The Turin Horse
A Film By Béla Tarr
Hungary
When
the “plebeians” below us think about art cinema, they may imagine long
tracking shots where nothing happens, filmed in black and white without dialogue, on subjects
that seem moronic and too mundane to ever demand the attention of cameras. Of
course, those men and women are certainly entitled to their opinion (as well as
their Transformers), but they may be
missing out on something that even most filmmakers would refuse to do: stare
into the abyss of life with much disdain and fear as it stares back into us.
And
thus comes the final film from Béla Tarr, The
Turin Horse, a two and a half hour masterpiece that is brutal truth at
24 frames per second. This deeply disturbing work borderlines on parody of art
cinema, mainly because Mr. Tarr is a relentless filmmaker who never
compromises in his portraiture of a life void of hope and the impossibility to
fight against the idea of a progressive world. I had somehow missed Mr. Tarr’s
previous features—most notably the 450 minute Sátántangó—but knew to be prepared. A mutual friend
of mine and Mr. Tarr’s suggested to let the film “wash over me.” And bathe in despair I did.
The
titular horse of the film comes from the parable about Friedrich Nietzsche, who
saw a horse being brutally beaten and broke down in tears, throwing his arms
around the horse, and then refusing to speak for the last ten years of his
life. A deadpan voiceover tells us that this film is about what happened to the
horse. Really though, it’s about the man (János Derzsi) who whipped the horse,
and his subservient daughter (Erika Bók). The two live in a home in a place
more resembling hell than Hungary. A brutal wind never stops howling as it
attempts to crush the world around them, and the sky shines a constant white
that blinds anything past the first hill (the film’s black and white
cinematography is gorgeously despairing, thanks to director of photography Fred
Kelemen). For all they know, they own the last patch of dirt in the universe.
Mr.
Tarr thus uses his camera to capture the slow days in the life as man and daughter
live their lives in this hellish land. But this being a work of Eastern
European art cinema, Mr. Tarr is only a collaborator in our own investigation
to these lives and what meaning, if any, could be found here. This is the type
of film where the characters are defined by the way they eat boiled potatoes,
after all. But jokes aside, the potato eating ritual is one of the crucial
articulations of gender in Mr. Tarr’s world, between man, who smashes his
potato and shoves it into his mouth with force, and woman, who gently eats
potato, carefully savoring what little flavor can be found in each bite. And then there’s horse, a Bartelby-like
figure who refuses to work, or even eat or drink.
Why has the horse given up? Why is the man so stern about change? Why does the woman accept all that comes her way? Mr. Tarr’s film becomes
an endlessly fascinating work that paints a psychological portrait of life
unfulfilled, as the world becomes more punishing. This wouldn’t be as effective
if Mr. Tarr’s camerawork lacked its austere and masterful approach to long
take. Despite running almost two and a half hours, The Turin Horse
features only 27 shots, which Mr. Tarr flows throughout scenes, often creating
haunting compositions that reflect the character’s emotional realities as they
struggle with a daily, purely meaningless life. These shots not only play out
in real time, helping us enter the sense of endlessness and despair that seems
to enrapture the world around the home, but bring us into an intimacy with the characters
as they struggle to simply live. If the home seems to be the last refuge on
Earth before the end of the world, Mr. Tarr’s camera flows vividly through what’s
left of this world with all the wit of a Scorsese dolly shot and without a
sense of any limitation.
About halfway through The Turin Horse,
a passerby visits the man and his daughter, delivering what seems like the only
important dialogue of the film (there are moments here and there, but they seem
almost inconsequential). He rants on and on about how change will never come to
the world, and his nihilistic monologue seems to capture everything Mr. Tarr believes
about life. The man, in what feels like a self-aware joke, simply responds, “That’s
rubbish.” But is it? The Turin Horse is probably the most difficult film any person
might sit through this year (at least those avoiding anything particularly
avant-garde), and with its cinematic minimalism, as well as a its dreary and repetitive
score, could cause many to flee their seats. But sit carefully and give up on
life, and submit to the power that is Mr. Tarr’s world. Nietzche couldn’t stand
the pain of seeing an innocent creature submitted to the worst of violence, but
Mr. Tarr finds this all but ordinary. Life is struggle, and can only end in despair
and darkness. Live what you can.
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