The Man from London

In his penultimate film, Béla Tarr brings his formidable stylistic arsenal—a combination of impossibly choreographed camera moves, astonishingly precise chiaroscuro lighting, and hypnotic, wordless scenes—to bear on a Georges Simenon thriller about a railway switchman who retrieves a suitcase filled with stolen money. Adapted from Simenon’s 1934 novel and codirected by Ágnes Hranitzky, The Man from London follows the solitary operator Maloin (Miroslav Krobot), whose elevated signal tower affords him a commanding view of the docks—and an unwelcome glimpse of a murder that entangles him in a quiet spiral of guilt. What begins as a chance windfall gradually estranges him from his wife (Tilda Swinton) and daughter, even as a visiting British inspector closes in. Set amid fogbound wharves and cavernous portside interiors, the film refracts noir through Tarr’s long-take formalism, transforming crime into a study of moral isolation and the slow corrosion of certainty. A Janus Films release.