A Disappointing Continuation

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

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.

"The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes" is a strange and wonderful dark fairy tale about a piano tuner sent to a mysterious island to assist a malevolent conductor who's keeping an opera singer captive; the conductor wants the tuner to fine tune and repair several large, mechanical, complex Joseph-Cornell like boxes. But the boxes are not what they seem… I agree with those who felt "Institute Benjamenta" (the brothers' first full-length film) was boring--it is--but The Brothers Quay have improved by leaps and bounds with this film. The narrative is significantly easier to follow & figure out than, say, "Mulholland Drive"; in fact, I'd even say it's more straightforward than executive producer Terry Gilliam's own "12 Monkeys" (for a start, it's linear). Everything said about the images is true; Nic Knowland's cinematography and the Quay Brothers' own production design is superb.So don't be put off by the reviews saying "Piano Tuner" doesn't make any sense; this is in fact a straightforward movie if you're paying close enough attention. Anyone who likes David Lynch, Gilliam, or Jeunet & Caro needs to see it. It's also one of the best films of the year.

I viewed the film Piano Tuner of the Earthquakes last night in Santa Monica, California. It is an incredibly artistic piece, but all that would be lost if it lacked a coherent story of some kind. The entire story, however, is clear once you know what to look for. First of all, what we see is a dream by the narrator Piano Tuner who speaks in the first person describing the events. It is not one night's dream, but a series of dreams, chapters, parts of which he dreams over and over, sometimes having the details change slightly. The theme of the dream is simple: the man who is dreaming has become, in true life, an obstetrician. In real life, he tries to save mothers and infants in childbirth. He tries to make life sing through their souls, and thus sees himself as a Piano Tuner. His recurring dreams arise from the fact that in his own childbirth, his mother, in the course of her convulsing labor (the earthquakes), died. He remembers this event as an earthquake and sees himself as the cause of her death. The young opera singer represents his dead mother. The older woman in the story represents the conscience or consciousness of his mother as she speaks to him from the grave. The man who hired the Piano Tuner probably represents inevitable death, or the plain fact of history which will not change. The Piano tuner tries again and again to save his mother, without success.To me, having seen it once and never having heard anything about the film prior to viewing the movie, that's the story. It was definitely worth the film experience to step into this complex world.Jack Forbes

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.