetic dialog (John gets a good deal of this at times, like when he is shown plotting away with his own agenda at hand). But it's really seeing them, with their distinctive looks, Saracho with his bony figure cast alongside the beautiful Casar, in relation to what comes forward on screen.

To say it's a feast for the eyes is an understatement, and to try and describe much of what comes out in the Quay's design could make this too revealing and long a review. Yet it's the abandon of the usual logic and going head-on into this world that earns their comparison to the likes of Cocteau: we're given a look, quite often, at the automaton and its movements, the gears and wheels churning in titled compositions, and cut against the other seamlessly stop-motion movements. But more importantly, this is set against the actors, and then with other visuals such as inexplicable stop-motion creatures like a woodcutter, or figures in the opera scenes, and if one were to watch it with the sound turned off at home it wouldn't make much of a difference with the visceral impact of it all. Their design attempts to keep the audience in this world from the moment we see Dr. Droz's castle, which is a computer-generated creation, but a much more intricate and detailed kind of set-piece, cut and chiseled in rock and steel. With many of these scenes, set against the music of Duncan and Slaski, which is as a given atmospheric and creepy, and a very unsentimental and moving ending, The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes knocks it out of the parts on technical terms, and should not disappoint the die-hard fans of the Quay brothers' previous works. It's also of no surprise now seeing it why it's the only film that Gilliam has ever had a producer credit on that has not been one of his own directorial efforts- for the kind of mind that loves what can come about through in holding on to an idea and seeing it through in a fantastic manner, it's a marvel. Just don't try and make sense of it all though. 7.5/10

There are some writers (Kafka, Haruki Murakami), some musicians (Monk, Trane, Beethoven), some artists (Max Ernst) and some directors (The Brothers Quay and possibly David Lynch) whose work never disappoints me.

I don't care if a movie makes sense or not. In fact, I prefer dream logic to real logic (forget about Hollywood logic!). The Piano Tuner draws you into a world you cannot forget. The alternately subtle and dramatic lighting choices the directors/cinematographers made were compelling.

The fact that the protagonist looks a bit like Kafka and has a similar predeliction for dreams and a similar love life happened to resonate for me.

True surrealism did not die out in the Thirties, but what passes for surrealism these days is generally anything that is "weird" or "fantastical." The Brothers Quay have put together a movie that the classic surrealists (and today's surrealists!) would have loved is an accomplishment of which the Brothers Quay should be proud.

Any movie that changes the way I look at the world when I walk out of theater rates ten quivering mechanical thumbs up for me.

The Brothers Quay are directors, judging by conventional thought, should have stuck to making short films. I myself actually really liked their first feature, Institute Benjamenta, but judging by their sophomore effort, The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes, I'm willing to agree they don't come close to equaling their past genius at feature length. Piano Tuner is, without a doubt, a gorgeous film to look at, and often to listen to. Unfortunately, it's borderline painful to sit through with its convoluted narrative and glacial pace. Reading the plot synopsis, it sounds like a pretty good story. But the Brothers fail miserably to bring it to life. One thing they should consider avoiding completely in the future: dialogue. My God, it's awful here. A huge bust.

What an amazing movie - so strange, so romantic, so beautiful, so different, so dreamy, so delicate, so imaginative. This is a film that should be seen if only because it is one of the most beautifully shot films of the last several years. Praised to the high heaven "Pan's Labyrinth" simply pales and disappears in comparison. The Brothers Quay are the visual masters with astounding talents for capturing dreams and transferring them to the screen in the most hypnotizing ways imaginable. We may not be able to always understand the meaning of a dream by trying to interpret its objects but it would not stop us from feeling the beauty and magic of the film. There is a story of course, a fairytale about an evil doctor who abducts a beautiful opera singer with a magnificent voice whom he wants to transform into a mechanical singing device and a piano tuner of earthquakes who falls in love with her and tries to save her but every image and every sound of the movie are the story themselves. Everyone who feels at home in the worlds of David Lynch or Peter Greenaway, Luis Bunuel or Jan Svankmajer, Guy Maddin or the Brothers Polish; who is impressed by Georges Franju's "Les Yeux sans visage", Jean Cocteau's "Belle et la bête" (1946), by both Patrick Susskind's and Tom Tykwer's "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" (2006), and by dark romantic fairy tales of E.T. A. Hoffmann, should see and listen to "The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes", the film which charm starts with its title.

Excellent , and according to my own grading system, a visual and sound masterpiece, I wish I'd seen it in the theater

I really wanted to like this movie, but it was just imposable. The acting was ultra hammy, the plot was annoying, and the pace was SLOW, sooo slowwwwww. The whole time sitting in the theater i wanted the movie to end. Twenty minuets into a films and I'm praying for an ending. Sure some of the visuals were nice, but c'mon guys, I mean really! And for a movie about a guy tuning magical instruments there really wasn't much music to speak of. The music there was was annoying, and boring. There were sound loud shrill sounds at times too, those were also annoying. Mainly this film managed to bore me, and creep me out at the same time.

I'm glad its over. I need to go see "Tideland" and wash this bad taste out of my mouth.

Its a matter of abstraction. Always has been, in everything I suppose. But especially in film. The business is one of sharpening some edges and making others recede so as to cut us in some way. Its a dangerous business for all concerned and if it ever seems too competent, you know the blood is fake.

The Quays, like Madden and Greenaway go into forbidden visual zones. They do let me down sometimes when I sense fear, but never when they stumble because stumbling is what shows the risk.

These guys already have earned a place on my short list of films you really must see before you die. I only allow two in any year, so it is something that their incredibly short "Are We Still Married?" is there. But there it is, something that is so rich and open, yet haunting, it will change your dreams permanently.

That short is entirely animated in their preferred style. They are Victorian in nature, both in the junk they assemble to create their worlds, but also in the cosmology they lean on. Its one where explicable means are all broken. Humanity escapes logic. Its the other side of the Holmes syndrome. Its where most of us live.

That's that and this is this, something more ambitious, the long form. That means you must support the long arc, a stretch across the cosmology longer than we can retain in our short memory. What they've done is rely on something we've seen before: a man-god who captures life in a life within life fold. We are sometimes in and sometimes out. The "in" is one of seven "automata," complex mechanical devices that sing life.

The tuner believes himself to be assisting in the maintenance of the machines from the outside but finds himself to be part of the mechanism. The existence of the machines allows the Quays to insert animated sequences that are supposed to merge with the live action. That live action is mostly dream space and when not, is a pseudodream world of Victorian frames and hues.

Its all just too lovely and risky and dangerous to be denied a place in your soul. Sure, it comes dangerously close to the banal. Sure, you can see a few seams and we all wish the budget for the final "performance" was bigger. But if you allow yourself to be swept in this as you routinely do for other science fiction worlds, you will find a sort of psychic sexual release in some long sequences.

In reading about this, some cite Svankmejer as an influence. You need to understand this. Svankmeyer is a Czech animator, a good one. He's an influence in just being there and surviving. But his world is organic and bleak. It is the stuff that comes from repeatedly beaten innocents. The Quays are more mechanical in their images, more episodic in the small. And leagues more optimistic. Their world is one where the sun shines, but just over the edge of a place in which we are stuck.

It makes all the difference. One you would bring children to, in hopes that they would remain children in the edges and so make you wise. The Czech, no. That's where you go to die or try.

I'm putting this as a four for the time being. It may be bumped. 2005 was a very bad year for film. But I haven't yet seen "Cache" or "History of Violence."

Ted's Evaluation -- 4 of 3: Every cineliterate person should experience this.

This is obviously an attempt at art but it is simply tedious and unfathomable.

Aesthetically interesting but otherwise not worth the effort to watch.

I love Gilliam's genius but I guess he had to much involvement on this one.

Dark and textured. This is a adult parable/fairytale about Love & death steeped in victorian-age clockwork magic. The scenes rendered in almost antique "stop Action" animation has an eldritch/creepy feel to it that keeps the viewer on the edge of feeling like he was watching someone's beginning nightmare, or a fever dream on the verge of going very wrong.

For those of you who care-- Although the story never crosses the line: there is a light stream of dark eroticism running through this movie-- so ADULTS ONLY, folks! This movie is NOT FOR KIDS. Mind you, it is tastefully done, whatever your morals.

The storyline is. . .obscure yet evocative. It echoes of something I can't quite pin down I won't repeat what others have said except for the Main Reason for the entire Adventure. An Beautiful Opera Singer dies, and is brought to the weird clockwork isle of Dr. Droz to be magically revived as part of his clockwork art/machines.

This isn't a Storyline or a Plot, really, it's a description of what you start with. What the STORY in this movie is ACTUALLY about is still hard to wrap my mind around-- except that it's deeply woven in the characters and the soft, twisty, multi-meaningful dialogue about Desire and Death.

Having said that, I never once hit the FF button, and I PAUSED the DVD when I had to leave for a moment.

This movie is more aptly a literary event for the eyes and the mind. Best viewed with the lights and cellphones OFF. Gag the Girlfriend for good measure while you're at it. I don't expect her to pass this test.

Every single appearance in this magical world pretends to have a meaning. Maybe it has, maybe not, that makes no difference. It's just a dependency, an intimate relation which chains you at the screen, forgiving you, still busy in wondering who and why... it embraces you in a cozy fake world, more real than any realistic projection. The discounted love story plot is just a background for the astonishing images and sounds, artificial and natural visions, insane but familiar feelings which make this hours pregnant. Erotism is driving the puppets (aka all of them, the characters) straight into their toy alcove, still standing on the edge of perversion and passion. You'll love these dropped confetti, if you're in a receptive state of mind.

This is not a movie for people who do not know a great deal, and people who are not willing to think - the authors, whoever they are, made a great film, but not for people who do not like to work their brains - the Heros of the story are Dr. Droz, and Assumpta. In the end, Assumpta becomes Dr. Droz, as the assumption of the movie is that all enlightened people are spiritually one. The puppet is that part of Assumpta that was not quite enlightened, and the tree she cuts down represents all the unenlightment in her life found in her friends and herself - when she finally becomes one with all the other enlightened people in the world (at the end of the movie), we see her looking in upon the lives of the piano tuner, and Malvina, who represent people who have tried to be enlightened, but gave up forever, and are now being used by the Droz to teach the world about the fact that it is being controlled and managed by a secret organization of Enlightened Masters who are one with each other completely. There is not even a slight hint of illogic in this movie, maybe that is why you might be having a hard time understanding it - I have yet to see a comment that even gets close to grasping the profound meaning of this movie - no one has a clue, and that is too bad - you would think that a professional critic would at least have some clue as to what the movie wants to say to the thinking world!

in fact this movie wanna talk about"love"and "fate": fate control everything,and everything u do never be fresh and surprise..some one must did that before. "i am standing the painter which is someone have done it yesterday" and no beautiful thing can be stay forever: except the one who without live(died people) can get real love forever , just like machine of music(in this movie one) without live can get perfect voice forever. otherwise,u also can do what the tuner have done,lost yourself in somewhere and repeat the perfect part of your love forever...and cant take off control of fate forever ,either.

and the color of this movie very beautiful too .when you have seen this movie ,you will think about (Sleepy Hollow \ Tim Burton),very similar style of design.if you are female with rich philosophic love idea ,you will love this movie very much.

Of all the reviews I've read before seeing this movie, I would have thought that Quay brothers had made a real sleeper of a movie. After seeing the movie however, I realize that more of the critics of this movie would have better spent their time at a $.25 peep show instead of an art-house movie. They would have gotten their satisfaction in far less time and wouldn't have had all that messy metaphor to deal with. Not to mention, instead of giving credit to the Quay's, many critics have tried to describe what other book or movie it feels like. While there are undoubtedly similarities to other works, this is pure Quay.

This movie is brilliant, passionate and a pleasure to the eyes and emotions. The trademark Quay animations, digital effects and intricately designed sets are a smörgåsbord for the senses.

My vote of 9 instead of a perfect 10 was due to some of the storyline holes that were never properly filled in. None the less, this is a great film and is very watchable in spite of a few minor flaws.