“The past is a foreign country,” the novelist J.P. Hartley wrote, “they do things differently there.” A similar thought passed through my head while watching “Werckmeister Harmonies” (2000) and, for that matter, the same is true for most films from Hungary. 

There isn’t a nation that can shrug off its peculiarities of taste and vision, but, I mean, Hungary? They really do things differently there.

Take, as a prime example, “Werckmeister Harmonies.” Starting May 26, Film at Lincoln Center is hosting a revival of the movie that placed director Béla Tarr in the international spotlight and is, arguably, his best-known work. The film has undergone a 4K restoration, and those of us familiar with the picture can only boggle at the thought. 

With a total of seven cinematographers to its credit, Mr. Tarr’s film, which was co-directed with editor Ágnes Hranitzky, is already a bedazzling display of black-and-white movie-making. Why we should have color at all is but one question prompted by its grainy opulence.

There are myriad other questions raised by “Werckmeister Harmonies.” The movie is, to quote Winston Churchill, a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Few pictures are quite as obscure in their story and quite as clear in metaphorical intent. Elaborating on either would be like explaining a joke: too much would be lost in translation; a clear-cut rationale would render it meaningless. Historical tangents of a rather implacable sort funnel their way throughout “Werckmeister Harmonies.” 

Mr. Tarr’s picture centers on János (Lars Rudolph), he of the shaggy mane and doleful eyes who is at the mercy of some rather bizarre circumstances. János spends a lot of time wandering through an unnamed Hungarian township, a milieu that seems to have both escaped from modernity and been trammeled by its excesses. János tends to Uncle György (Peter Fitz), a musician and scholar involved with some rather abstruse musical theories stemming from the work of an 18th-century composer, Andreas Werckmeister.

On a particular afternoon Uncle György’s estranged wife, Tünde Eszter (Hanna Schygulla), shows up at the door, suitcase in tow and with a demand: Her husband, Tünde Eszter tells János, must contact a list of people as part of an effort to quell the town’s civil unrest. Should he not agree to this course of action, Tünde Eszter threatens to move back in with Uncle György. She drives a hard bargain.

All the while a circus, of sorts, parks itself in the city center. Notwithstanding an array of things preserved in jars, the show’s main attractions are a whale carcass in a not-so-great state of preservation and somebody — or something — called The Prince. We only ever see a shadow of the latter, but we do hear the fluted voice and pronunciamentos of vague political purpose. The Prince and his directives are viewed by the townies as a threat to an already collapsed social order.

At one point, a rabble of men — we don’t know whether they are born-and-bred townies or outside agitators — run amok in the local hospital, pulling patients out of their beds and destroying property. The camera takes all of it in with silky insouciance.

What to make of this obstreperous movie? Looking back in time, we can read it as being emblematic of the unrest bred by authoritarianism; projecting forward, we can shape it as a prescient satire on populism and its discontents. The only thing for sure is that Mr. Tarr’s film elides classification with a beguiling suppleness. Existential comedy, horror film, political parable or a very grim fairy tale: “Werckmeister Harmonies” is a movie whose difficulties are part-and-parcel of its poetry. Once settled into, it is not easily denied — or forgotten.