Directed by
Béla Tarr
Ágnes Hranitzky
Writing credits
László Krasznahorkai (novel "The Melancholy of Resistance")
László Krasznahorkai (screenplay)
Béla Tarr (screenplay)
Péter Dobai (additional dialogue)
Gyuri Dósa Kiss (additional dialogue)
György Fehér (additional dialogue)
The story takes place in a small provincial town on the Hungarian Plain. The weather is bitterly cold (seventeen degrees Celsius below zero) but no snow has fallen. Despite this, hundreds of bewildered men stand around a circus trailer (or corrugated iron box) in the main square, waiting to see the main attraction - the stuffed carcass of a whale. The men composing this faceless, ragged crowd have come from distant parts of the country as well as neighbouring settlements, and the strange state of affairs — the presence of strangers, the extreme cold — is disturbing the order of the small town. Relationships are changing, and some ambitious people feel they can take advantage of the situation; while others who are more passive fall into even deeper uncertainty. The unbearable tension is brought to a head by the figure of the Prince, a disfigured, Slovak speaking figure, who is hiding behind the whale; his mere appearance is enough to unleash destructive emotions. The ensuing apocalypse spares no one.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0249241/
