Review by JuguAbraham

The begins with a handsome young man immersed in playing a violin solo in a hospital ward for mental patients, who find the music calming. The film ends with a small group of classical musicians playing Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody, at the request of a classical music enthusiast, who thinks and lives in the world of composers. The situations, where both these musical sequences are played, are allegorical views of Hungary's social and political reality in the early Eighties. I had visited Hungary at that time. Tarr's movie has the philosophical line "Music can't be bought, it is not like a painting." There are sequences where the audience can easily miss the satirical undercurrents--a joke about a chicken thief who insists his bag contains crows, and when discovered, says he doesn't want them.

"The Outsider" is an unusual Tarr film because it is in shot in colour; usually his films on equally bleak, reflective subjects are best captured in black-and-white. It is also unusual because all actors are non-professional (according to the IMdB trivia). But the lead actor Andras Szabo playing the role of Andras is a delight to watch as a happy-go-lucky man, refusing responsibility of having fathered a child, getting fired from jobs, and eventually getting married (the actual marriage is never shown, except for a post-marriage dance and merry-making and a bus trip with wedding attire.) Andras is "The Outsider"-- an affable, talented violinist who is rejected from orchestras as he has not graduated from music schools and has a history of being fired from many jobs. He is an outsider also because he rejects social responsibilities that most others would accept.

Tarr's wife Agnes is also the film's editor. Not a major Tarr film but the non-professionals are by and large agreeable on screen.