Das Turiner Pferd

Bela Tarr claims this will be his last film, and damn does it have finality written all over it. I guess there's few ways to be more final than to devote a work to the end of humanity. And I've never seen a film that struck me as more authentically apocalyptic than this one. It is immediately strange to say then, that one of the things that most impressed me about this juggernaut is its ultra-sly humor. Tarr really is a nihilist and a misanthrope, at least philosophically. The fall of our silly little species really is funny to him, in the darkest way possible, and in half audible beats he makes it funny for us too. All of the other species have sensed the death of the world and have, reasonably, stopped trying to survive. Only homosapiens, represented by a half-functioning horse-carriage driver and his daughter, are clueless enough to continue their wretched routine in the face of a blatant apocalypse. We, along with Tarr, laugh at, pity, and admire the duo for this all at the same time. This is why I call Tarr a misanthrope in philosophy only. In practice, he has love for his fools, even as he leads them towards annihilation. The film includes many references to cinematic finality as well. Fading lanterns, windows that show a world that is becoming not, opaque, all suggest an abandoned cinema. The empty shell of a cinematic artist imagining his own abandoned corpse.

For most of the film's length we watch a father and daughter's sparse and bleak existence in a remote farmhouse, blasted by an eternal wind. Only a couple of visitors come to break the near-silent existence of this couple and their ageing horse. Out of this silence and the wind and the darkness, an apocalyptic vision of a fallen, corrupt world emerges.

It's a unique and haunting film, like a filming of a near-wordless play of Beckett, stained with an indelible sadness and regret that our world cannot be saved from darkness. Along with SATANTANGO and WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES, this is another masterpiece from Bela Tarr and his regular band of collaborators.

I really liked this film. I didn't like watching this film. Tarr pushes the audience to the limit of their patience but after a while it gets under your skin. You fall into its all-encompassing, hypnotic pattern. It's humanity at its most bare - its most bleak. It is a look into humanity's most raw, pained existence. It emerges you. Philosophically rigourous, Tarr goes to great efforts to make the Nietzsche analogy and whatever you think of Nietzsche, or even if you don't, there's a bitter comedy to the way in which Tarr looks at the human condition here. It laughs in the face of meaning. Yet, paradoxically, it's a film of distinct humanity, as shown to us in the last scene. It won't be for everyone, I know. It's cinema at its most cutting; its most applied.

How can you make someone see what is staring them in the face?

Tarr is nothing if not serious cinema. It may not move, entertain or give you a thrill to the bottom of your popcorn. But it is also, for many cineastes, a standard by which other art cinema can measured. And if that introduction is overweening, perhaps it will deter anyone even vaguely faintly thinking about popcorn - but encourage serious-minded cinema-goers to consider dropping everything to see this.

Hungarian Grandmaster Bela Tarr uses a technique made famous by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky – that of incredibly long takes. We are forced to immerse ourselves in real time, to experience the minutiae of existence (and its totality) in the same way the characters do. But in terms of 'suspension of beliefs', Tarr goes one stage further than Tarkovsky. The latter's films were often connected with metaphysics and decorated with religious iconography; whereas Tarr eschews God and religion in favour of the people, in favour of human rights, in favour of righting wrongs, or simply in favour of what is most basic to any individual. At times seen as heavily political, his films are careful to portray only a 'documentarist' style reality. They are films designed to make you think, rather than make you entertained. In this respect, his work preserves a thread from the fierce artistic integrity of Godard - perhaps by way of Fassbinder, who would also at times exemplify a fierce minimalistic style.

In The Turin Horse, Tarr gives us a six-day prelude to an actual event that we never see. Even in those six days, nothing very much happens – yet you could probably write a Masters philosophy dissertation on that 'nothing very much.' The ontological lynchpin of the film is Nietzsche: in terms of storyline and also the dilemmas a viewer might confront.

Our movie begins by informing us of a well-known tale concerning the German philosopher. Nietzsche had caused a public disturbance – apparently by attempting to save a horse being flogged. Immediately afterwards, Nietzsche collapses and succumbs to mental illness. He will remain that way for the rest of his life. Tarr's film is an imagined reconstruction of the days leading up to the incident. It features the ailing horseman, his grown-up daughter, a visitor who provides the film's only monologue, and a brief visit by a band of gypsies. The horseman and his daughter live in the most spartan of conditions trying to survive, surrounded by a harsh and barren landscape. He probably would have rejected Nietzsche's philosophy, the rejection (or death) of God, and the idea of the 'slave-morality' dominating society. Indeed, the horseman dismisses the reflections of the visitor, whose thoughts are perhaps a shadow of Nietzschean ideas, as "rubbish." We can perceive a shift from classical belief to atheism as the ideas move quite politically: 'man is responsible for his own fate, but there is something greater that takes a hand' - yet that 'something' might be nature, rather than 'God' and it seems undeniably demonstrated in the harsh conditions that gradually drive the horseman and his daughter nearer extinction. Or it could, of course, be 'the ruling classes.' But this is not a film where intellectual arguments are expounded or debated. Most of the dialogue, in the rare instances where dialogue occurs, comprises an occasional monosyllable. The film is in black and white, and consists of merely thirty long takes – that would be excruciating were they not mesmerizingly beautiful. Each shot is perfectly composed, right down to the individual hairs on the horseman's Rasputinish beard. (This is one reason why it could not work as well on a small screen – the other being that its impact depends on being a captive audience.) As in The Man from London, Tarr uses environment as main 'characters' – the buildings, the landscape. They are 'major players.' This gives not only a tremendous sense of grandeur and majesty in simple images, but allows Tarr to convey a more cosmic point, even with such a miniscule budget. The characters each form a microcosm, doing what they do (what Man does) in order to survive. We are aware of the oppression and hardship of the plebiscite – oppression we can say is caused by 'conditions', but equally by the ruling classes. Dirge-like music, a daily meal of boiled potatoes eaten without cutlery, and a bleakness from which there is no apparent escape.

On the Second Day, the horse, once hitched, won't move. The daughter expresses some sympathy for its abject refusal. Yet the horse's gradual deterioration (to a point where it is starving itself to death) almost mirrors the plight of its owners. The horseman and daughter struggle against becoming dehumanised: he by fighting, she by gentleness. What does it mean to be human? As the wind whips dust across the landscape, she reads of the "holy places violated."

The downsides of The Turin Horse are that, given its minority-appeal audience, most people will only see it on DVD. The political landscape about which Tarr is so passionate demands extra study in order to be illuminated by the film. Nietzsche declared that art is the proper task of life, that it is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but a metaphysical supplement to nature's reality. But can The Turin Horse stand philosophically on its own merits? Some may feel that Tarr has indeed flogged his point to death, and fails to offer any man or super-man to triumph at the end of his inevitable Gotterdammerung.

Constant use of steadicam gives the impression that we are personally observing what happens - even when all motion stops and the last light is extinguished. Susan Sontag once championed Tarr as a saviour of the modern cinema. If she had lived to see this, probably his last film, she surely would probably have felt doubly justified.

I can't organize my thoughts so I'm just going to spill them out and sort them out some other time. Although it is a shame (a tragedy) that Bela Tarr will make no more films after this, but perhaps it is a fitting end. A farmer (we assume... he has a horse but it's unclear exactly how he makes a living, if he does at all) and his daughter trudge joylessly through their monotonous routine. Getting dressed, schlepping water from the well, eating a meal of simply boiled potatoes, and for relaxation, staring out the window. Over the course of 6 days, we see -- in a manner mildly reminiscent of JEANNE DIELMAN -- the routine start to break down as some sort of vague apocalypse seems to be descending upon them. Life, what little is left of it, is draining out of the world. A neighbor delivers a monologue about the degradation of humanity, how the good people have quietly faded away while the rest debase everything they touch. A wandering pack of gypsies leaves the daughter ("eyes of the devil") a religious text. Is it these two particular people who are doomed, or being judged? Or all of mankind? Tarr, as usual, not only doesn't give answers, he doesn't even let you know if he's asking the question.

Which is to say, if you loved any of Tarr's previous four films, you will probably love this one, although it is his bleakest. The cinematography is, as one would expect, jaw-droppingly rich. From the opening shot of the horse defining the word "struggle", to Ohlsdorfer's sunken, skull-like eyes, to the spine-chilling image of the daughter's beaten-down face staring out the window, the film is loaded with stark, gorgeous, unforgettable visions. Mihaly Vig once again submits an incredible score, a funereal dirge that shares the soundtrack with the incessant howling wind. Tarr's films have a tactile effect, and here you can truly feel the bitter cold of the landscape and the house that surely does little to protect its occupants from the elements.

It's a haunting film, and perhaps Tarr's most difficult... although only a third the length of SATANTANGO, the repetitiveness gives it less forward momentum. But it completely worked its way under my skin. It's mesmerizing, thought-provoking, breathtaking. If Tarr makes another film, I'll be thrilled, but if he doesn't, at least he's left me some of the greatest works of art I've ever seen.