Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky’s 2000 film moves slowly around a small town where a very strange circus has arrived. Its eerie power has only grown in a time of rising fascism

Hungarian auteur Béla Tarr and his co-director and editor Ágnes Hranitzky now have their 2000 film rereleased, 24 years on as part of a career retrospective; it is an eerie monochrome vision of power, group hysteria, cosmological breakdown and the end of the world. When I first saw this film I responded to what might be called its spiritual aspect, its mystery, its unknowability, and of course its distinctive style: the extended dream-tempo takes, the murmuringly restrained dialogue achieved through overdubbing and the long trudging walks through an unforgiving landscape. There is a quite extraordinary closeup sequence in which two men simply walk together down a city street in wordless silence, for minute after minute, their faces juxtaposed in semi-profile. That...