Film Review: The Turin Horse

"In Turin on 3rd January, 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche steps out of the doorway of number six, Via Carlo Albert. Not far from him, the driver of a hansom cab is having trouble with a stubborn horse. Despite all his urging, the horse refuses to move, whereupon the driver loses his patience and takes his whip to it. Nietzsche comes up to the throng and puts an end to the brutal scene, throwing his arms around the horse’s neck, sobbing. His landlord takes him home, he lies motionless and silent for two days on a divan until he mutters the obligatory last words, and lives for another ten years, silent and demented, cared for by his mother and sisters. We do not know what happened to the horse.”  These are Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr's introductory words on his latest, and possibly last work of cinema, The Turin Horse.  The film then proceeds in telling the story of this unknown cab driver as he goes back into his brutally harsh world of shit.  A world that may make many a film goer quite uncomfortable in their seats.

Let's not kid ourselves.  The cinema of Béla Tarr is not a cinema for everyone.  It is a hard and harrowing cinema.  It is a cinema full of despair and longing.  It is a lonely, desperate and miserablist cinema.  The director himself has spoken of how he sees the world as shit, and in turn we see that in his work.  It is not a cinema for those faint of heart.  But for those who get Béla Tarr, and understand what it is he is doing with his films, it is a cinema of beleaguered beauty.  A cinema of transcendental ideas.  It is a cinema full of grim Hobbesian views but also a cinema that makes sheer and succulent imagery out of that aforementioned world of shit.  For many, especially those used to a faster editing style, it is a cinema of painstakingly long takes, but for the few that do see Tarr as the visionary master of poetic modernism that he is, it is a cinema of ultimate pulchritude.

With three true masterpieces already under his Hungarian belt, Tarr has fashioned yet a fourth film worthy of such accolades. With the director's latest (and if one were to believe the man's own hype, his final film), a work called The Turin Horse (actually co-directed by long time collaborator, film editor Agnes Hranitzky), one can easily see the filmmaker is back in the brilliantly subversive mad genius mode that gave the world such masterpieces as Damnation in 1988, Sátántango in 1994 and Werckmeister Harmonies in 2000, before faltering a step or two with his flawed but still quite impressive Man From London in 2007. A mode that has influenced many a modernist filmmaker (or should I say remodernist filmmaker, after the movement indirectly started by the works of Tarr) and made Gus Van Sant go from Good Will Hunting to Gerry.  This is a mode that makes the director's films seem like classic works of cinema with their immediate release.  This is the mode that all we true Tarrheads, from stalwart defenders like Susan Sontag and J. Hoberman to yours truly, clamour for, and this is the mode that Tarr has given us for what the director calls his final film.

But then, as more than alluded to up front, Mr. Tarr is definitely not everyone's cup of tea. In fact he probably isn't even everyone's cup of anything. We Tarrheads are surely outnumbered, but naysayers be damned!  This is what is meant when someone speaks of pure cinema.The auteur is known for having an oeuvre of long (some could say excruciatingly long in a few cases - especially in one case in particular), very methodical, oft-times meandering along at the breakneck pace of an especially melancholy sloth, works that derive the same type of socio-religious pleasure as Dreyer, Bresson and Tarkovsky all rolled into one great big beautiful three-headed, six-armed, six-eyed apocalyptically-minded cinematic beast from the very bowels of Hades. Hyperbole aside, the basic gist of all that was to state the obvious fact (for those that know the man and his films) that to see a Béla Tarr film is to see a work that may be demanding to those uninitiated, but a work of true mad genius indeed.

With a running time of 146 minutes (which, with the exception of the 450 minute long Sátántango, is a pretty standard Tarrian running time) and based on the harsh life of the horse that was the supposed breaking point for Nietzsche’s impending madness (as you have already ascertained from the opening salvo), The Turin Horse shows us the daily rote of the old man and his daughter as they go about their miserable existence in an old wooden shack in the seeming middle of nowhere. The landscape is harsh and unforgiving.  The wind blows through as if a sign of the impending apocalypse.  Interspersed with moments of surprising humour and feeling as if it truly is the end of the world, Tarr manufactures the most appealingly miserablist motion picture he can conjure up for what may very well be his final act of cinema.  And if this is indeed the director's final film, it is a shame really, as he has proven once again why he should be considered one the most important filmmakers working today.  Even as his film shows the finality of the man, his daughter and their horse, and very possibly of the world, we too are saddened at this being the end of Tarr's cinematic world as well.

NYFF 2011: Bela Tarr's The Turin Horse

If one were to come up to a person, and describe a film they have just seen as being typically Bela Tarr-like, such a description would mean very different things to very different people. First of all, one must have knowledge of who the hell Bela Tarr even is in the first place, which I suppose narrows down our focus group pretty damn drastically. But for those few who do know the Hungarian filmmaker, and more importantly, know his films, to describe something as being typically Bela Tarr-like could either mean the film in question is a brilliantly methodical, sparsely actioned, black and white, fascinating work of cinematic art, or it is a pretentiously methodical, sparsely actioned, black and white, tiresome work of cinematic arrogance. Six of one, half a dozen of another I suppose. 

Now the film in question here is more than just Bela Tarr-like, it is actually the Magyar maestro himself. With the director's latest (and if one were to believe the man's own hype, his final film), a work called The Turin Horse (actually co-directed by long time collaborator, film editor Agnes Hranitzky), one can easily see the filmmaker is back in the brilliantly subversive mad genius mode that gave the world Damnation in 1988, Satantango in 1994 and Werckmeister Harmonies in 2000, before faltering a step or two with the good, but certainly not great Man From London in 2007. A mode that has influenced many a modernist filmmaker (or should I say remodernist filmmaker, after the movement indirectly started by the works of Tarr) and made Gus Van Sant go from Good Will Hunting to Gerry and Last Days. If this is the director's final film, it is a shame really, because he has just managed to prove that indeed, he does still got it.

But then, as more than alluded to up front, Mr. Tarr is definitely not everyone's cup of tea. In fact he probably isn't even everyone's cup of anything. The auteur is know for having an oeuvre of long (some could say excruciatingly long in a few cases - especially in one case in particular), very methodical, oft-times meandering along at the breakneck pace of an especially melancholy sloth, works that derive the same type of socio-religious pleasure as Dreyer, Bresson and Tarkovsky all rolled into one great big beautiful three-headed, six-armed, six-eyed apocalyptically-minded cinematic beast from the very bowels of Hades. Hyperbole aside, the basic gist of all that was to state the obvious fact (for those that know the man and his films) that to see a Bela Tarr film is to see either a great great thing or a bad bad thing - but a thing nonetheless.

With a running time of 146 minutes (which, with the exception of the 450 minute long Satantango, is a pretty standard Tarrian running time) there was seat shuffling a-plenty, as well as much sighing and some rather strangely placed chuckles (and yes, there is some humour, but no so much as to elicit the laughter interspersed throughout the almost full cinema) at the noon press screening at Walter Reade. And of course, there were a few walkouts, which is usually kept at a minimum at a press screening, no matter how excruciating one finds the film or films in question. When the film ended (finally ended some may say) there was no applause - just silence, followed by a quick mass exodus once the credits ended and the lights came up. Hell, even Mr. Divisive himself, Lars von Trier received a round of applause after his Melancholia screened here last week.

There were, I am sure, varying degrees of enjoyability for those other members of the intrepid press corps that filled the Walter Reade on Monday - though I would go out on that ole proverbial limb and say the consensus was not an overall thumbs up (please do not sue me for that last comment oh great and powerful Mr. Ebert). I did happen to overhear one critical compatriot say, "I wasn't bored", almost as if one would expect him to be. Bully for him I say, bully for him. I happen to be (as I am sure you have already surmised from that " brilliantly subversive mad genius mode" comment a few paragraphs back) on the side that was not only mesmerized by the film, which incidentally is based on the harsh life of the horse that was the supposed breaking point for Nietzsche’s impending madness (I kid you not), but maybe even, as the kids are saying these days, blown away

When the film will see the inside of a US cinema is still up in the air. With American theatrical rights now owned by Cinema Guild, my best bet would be sometime in the first quarter of 2012. Whatever the case may be, a full review of the film will be forthcoming on or around that eventual release date.