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.