"What More Can I Say?" Béla Tarr Discusses The Turn Horse

Over the last thirty years, writer and director Béla Tarr has remained one of truly great masters of cinema. And as much as it is a shame that he will retire from filmmaking, his swan song, The Turin Horse, is an uncompromising and wondrous work that may be his greatest achievement (read my review here). Tarr prefers not to discuss his films, but he made his first appearance in the United States in 17 years for the premiere of the film at the New York Film Festival. Read the Q&A below:

Encountering the piece of writing by longtime collaborator László Krasznahorkai

In 1985 was when I heard first time this text. [Laszlo] had been lecturing in Budapest. We know what has happened to Nietzsche but we don’t know what happened to the horse. That is the question that moved me. And since 1985, we tried to find the right answer for this question. And time to time, we had discussions. And then when we finished The Man From London, we said, “Okay. Let’s make it my last. Because we have to answer this question.” So we started work with Laszlo, and this is our answer.

Collaboration with DP Fred Kelemen and the use of movement

He was my student in Berlin in 1990. I was working with some other cinematographers, but I’m a very autocratic old guy. I know the whole movie from the first screen to the end, and I knew his sensibility. I can tell him camera movements, I can tell him compositions, I can tell him a lot of things but when the camera is rolling, he is watching the scene. You read his sensibility; when you go a little bit closer or a little bit further, it’s totally different. We know each other well…we are not talking during the shoot, just doing. There’s no reason to talk. He knows what I like. Sometimes they can say something, sometimes they don’t. That simple.

In response to a banal question about “human behavior and nature.”

If I was able to say some words, I wouldn’t have made this movie. This movie cost a lot of money. If I can tell you really by words, I wouldn’t have told my friends to be there at 4 o’clock in the morning in cold weather to show what we feel and how we feel. That’s the reason why I really don’t like to speak about the movies. The movie is picture, sound, written, humanized, and a lot of emotions, and the presence of the personalities. I could say something about our responsibility to nature but what we put on the table is a little bit more; it’s what you can see. 

New York Film Festival: Béla Tarr's The Turin Horse

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.