The ultra-camera format and audio-visual minimalism of The Turin Horse, almost Bressonian purification of all unnecessary things, made Tarr’s last picture the standard of staged maximalism and one of the darkest (if not the most gloomy at all) film statements in the history of the Tenth Muse. Of course, purely externally, Turin Horse does not offer a fan of Tarr anything fundamentally new, all the same themes and motifs are repeated, but at a new stage of development of directorial thinking. Those who watched this tape to the end, and most of them, because in comparison with other films of the great Hungarian, this is a completely spectator cinema with a linear narrative, a simple composition and a clear message, does not raise questions why Tarr left the profession after the end of “Horse”.
This picture, like Jarman’s “Sineva”, tests the boundaries of cinema for strength, maniacally leads screen art into a dead end, from which the director has no other way out, except for the withdrawal of their craft, or physical death. Only nominally linking the story of a father, daughter and their horse lost in time and space to a biographical episode from the life of Nietzsche, Tarr and Krasnahorkai again (especially in the finale) strengthen Becket’s motives in their joint work. Everything here seems to be like in “Endgame”: the lights go out, the world dies, the elements are destroyed, Tarr and his screenwriter subordinate the decay to natural cycles, biorhythms, decomposition here as consistently as the creation (as many reviewers wrote on the film).
I do not think that the philosophizing guest and gypsies are superfluous in this tape: without them it would become quite stingy, even empty, of course, their appearance and a kind of chewing of the author’s plan seem to be a trick “for the dull”, but this is only externally. After all, the guest’s monologue on the second day is not so much about the end of the world as about the fact that spiritual people have squandered civilization, giving it to scoundrels, and the gypsies on the third day appear and behave like barbarians, not by chance. Both the guest and the gypsies bring the heroes news from the outside world that he is dying, that even water is already scarce. If there were no these characters and everything was limited to the actions of the father and daughter, neither they nor the viewer would ever know what is happening outside the scene, so these seemingly optional characters perform an important informative function.
But, of course, most of the screen time of the Turin Horse is repetitive everyday activities, the mechanism and automation of which day by day more and more depersonalizes the characters. Abstractness of this tape, brought to the limit (we do not know about the characters, nor the place, nor the time of action absolutely nothing, the exposition is absent, the viewer is immediately thrown into what is happening). Never before has Tarr’s everyday life been so total and inhuman, the trap of eternally returning to the same day, differing only in detail from the previous and future, is the true sentence of a man over whom the curse of cyclical processes gravitates.
Tarr does everything to diversify the monotonous material: shoots characters while eating from different points, uses Viga’s obsessive melody only in certain moments to enhance their expression, makes Kelemen’s usually mobile camera move almost imperceptibly, montagely ending most plans by dimming. Surprisingly, the duration of Tarr’s plans for the first time does not cut the eye and looks organically depicted. What's in front of us? Is it just a struggle for survival and a gradual quenching of the thirst for life, both in the horse and in man? No, this is not Keneto Shindo’s “Naked Island”, it is not a hymn to human endurance and dignity, but a film about the painful unfreedom, the bondage of the spirit to matter.
Except for a small episode, the characters do not open books at all, almost do not talk, live automatically, instinctively, like animals (because the father, for example, does not communicate so much as quarrels with his daughter, he is merciless to the horse when she does not go). For this reason, the horse is so important as the third character, for people here are no different from her, she first rebels, refusing to perform their daily functions, people hope for something to the last. It turns out that the horse has more dignity here than people reduced by their fate to the condition of earthworms? Turns out I am. In that case, what do Tarr and Krasnahorkai offer? Stop fighting?
For many years, Tarr, with his screenwriter or without him, proved to the viewer a simple idea: we are trapped in a material existence from which there is no escape, all our social, political cultural problems are derived from this very insoluble situation of our human destiny, the fate of being trapped in the body and the routine processes to maintain its functioning. That is why death is so rarely explicated in the cinema of the Hungarian director: it itself is not the problem, not the source of tragedy, on the contrary, it is deliverance. It can be said that Tarr’s heroes do not rebel, do not commit suicide, do not kill others (at least rarely when), they and we are all human beings – slaves of incarnate being, being in the flesh and nothing can be done about it. Hence the existential despair of this great artist that fills his films, making them sometimes unbearable.
For Tarr, for many years there was only one way out of the ontological trap - creativity, art, which allowed people and him personally not to die from the bare truth of cyclical life. However, in his last film, Tarra turned into self-denial, a gesture of nihilistic rebellion against himself, disbelief in himself. Of course, art and creativity do not save and do not change anything in the world, on the contrary, they sharply put the reader and the viewer before what they want to forget, and perhaps even do not want to know. At the same time, however, art is a form of escape from the unbearableness of physical life, a form of protection from its truths; it invents new worlds in which to escape the ubiquitous material reality.
He who thinks and reflects, not to absorb the art of others and not to produce his own, is tantamount to death while still alive. For this reason, it is especially sad that Bela Tarr, our great contemporary, has left the cinema, because by this step he has deprived himself of the only way of living the world and opposing it. However, while Tarr is still alive, the hope remains that he will return to art, not necessarily cinema, but maybe literature or painting. I believe that not only me, but also fans of Tarr, and just his attentive viewers and critics, all secretly hope for this.
After writing a negative review of Satanic Tango five years ago, I was called an idiot. There were even people who wanted to kill me. Not just me, but my whole family. I can't blame them. I'm a villain, and Bela Tarr is a good one. I'll live up to my rank. This is my story...
Turin horse
The last film of the genius creator. The Last Movie of the Man Who Cries Every Day He cares about all people. He's a saint! Bergman was the Antichrist (played chess with death). Tarkovsky was complacent (he sent everyone in a row, even von Trier had time). Jodorowski was fallen (raped his actresses). Tarr is above all. He's good! Everything in his picture is very bad because life is like that. Life is a tough mare. Bela Tarr cried while filming her film in Germany. Bela Tarr cried while filming her film in the US.
It doesn't matter that the frame shows one road with a stinking hut. No, you don't think that. If he's traveling with his wife, turn on the brain. Tarr is a martyr. It just absorbs all the human pain around the world. That’s why I had to come to France. Jacques Tati, I guess. Jacques Tati died a long time ago. Tati's a clown. Tati could have gone to the beach, and when he did, the credits went. And you sit happy and surprised, but it's from the evil one. People are miserable. People are sick. If Tati had played at Tarr's, he wouldn't have come to the beach, he'd come home.
Balabanov lied. That doesn’t happen, people shouted. “Cargo 200” is a lie and a provocation, but “Turin Horse” is the truth. Who is your Balabanov? Another dead man who was hand-feeding homeless people as he drove through villages. He didn't even have glasses or cigarettes like Tarr. Balabans are for suckers. Tarr is the talent, the master. It takes a lot of intelligence to get a man on a cart and then get him (and another actress) to go back and forth. A minute of a movie is a minute of life! I talked to a moviegoer who said it was brilliant. Of course I shouted back at him. Let’s watch “Satanic Tango” instead of the fun gypsies of Kusturica. Only I've ever seen him.
Bresson, don't make me laugh, you fool. Roy Andersson? God be with you, I mean. Tarr's with you. Roy is a charlatan. Roy didn't care about people. He doesn't care about them. They play their songs from the second floor. And about Kaurismäki and not worth remembering. His people are bad (Leningrad cowboys and match factory girls), and Tarr has good people. But life doesn’t give them a chance. The horse does not want to jump when there is a strong wind outside. Even the horse knows there is no way out. We're in hell. Kira Muratova - do you hear me? Although what I ask a woman at all, there are no such things as good directors for women. Especially those who would impose a death sentence on all mankind.
Only Tarr in his Turin Horse could. He's a pioneer, of course. Thanks to Tarr, I learned that people are suffering. Thanks to Tarr, I learned that people are dying. Who's to blame? Nature, themselves or the horse, do not care. Nothing changes. Thank you so much for that thought. I never thought about it. Tarr really made a unique movie. So unique that all his other films are also considered unique. What? Put a man and a horse in Satanic Tango? Cheater, it's different movies, he doesn't know cinema, burn it at the stake. That movie lasts 7 hours, and this one's two and a half. Tarr is unique, period. All his thoughts should be recorded.
And the film itself must be in every encyclopedia about cinema, so that all young moviegoers will see it. Love Tarr. Take it like him. And most importantly, believe it. The Berlin and Cannes Film Festivals are open to you!
Lord, people live so hard. Let them laugh! (c) Leonid Gaidai
Laugh? Who missed this comedian with his Shurik? Get him out fast. We have grief here, people in various corners are dying, and we still go for awards ...
P.S.
Bela Tarr - officially (silently unable to...) Stuart Gordon, study. Yay! For me, there is only one Bela in cinema, Bela Lugosi. Two Hungarians, and what a different erection
4 out of 10
(for a horse, a well, black and white and rings on a neighbor’s fingers)
If God is dead The filmmakers obviously play out Nietzsche’s theme of the death of a god, a rather symbolic death. Of course, a person who is not at all familiar with the philosophy of Nietzsche will be bored, he will fall into pessimism or even curse this film. But everything's fine. Just as in a fairy tale someone shouts “The king is naked!”, so Nietzsche shouts: “And the man is hollow!” That is, man is empty inside, and in himself is nothing without his own desire to be a man. Our characters in the film are just that, they are not filled with inner human content. Their life is practically no different from that of an animal, and specifically from that of their horse. Without God, a hollow man is nothing. That's probably one of the ideas. By God, Nietzsche understood only the basis of their existence. That is, the external meaning of their lives. If it is not, then there is no sense (and you need to look for it yourself, and for this you need to work, and it is difficult to work, because a person is lazy). It was easy for me to watch the movie because I didn’t empathize with the characters as victims. I saw in them only an illustration of a hollow man according to Nietzsche. A neighbor who came to pick up a crib from somewhere (it is not clear why he is a neighbor, if, as is obvious, he lives too far away) tells that the city has disappeared, that people are to blame, and that God (or God) died. The idea of the film is that if God is dead, then people no longer have an understanding of good and evil, and if so, they do not. So they disappear. At the same time, Nietzsche is a little different: if God is dead, then yes, there is no good and evil, but that is not all. In him this, in turn, means that there is nothing that can have intentions for a person, which means that one must now act on one’s own, show one’s will, without foolish hope, fill oneself with (meaning, action), striving to become a superman (not exalting oneself above others, but exalting oneself exclusively). And we show people who are not capable of it. Desperation in everything. In the film once flashed gypsies ... Gypsies, of course, appear as villains, but they are at least living characters. They may be filled with destruction and meaningless sprees, but they are FULL, they are alive. Our heroes cling on their last breath for their everyday life. Sometimes the scenes seemed drawn out. It seemed that in two minutes, as the peasant rides his horse into the wind, the author has already said all that is necessary, but he rides it for another three minutes. That's the whole movie. However, at the conclusion of the viewing, it is clear that it is these drawn-out scenes that create the space of the film, how a huge forest and a long river create the landscape (instead of three pines and a stream). In the film, the world is quite voluminous, although geographically limited. It seems that you can even feel the film almost physically: it is the taste of dust, the smell of old dry leaves, which have long been colorless, as well as the cold of the impending void. The doomed “should eat”, said by my father, as if convincing himself of this in one of the scenes, I liked especially (more details – see for yourself). Do heroes think about anything? Are they trying to understand their situation? Probably not, and that's their hell. They live in hell if you take evil infinity as hell. But most likely, the film does not show the end of the world at all. It’s the individual end of the world, and it’s scarier because it’s more lonely. 9 out of 10 Original
In a sense, The Turin Horse is hopelessly outdated and at the same time surprisingly relevant. The theme and poetics of the film refer us to the eschatological discourse of the late XIX-early XX century, which is so felt in the works of Nietzsche, Schopegauer and Spengler. However, it is hardly accidental that the Turin Horse appeared in 2011. Let me remind you that then Trier’s “Melancholia” and Nikols’ “Shelter” were published. The abundance of eschatological connotations affected not only the mainstream, discharged by a stream of disaster films, but also author's cinema, which once again allows us to characterize cinema as a crooked mirror of social reality.
It is difficult to judge the work of Bela Tarr, having read only his latest film. However, the epilogue of the Turin Horse is undeniable. Apparently, the director seeks to remind the public and himself that without a meaningful existence, a person is doomed to death. Most of all, a person is afraid of nothing and nothingness, that is what haunts the main characters, leaving them no hope for salvation.
The loss of a meaningful beginning of being occupied the minds of many thinkers and in this sense Bela Tarr is not original. However, there are few places where you can find such a holistic and conceptually verified mapping of the consequences of this loss. Everything is relevant here: from black and white colors to music, which plays an extremely important role in creating the specific atmosphere of this monumental cinematic canvas.
Nietzsche's "Turin horse" is not so noticeable, rather we can talk about the existential touch of the narrative. This is due to a certain unmodernity of the film, the creator of which with pathological seriousness speaks about the finiteness of everything and everything, fundamentally rejecting any manifestations of postmodern humor.
One thing is certain: familiarity with the Turin Horse provides ample food for thought. From viewing, everyone will get something of their own, a portion of exclusive sensations and thoughts. However, this requires patience and respect for the creation of the classic of European cinema.
": All because of human judgment. Everything they touch is worthless. They achieve - devalue, devalue - achieve, or, if you want, I will say differently: touch - devalue and thereby achieve, or touch, achieve and thereby devalue ...
After the filming of the being parable "Turin Horse", the Hungarian Tarkovsky Bela Tarr withdraws from cinema with a barbed whistle of corruptible wind, destroying to the ground the fetid world of decayed souls. The amazing ability of Tarr lies in the masterful application of magical hypnosis, pushing the viewer to detached contemplation of black and white, not devoid of aesthetic cyclic algorithms, without provoking imperative urges.
Against the backdrop of a landscape of alarming disunity and aching emptiness, woven into the general fabric of a ritual ascetic hopelessness funeral soundtrack, father and daughter continue with submissive phlegmaticity to perform household automatisms: dress, change clothes, eat burning fingers boiled potatoes, harness an indifferent horse, drink a standard dose of peacock and inexhaustible infinity merge with an indifferent glance with an agitated storm. The mournful silence is interrupted only by the fleeting Nietzschean monologue and the emotional roughness of the Roma passing by.
Tarr is not young enough to do a thorough cleaning when rats enter the house. It has long been ripe to the complete destruction of the building teeming with creatures. He is wise enough to believe that in a world full of suffering it is possible to find a microscopic place for his personal happiness, as well as he is smart for the banal Hollywood-like zeroing out of the existing system, in which humanity is embedded in small puzzles, entered into a global phase of its manifestation, brazenly and without giving up exploiting vital resources. He uncompromisingly overturns a closed, fiery lava-filled misanthropic vessel, with hypnotic equanimity and dysphoric sluggishness splitting living forms.
The world is subject to the black miracles of the Antichrist: the metaphysical horse falls into apathy, the well is emptied, the gloomy alarmistic storm subsides, the last whistling of the storm wind interrupts the rebellious dance of the shriveled dead foliage, the dusty mist penetrates into the feral-trembled souls, submisssively settling with aminant precipitate, the light goes out, the person is immersed in the smell of damp darkness, vacuum insensibility, the process of death.
Such a strange, viscous and atmospheric picture is a rarity in modern cinema. Especially considering the fact of awarding the title of “picture”.
An old house of crumbling stone in the lowlands. Poor old man and his daughter. A dying horse and a howling wind. Something's wrong. The bark beetle no longer sharpens the tree. An alarming expectation of the unnamed phenomenon that is about to happen, distorting the very existence of the heroes.
Two and a half hours of black and white palette, mourning music, excellent camera work and boiled potatoes. It is not even worth stuttering about any dynamics. If you endured Tarkovsky’s Nostalgia, then you will survive the Turin Horse, despite the fact that the word “survive” does not mean the painful wait for the final credits.
There is nothing to wait or expect. You just have to literally turn off your brain and just contemplate. Watch the fire in the stove and catch rare replicas, sometimes replaced by a voiceover. And to ask at the end: what is Nietzsche really about?
What a name. You can call for Jung's help, and then the well will no longer be a well, and the gypsies - gypsies. The unfortunate horse is Jesus, who died on the fifth day and hardly rose again on the seventh. A death that Nietzsche had longed for until he felt himself suffering for all mankind. The unfortunate Italian horse.
The wind subsided and they could be heard eating raw potatoes. Everyone has a cross. Everyone has their own Turin horse.
About the charms of rural life tried to reflect the creators of the film “Turin horse”. At the forefront of the plot canvas of the film are banal-drawn to holes and disassembled on tearful-sweet quotes theme of the apocalypse and the death of God, emptiness and ordinary human existence. But these weaves into the ornament of black and white requiem seem only the upper cultural layer, recognized even by a not very advanced moviegoer.
One gets the feeling that the film is not about the hard life of peasants, the emptiness of the poverty of their way of life, but about the emptiness of their essence.
It seems that God did not die, he was just tired of cleansing human souls of viruses, mold and rot. Died Man, his creative beginning, the ability to think and transform reality, according to the plan.
It seems that the director did not set his task to show folk culture and life of the XIX century, rather we are talking about a man of the XXI century, placed in ancient scenery.
A retelling of the plot would take three minutes. For almost three hours of the movie, exactly the following happens: a daughter and father with a sick right hand live in a remote house equipped with minimal amenities, utensils and food. Heroes do not endow the viewer with verified and thoughtful dialogues about the problems of being. Rather, the communication of the daughter and father resembles the dialogue between Gerasim and Mu-mu. A girl with the appearance of a housewife Kuzi and the same hairstyle begins each of the 6 days with a hike to the well, then helps her father with changing clothes, cooks, sits at the window, sympathizes with a horse that refuses to eat and forays into the street, where bad weather rages. The father only sleeps, eats, makes senseless manipulations with the horse, sometimes cuts firewood, tries to participate in a conflict with the Roma and explain to his neighbor how he is raving about the destruction of the city. He also drinks on a regular basis.
These strange, seemingly unfamiliar with each other people, themselves extinguished the light with such phrases as “go to bed”, “go figure it out”, “tomorrow we will try again”.
Their hut looks like an uncomfortable, damp-smelling cave. Throughout the film, we see walls that are three hundred years old, with places remaining plaster.
Strangely, the girl in the film reminded a utility worker or a bureaucrat who will strangle himself, but will not do too much, will not stay at work for five minutes. Therefore, the dwelling of the heroes is simply uninhabited four walls, a roof, a window and a door. It's calm, without changing the meaning, there could be four other walls. There are no signs identifying the hosts, such as a spindle or casket, tablecloth or nets. All we know is that Dad's a cabbie. And he can't do anything else. He took people, unteared the horse, ate and went to bed – this is practically the whole set of mechanical actions of the day. Heroes are absolutely easy after a well breakage move to another house, as if nothing connects them with their former home.
The girl has hands, needles and an infinite amount of time, but she has never been caught in needlework or sewing. Moreover, if you come to any ethnographic museum, you will be shown many exhibits serving as examples of folk art. According to sources, in the villages were engaged in many crafts: lacemaking and weaving, embroidery and wood carving, etc. It is hard to believe that the peasants were so dark that they could sit by the window and count crows for an hour while the potatoes were being cooked. Each of us, having arrived in the village, can see woven paths and embroidered napkins, knitted little things, in which so much warmth and diligence of ordinary people is invested! And if you are lucky, then as a bonus, in such a village house you can find a spindle, spinning wheel, even a dilapidated weaving loom of the XIX century, well, or at least a trough. That's according to Russia. But I am sure that not only our great and immense ... was rich in crafts. It is unlikely that any Swedish or Hungarian peasant woman sat for hours at a window, looking at the silhouette of a tree and crows running around, most likely she had a lot to do. From these small blunders, it seems that the heroine and her father are not from a bygone era, but from our own. It seems that the heroes are residents of a modern city, who were deprived of electricity and the Internet, sending them to the village, where they were bored and went wild.
By the middle of the film, it is not only the girl’s ability to do something in the house that irritates her, but also the fact that she cannot put herself in order. Outrage and disgust cause her forays into the street with mandatory close-ups of her mop-style hairstyle. It is inconvenient and disgusting when dirty hair collects dust everywhere and climbs on the face. You could have worn a scarf. No, the end of the world, not before. I don't think she even understood anything from the neighbor's speech about the ruined city, and she'll look like a pocalypse, like a christmas house. And all because it is so familiar and learned, and to change something, you need to move away from the usual program of behavior, but this is impossible. She was offered to change the algorithm of behavior, to go to America, but she was not interested.
The potatoes that the baby brews every day are like poison. To wash, clean and cut food, and not to throw as is to eat on the oven, apparently, for her as conceivable as a demon to summon. So this creature, dressed in a bunch of terrible rags seems to be the embodiment of all the stupid and poor aunts who do not think beyond their nose.
As for the father, he is less annoying, since he has little at his disposal. And here, strangely enough, we encounter the Lacanian motive of the relationship between the slave and the master. The slave is the daughter, the master is the father. But the master does not have the knowledge to solve any problem, he does not know what he wants at all, so it is not surprising to hear him say “go to bed” or “go figure it out.” In fact, the slave must have knowledge because he knows what he wants. But the daughter does not want anything and can not direct the father to anything. She doesn't want to get married, or eat, or go to America. It only performs mechanical movements, like the hand of a clock, which does not lead to change. Or maybe she just wants peace. But life itself cannot consist of rest alone. For some reason, there are lines from Gorky about crawling and flying, about stupid penguins.
In principle, there is nothing to put high marks on the film, but another thing is the aftertaste of the film. Our usual action films or thrillers are a finished picture, and films like the one presented are a canvas on which everyone will draw plots and interpretations. The film, in fact, is painful to watch, I want to rewind and have to somehow deal with it.
This is absurd, a lie.
skull, skeleton, braid.
“Death will come, she will have it.”
It will be your eyes. Joseph Brodsky
Hungarian director Bela Tarr has long since lost faith in the phenomenon of life. Like a Frenchman suffering from nausea, he perceives people as urns of a giant columbarium and in each new film masterfully inflates an existential elephant from a random fly, arranging an apocalypse on the most unexpected occasions: from unhappy love to unsound melody. The Turin Horse climbed to the top of the eschatological pyramid before filming even began, for it was declared the last film, and if anyone in the world had guessed to arrange a competition for the best departure from the big movie, Tarr would certainly fight for the top line. The inverted story, where the starting credit illuminates the real case of Nietzsche, who spared a tormented horse before finally moving his horses himself, and the rest of the time is occupied by the simple farm business of the cabman and his daughter, turns into a pessimistic apocrypha about how the twilight falls on his shoulders with a prickly veil, about how the universe, according to the Poincaré precepts, collapses into a point without the help of seven trumpeting angels. And any discussion of "Horse" is doomed to swing between shadow combat and screaming in a vacuum.
The room of the lonely house was flooded by eternal darkness, and outside with a whistle the wind, which is not wind at all, is raging - the utter Kierkegaard angst, bare terror before existence and its absolutes, it cuts to the bones, I want not to cringe, but weep silently with a stone face, "to listen to silence, as they listen to the enemy." There is a division of two worlds: inside the house the kingdom of details, strict peasant life in the spirit of socialist realism, the last shelter of the skeptic is a semiotically stingy, teleologically trained space; behind the walls the stylistics of the irrational flow, the play of shadows and long panoramas, from there the curvy road to the house is haunted by the crimulous Zarathustra of local significance. Dry leaves carry away from the frame, like random fragments of the past, everything around fades away, thins out - the film language changes in time, the glue is less and less, and already too slow at times, Tarr's style reaches absolute cinematic zero, the camera freezes, people freeze, voices subside. The old cabbie, sitting by the window, watches as the old world melts in the distance with an ash ghost - the beloved mise-en-scene of the Hungarians, an associative near the dying village of "Satanic Tango", Janos, fearful of the raving crowd in "The Harmonies of Verkmeister", here the distraught Carrer and literally the sky of "Curse" appear. The last witnesses of the apocalypse, the highest points of the author's aesthetics, connected by a mysterious narrative arch in filmography.
Bergman tried to look beyond the seventh seal, playing chess with death, Dreyer searched for the word of God in the gleams of light on the wall - and it would seem that one can find Tarra a place there, in the inaccessible pantheon of the last masters of great style, who were still interested in great ideas instead of a patchwork of contexts, until the stuffed logocentrism was burned at the stake of modern times. However, in the "Horse" position looks typically postmodern. Just as Nietzsche’s “God is dead,” which became the film’s unofficial slogan, came out in fact with a statement exclusively about a person, so did Mr. Tarr, whose worldview resembles either the bad-trip of an inveterate Gnostic, or the whisper of demons in the head of William Golding, equally alien to the inspired adversarialism, and the expectation of revelations in the rustle of foliage. Both the famous German and the pseudo-biblical six days here are just an occasion to start a conversation, and in the apocalypse of the global death is hidden concrete, quiet, imperceptible. If, for example, in the “Curse” the world was allowed to agonize and beautifully go mad, and the lens of a static camera was almost Bunin softly placed transparent rain grid, then there is no poetics or the notorious danse macabre, the beauty of destruction reveals itself inevitably, monotonously, pressingly. All that has been done before has been nihil. Therefore, the story of Nietzsche logically remains behind the scenes.
Therefore, in your own honesty, you can open a new artistic dimension. The scheme of cyclicity of being in the Turin Horse, habitual to the author, is executed literally: day after day, a cabman and his daughter equip a stubborn horse, wander to a drying well, eat exclusively boiled potatoes, the heat from which at the fingertips seems to only bind the universe cracked at the seams. They silently push their stone from constant rituals to the top of meaninglessness, so that the next day, when another night crumbles into the roadside dust, and the dust blows away by the wind, start all over again. Albert Camus once stated that the only truly philosophical problem is the problem of suicide, after which he recognized ancient Sisyphus as an amazingly happy person, because he fully knew and accepted the ubiquitous absurdity of life, and therefore found his meaning. And yet, memento mori. The last stone is even the ancient heroes. And now, just before the finale, it doesn’t matter who we are, a bunch of hydrocarbon compounds or a third-rate emanation of Yaldabaoth, because no one is allowed to see their tombstone. The Turin Horse is a great movie, because Tarr has the courage to break down the ladders of metaphors that lead to meaningful nowhere, to cut the belly of idle existentialism, pull the lever and destroy everything without looking back. But death was as empty and as bored as ever. Just a moment of darkness at the end.
I watched this film in several ways. Approaching it with a ready-made set of some familiar evaluation criteria is like trying to describe in a nutshell the greatness of a black hole.
So, six days. The three creatures are father, daughter and horse. Stone house, flying storm. Hard potatoes, clear vodka. Strong silence, exchange of empty phrases. Despair, hope. Darkness, light. Life, death.
The appearance of a neighbor and his confused Kafkaesque speech, the arrival of strange gypsies - all this does not add color to the dichotomy of Bela Tara.
The film, like its soundtrack, is designed in the style of minimalism: the characters repeat the same actions, the cello rusts again and again. And from this repetition creeps boundless existential horror.
By the third day you come to the conclusion: yes, the main character would have done something terrible - than just stupidly chopping wood. It would be better if the girl threw herself into the well - than just sat in front of a barred window, behind which an apocalyptic storm walks.
It would be better if the horse kicked and beat in the stall, like the horses in Trier’s film “Melancholia” before the fall of the planet to Earth – but it just stands and looks nowhere.
Film critics should pounce on this film as a dessert in a Michelin restaurant. You can write a lot about him: from the point of view of drama, and script, and acting, and all sorts of symbols, and roll call with great predecessors. This film is for dissertations, but what can it give to a simple viewer?
It is difficult to answer this question: he is not looking. The reference to Nietzsche at first provides some intrigue, but it completely dries up after ten minutes, when it becomes clear that no details will be added to the famous scene. Yes, the brilliant philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, a very sensitive, nervous, in essence completely sick man who considered compassion a humiliating weakness and extolled health, strength and beauty, went mad when he saw an old horse being beaten. What an irony of fate...
Does the future fate of the horse clarify the shift in the mind of the great German? I wouldn't say.
What is left for us?
1) Look and see the details.
By the way, it wasn’t until the middle of the film that I noticed that my father used his left hand. Perhaps that is why the scene of eating hot potatoes looks so wild, which he peels and squishy fingers of one hand, while the girl - rather a small woman even - gently, piece by piece, eats her portion.
2) To conduct an experiment on ourselves - are we able to withstand two and a half hours of uneventful video sequence, sustained in the style of a nightmare? Perhaps Bela's film will serve as a measure of her own desperation - it seems that the grief of this director is endless.
Still, the main problem of modern author’s cinema is that the directors have very few fresh ideas. Everywhere you look, you see a purely festival movie of homegrown followers. Bergman, Tarkovsky and other greats. And each of them is trying to do something creative, it just does not always look like a mature and convincing work. Of course, there are exceptions.
The most radical of them came out 20 years ago - black and white "Satanic Tango" by Hungarian director Bela Tarr. This is an almost eight-hour descent into a routine human hell, accompanied by the most complex work of the operator and the minimalist music of Mihai Vig. Suddenly, this makes the movie insanely beautiful and hypnotic with all its dirt and hopelessness. But this is Tarr’s latest work, which is hardly a serious revelation after “Satanic Tango”, but still... I caught myself thinking that author’s cinema does not have to be original – it must be sincere, holistic and impactful. The Turin Horse is one of the few representatives of such cinema.
First of all, if you don’t know the year of the film’s creation, you can easily mistake it for the creation of the 50s or 60s. The second time I am convinced that the most virtuoso stylizations for black and white cinema belong to Tarr. Stylistically and thematically, the film may conjure up associations with Haneke’s White Ribbon (a luxury film after all!), but even he’s a hell of a long way from that stunning cinematic power that you sometimes want to feel on the big screen. By the way, it is quite possible to watch the film on the big screen - the director is limited to quite adequate 150 minutes. I must say, this makes the film even more capacious and even more impactful.
The director created his own small universe, wildly textured, unlike anything, completely taken out of the context of normal earthly existence. Like the organic conclusion of biblical stories, this universe fades inexorably for six days... the oppressive everyday life and moral impasse of the heroes contribute to this. I must say, the film could easily slide into a dull rural drama, if not for the stunningly built long plans, each frame of which is saturated with the magic of decline. Therefore, Nietzsche’s famous phrase “God is dead” may well pass for the main idea of the film.
And in general, the theme of such a spiritual apocalypse managed to become a key one for many cult directors, but no one revealed it better than Bela Tarr and Werner Herzog. In the works of both directors, the landscape becomes one of the main characters, and with all its existence it personifies the slow extinction of human civilization. But if Herzog is trying to capture more vivid moments, to see the world in all its diversity and beauty before the imminent collapse, then Tarr is much more pessimistic. It seems that all his black and white work is directed towards the only possible end, the day when God will either die or leave our lost humanity.
Turin Horse, according to the assurances of director Bela Tarr, his latest film, really worthily completes the history of his work and represents the pinnacle of the skill of this author. In the Turin Horse, the main leitmotif of Tarr’s entire work is most widely and deeply revealed, namely, the study and description of the theme of the existential apocalypse.
Trends stretched by strong cold threads, through all the work of the Hungarian director, found in the Turin Horse the most complete, clearly delineated expression.
The style of Bela Tarr, at least after the beginning of his constant cooperation with screenwriter Laszlo Krasnohorkai, is distinguished by characteristic trademark features. Minimalism, which serves not only as an indicator of professionalism and mature ascetic and verified feelings of a professional artist, but also carries a special meaning. This is the minimalism of art, expressing a deep dark pensive melancholy and despondency. In this case, the artist reluctantly, choking, as if overworking himself, interacts with the world, expresses his attitude to it. In comparison with the optimistic, cheerful art, which seeks to touch upon, mention as many spheres of life as possible, while presenting everything in a joyful, positive way, the art of brooding melancholy and decline, is very restrained and limited to a narrow circle of generalizations and abstractions. Individuals and the world as a whole are portrayed as something very unpleasant, stingy on emotions, clearly calibrated strokes in ink black and white, showing contempt for all other colors, depicting dirty, flawed, hostile, etc. That is, the minimalism of this genre, which can be described as a melancholic existential drama, logically consistently reveals the prevailing mood and psychological attitudes of both the artist and fans of such art. And the dialectical merit of all the creativity of Tarr and the Turin horse as the last element in this chain, that the luminary of this genre is brought to the zenith.
The whole film is set in the scenery of an old dilapidated lonely house, standing in the middle of a lifeless desert area, continuously blown by the violent wind. The game skeleton of the film is based on the repetition of the same cyclical scenes performed in devoid of not only joy, but also the very feeling of life, actions: dressing, undressing, cooking and absorbing food, etc.
The Turin horse is minimalist not only in the scenery, scenes and activities in them, but also in the characters. There are only three of them: Wind, father and daughter / horse
Daughter and horse characters are so closely related to each other that one can sometimes wonder whether the author shared them or whether they are no more than two manifestations of the same essence. The main feature of the daughter and the horse is their oppressed position and subordination to the head of the family, external weakness. These are the main sufferers of the picture, its pain and the main emotional content.
Father, the head of the family, a harsh and callous cold tyrant, the personification of power and external force. The oppressor of the daughter and the horse, in fact no less dependent on them than they are on him, and no less weak.
The wind is the personification of objective laws indifferent and indifferent to everything human. The all-destroying and all-erasing force that does not distinguish between the weak and the strong, the oppressed and the subordinate, zero in the denominator of the father-daughter/horse relationship.
Also here it should be noted that in the film there is another character, a kind of messenger of the Wind - an indifferent speaker of His will.
The Turin Horse is the life of a director after God. There is a clear reference to Nietzsche’s famous aphorism that God is dead. Indeed, it seems that God in the film world is really dead, he left this windy desert space, in which the fact of any life and, in particular, the lives of three creatures - father, daughter and horse - is a ridiculous misunderstanding and a senseless curse for them. And the main permeating, but rather blowing through the whole essence of the film force is the indifferent Wind, not God, but only its soulless shell.
Nietzsche's aspirations for power and power, the foundation that makes man look like a dead God, replacing him, are also leveled in the Turin horse. They are depicted not as manifestations of natural harmonic potencies, a kind of poetic-philosophical reflection of natural selection concentrated on man, but as a monstrous senseless and ruthless error in the mechanism of being.
However, despite the general pessimism of the film, its ending, which, of course, is symbolic and can be interpreted in different ways, still carries a spirit of catharsis, and does not throw the viewer to the mercy of fate in the abyss of despair.
The Turin horse, like all the work of Bela Tarr, will not appeal to everyone. It can cause a special dislike in lovers of a life-affirming beginning. It is a philosophy of alienation from life. It is the poetry of the cramped bottom of a parched well, which nevertheless reveals the vast universe of yet another manifestation of the greatness of Human.
Horse, don't.
Horse, listen -
Why do you think you’re better than them?
Baby,
We're all a little bit of a horse.
V. Mayakovsky
___
On January 3, 1889, in Turin, Friedrich Nietzsche witnessed a horse being beaten with a whip by a cabber in rage. Nietzsche threw himself around the horse’s neck, embraced it, wept, covered it with his own body, and never uttered a word until the end of his days. He spent the last years of his life in a madhouse.
This well-known story became the prologue to the film by Hungarian director Bela Tarr “The Turin Horse”. Further narrative is reduced to the fate of the horse and its two owners: a dry-handed peasant and his daughter, living in a desert farm forgotten by God and people.
Incredible movie. He overturns all canons and drags the viewer under the endless howling of the wind into his hypnotic stingy black and white space. Not everyone can take it. But even if a person is not prepared for arthouse, the mesmerizing influence of this picture can make him freeze for two and a half hours at the screen, detached from the real world. It's like meditation on the end of the world.
Two people almost completely silent (not a word will be uttered in the first twenty-odd minutes of the film) live on the outskirts. Every day the woman helps the old man to dress, cooks potatoes, goes for water to the well, washes, washes dishes, cleans the table, fills the oven with wood. Any actions performed by the heroes are shown in detail, slowly, in detail, in all details. Only once these actions become less and less. In six days, the world is completely destroyed: the horse stops eating, water dries up in the well, fire loses its strength, light disappears. People who try to hide from the hopelessness of existence leave their home, but then return, because everywhere the same thing - the wind of desolation, vanity and decay.
No matter how gloomy the plot of the picture, no matter how discouraged the philosophy of total death and return to oblivion, no matter how sad the thought of the mortality of all things, no matter how depressing the idea of the meaninglessness of monotonous existence, which, of course, everyone relates not only to the heroes, but also to his beloved, despite all this, the film does not cause a sense of hopelessness. Rather, this hopelessness is present, but rather speculative. It's all here, I think, in shape.
It's unclear if there's a God in Bela Tarr's world - the guest in the middle of the film philosophizes extensively on the subject. First, he says that God does not exist, but then he says that God destroys His creation, the world He created. And what happens throughout the film is that all the myths, all the beliefs of humanity, are essentially nothing. Thus, the Turin Horse demythologizes any human notion of being. The picture destroys, destroys the idea of immortality. But denying the myth as such, it forms a different mythological space, the very presence of which in a world where myth has no place is an oxymoron. And in this contradiction lies hope when there is no hope.
Cinema is not for everyone, but if you are a lover of art house, you will not think much. Watch the next apocalypse.
It does not matter whether you understand painting or literature, but after watching the film "The Turin Horse", you will definitely say that this is more than just a film. Compositionally having neither its beginning nor its end, it nevertheless bursts into the routine life of the villager and daughter.
Directors Bela Tarr and Agnes Garatsky removed a philosophical parable on topics that develops not the plot of the picture, but all sorts of speculation and reasoning of the audience. So it turns out that the picture "Turin horse" is a great relationship between the idea and the viewer, and the scope of this idea is not limited to the screen time of its artistic format, and after the final credits after watching, there is a feeling that the film is still going on.
What exactly is this movie about? To tell about what you see means not to tell anything about this tape, but to take and penetrate the semantic messages of the authors - then each viewer will be right in his own way in his judgments. Formally, the old man and daughter meet the end of the world, at least we can assume that the end of the world is coming.
And the two main characters eat potatoes, spend a third of their time on things that now urbanized people hardly encounter. What exactly did the directors of the film want to say "The Turin Horse" - I bother to answer, but he left something behind. A typical European art house, which is more aimed at fans of this direction, and perhaps also at fans of philosophical paintings.
6 out of 10
The movie is heavy. Especially for the unprepared for art house as such. That's right. But it's off. Black white colors of life, “funeral” music, minimalism in everything, the delay of the frame at the object, the menu only potatoes in the uniform, gray peasants both outside and inside themselves. They said the film was about despair. I don't think so. What did the filmmakers want to tell us? About the difficult life of peasants in the 19th century? No way. In the Middle Ages it was harder to live. And for such speeches about God and God could thunder on the fire. It's not just that the film is divided into six days.
In six days, God built our world as far as we all know. And built in stages. In the film, we see the exact opposite. First the insects disappear. Then the horse refuses to carry the cart. Then a man comes and says that the city is already destroyed and talks about God and gods who are not and were not. But the owner of the house does not agree with him - that is, he tries to fight everything that happens. With one hand. Then the water, the source of life, disappears. Then return home, for there is nowhere to go, there is no purpose in life. And finally, the end of the world. The owner tries to fight with “all this” for the last time by saying “you should eat”. It's a purely philosophical film. And the great Nietzsche hints at this.
11 out of 10.
The film has a prologue: behind the scenes tells the story of Friedrich Nietzsche, who once in Turin saw a stableman whip a horse. The philosopher found nothing better than to come and hug the animal, pouring tears. The scene made such a strong impression on Nietzsche that after a couple of days he became insane, and in the next 10 years of his life, spent in a mental hospital, he did not say a word.
One of the few modern metaphysician directors, almost like Leo Tolstoy, takes on the story of a horse. But in the end he has an absolute, hypnotic movie, as little as any other dream. A film about the intolerable monotony of everyday life and the end of the world. A movie that brings suffering and pain.
You don’t need to watch it for two and a half hours to feel it, you need to watch the first scene – an infinitely long ride on a horse. Already in it all the world's sorrow and universal sorrow are concentrated. This will be enough to make a black and white picture imprinted on your memory forever. Now, with a high degree of probability, every time you wake up in a sweat in the middle of the night, it is this driver with a horse that will appear to you as one of the riders of the apocalypse.
There is a movie about this very apocalypse. Because for the next five days, a one-armed man with a glass eye and his daughter, living somewhere in a remote farm, will literally cover the “darkness of Egypt.”
The so-called “cinema” is a dangerous thing. Because it often concentrates the fears of the creators in a large dosage. This variant of psychological protection is very reminiscent of the famous Japanese film “The Call”, where in order to avoid trouble, the characters had to pass the ill-fated tape to someone else. Some directors solve personal problems in a similar way, redirecting their neuroses (well, if not psychoses) to the viewer, who then begins to experience anxiety, often without realizing the cause.
So Bella Tarr, having sublimated her personal pain, unwittingly forces us to share it with him. The other question is, do we need that experience? With this film, one must be doubly careful, since the scenes with the horse, which is first ridden, then quilted, then tried to take out of the stable - produce such a painful impression that the story of Nietzsche will no longer seem far-fetched and unnecessary. This horse with the saddest eye expression I've ever seen will break your heart before the movie is over.
Last year, dead horses became almost a key symbol in our cinema: Smirnov in the film “Once upon a time there was one woman”, Zeldovich in “Target”, Zvyagintsev in “Helena”... It doesn’t go to that extreme here, but it doesn’t get any easier. The inscription "During the filming, no animals were injured", which was often the reason for anecdotes, no longer seems funny to me. I would put it in every movie, even where animals are not used. As a social advertising tool.
Having shot a picture that, no doubt, will leave a deep imprint in the psyche, Bela Tarr decided to leave the movie forever and go to taxi drivers. One thing is good, he still warned me to say goodbye that everything was fine with the horse in the film: she was attached to a rich estate, where she safely became pregnant.
You have to break out of the circle, even if life ends then.
It was not easy to watch, not so much because of the duration, but because of the lack of dynamics of the plot. Here one of Nietzsche’s main ideas about eternal return is fully manifested:
Life as it is, without meaning, without purpose, but returning inevitably, without the final "nothing": "eternal return."
Confirming this idea, the characters of the whole film are engaged in monotonous repetitive things: they dress, carry water, cook and eat potatoes (one potato a day is a menu that should be paid attention to regulars of McDonald’s), drink palinka.
The constant wind, black and gray tones and depressive melody set the tone for the whole picture. The only bright spots against this background are the arrival of a neighbor and the visit of the gypsies who left the heroine with a Bible that read a passage from it. The Bible is remembered earlier: the narrative is divided into 6 days, which allows you to draw a certain analogy with the creation of the world, but only mirror, because in the film the world is not created, but destroyed. The horse refuses to take food and water, then the water in the well disappears. The end is the disappearance of light. But the gypsies called the heroine to the end of the world - to America!
But where is it? The father and daughter stay in their cabin. No water. With potatoes, which they “should eat”, but the heroine is infected with the indifference and apathy of the horse. She doesn’t want anything, as if everything had already happened. Although it is more accurate to say that nothing happened, and most importantly - and will not.
A person gives the meaning of life independently, apparently, the meaning is all in this: to set a goal, to go forward, and not in a circle. Sometimes only death can pull out of this cycle, but in this case it is more meaningful life, because the characters just live with us.
It is worth looking at as an antidote to inaction, passivity and laziness.
The Turin Horse. Bela Tarra is a movie that caused a lot of noise. In an instant, little-known, even to the public, the Hungarian director ascended to the cinematic Olympus. The victory in Berlin and a fairly wide rental forced to talk about Nietzsche, the apocalypse and good attitude to the horses of all without exception cinephiles on the land, which Tarr so thoughtfully destroyed in his picture. This situation is not typical, since, trivially, the form and content of the film does not belong to the class of simple.
This is popular at film festivals "slow" cinema, silent and pseudo-documentary. The film consists of thirty plans, spread over two and a half hours, which in itself is problematic viewing, and should turn it into an act of patience. But thanks to a sophisticated intraframe temporite, surgically tailored color canvas and maniacally calibrated misan scenes, Tarr creates a suspense akin to Bressonian in his condemned to death. The sound, which is synthesized by the knocking wind and thick string music, works, unlike the visual component, on routine, looping. Thus, the viewer is sandwiched in the space between the millstones of anxious foreboding and languishing everyday life, astringent like an imperishable dream.
Speaking of sleep. Dostoevsky has an amazing story “The Dream of a Funny Man”, a stunningly life-affirming work: “I saw the truth, I saw and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the ability to live on earth.” I do not want and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of men.” Nietzsche, who found the work of Fyodor Mikhailovich in many ways close to himself, who revered his talent and proclaimed the Russian classic a great humanist, obviously had sympathy for another, more famous work of the master. Raskolnikov is the title of "Crime and Punishment" in Germany. It is not known for certain, but it can be assumed that next to “The World as Will and Representation” this book lay on Nietzsche’s night table.
At one session, my therapist asked me what I was most afraid of. I replied that I was afraid to meet my horse, as was the case with Nietzsche. The doctor, speaking silently, said, Nietzsche spent his whole life in his madness. He really wanted that.
Dostoevsky, who made a crying boy hug a mare and condemned Raskolnikov to murder, concludes his novel on an extremely optimistic note - he gives his hero redemption. Tarr, whose first five minutes are reconstructed by the famous events of January 3, 1889, tells us: Nietzsche didn't just crave his madness, he got it as a reward. And indeed, what we see on screen in the time that follows forces us to accept the director’s impulse: madness is the most attractive form of existence on this earth.
To material oblivion come the characters of the Turin Horse, living in the tautological Nowhere, in a place covered with dust and rotten gray foliage. Every day is similar to the previous one: the father goes to the city on a wagon, his daughter is waiting for him at home, busy with everyday routine. But after an episode of “common animal longing”, the behavior of the horse (read: the source of existence) changes, and with it the way of life of the family.
Thus begins the six-day destruction of the world of Bela Tarr.
Watching this film, and other Hungarian paintings, gives a clear sense of the tightness of his world, flowing into stifling claustrophobia. At the same time, the understanding of the cinematic world of Tarr disappears after the first hour: the self-sufficiency and usefulness of this land, doomed to destruction, is beyond doubt. The way the director masterfully and on a large scale creates the space of the film (not within a single frame – this work is conducted in the area between the plans and scenes) is reminiscent of the expansion of the universe before the Big Bang. On each new day, the camera captures the family’s recurring life from a new angle: the first day is devoted to the father’s mechanical procedures, the second day we learn, for example, how the daughter eats potatoes. And this new mechanics becomes a truly amazing discovery.
Undoubtedly, in addition to the above-described symptoms with which the picture is strewn, we can find scenes in dire need of interpretation - events-foreign bodies - the arrival of a neighbor (and his long monologue in which Nietzsche argues with Schopenhauer) and the arrival of gypsies, after which water mysteriously disappears from the well (read: the source of existence). It’s important and important to try to leave the house. “They reached the top of the hill, looked around and realized it was pointless to leave. It was the same behind the hill, the director explains.
On the fifth day, the stars faded - the existence of light sources ceased.
There is no light for tomorrow.
The only person Tarr saves in this movie, paradoxically, is Nietzsche. And he will save him very peculiarly, imprisoned for eleven years in a psychiatric clinic. This, of course, is a simple metaphor, once again emphasizing the deep humanism of the architect Superman, who in the conditions of surrounding poverty is powerless.
On the sixth day, the coals in the furnace went out, and Bela Tarr left this rotten world no chance of repentance. Because it is not proper for superhumans to pity and be compassionate, of course.
But tell me, my brethren, if mankind still lacks an end, perhaps it also lacks itself.
That's what Zarathustra said.
I don’t know about all of humanity, but the ontological parable “Turin Horse” had a goal – to put an end to the work of the Hungarian master Bela Tarr, who announced that this was his last film canvas. The realization of this goal seemed to me slightly refined and pompous (relative to the previous paintings) with its staging and leaf blowers, but I probably won’t see anything better this year. What is there in this, with the departure of Bela, the death of Angelopoulos and Guerra, the degradation of Trier and the lack of new names, “Turin Horse” can become a point not only in the work of Bela. I am writing this on the eve of Cannes, and I am afraid that if some Haneke wins, my paranoid thought will take on a clearer form. We're among the guilty, too. They drained Bela's well and left, sending a curse. That is why only two copies of the film were in Russia. It’s a pity they didn’t get to my village, but the Turin Horse would look great in the cinema. Moreover, there is a high probability of the fifth gluing to remain in the hall proudly alone. “Who needs such films?” – you ask, “Apparently no one,” – slyly answer Bela. He will stand, looking away from the window, and walk away in an unknown direction. But where? Nowhere to go, people are the same everywhere. Come back? No, when the fire of the artist’s soul goes out, the artist dies. When creativity becomes a necessity, it is tasteless and cold. It doesn't burn. Just like life.
I’m happy when someone says to me, ‘Your film is sad and depressing, but it’s full of energy and strength that made me happy.’ If I were a pessimist, I wouldn't make a movie. He would go and hang himself at once, as a true pessimist should do. And I believe that someone will go to see my film in twenty or even fifty years. What is that, if not optimism? Especially given the current state of the world... However, without intending to commit suicide, I have to admit that I am not satisfied with life, the world, or the cinema. That's what Bela Tarr said.
9 out of 10
Having read the previous reviews, I found a lot of clearly expressed thoughts - better than I could have formulated them. I will only add what I have not read.
A film about stability in a world of change. One way or another, the individual and the whole of humanity exist in a certain space that they can know. There’s always something else out there, but we just don’t have the resources to understand it. There is too much to do within the boundaries of our world to achieve our way of life, and when there are external changes, the nature of which we do not know, we can only adjust, trying to preserve what little we have. This is how the entire modern world functions, united in one network in many ways - no one owns the completeness of information, society itself is external to us, everyone lives as hermits in something important, and this cannot be changed.
Through the way of eating, characters are transmitted, perhaps even generalized characters of a man and a woman.
The horse or the heroes didn’t understand. They did not give up, did not die of despair, and hardly the director criticizes their attachment to the ordinary. Something just happened that they don’t have information about. Speaking of urgent problems, someone pumped out the water, because there is not much left of it clean, and in general nature died from the harmful influence of man - not these two, but some generalized man, because Nietzsche was a prophet. We live our own lives, which depend on the lives of others, capable of any good or evil, and all good and evil have already been and still will be, but we only partially know about them.
The film is not modern, but it will forever be about today.
8 out of 10
Every moment when watching a movie, the viewer is visited by completely different thoughts. And this is not surprising, because Bella filmed life itself. Our life is filled with mundane, monotonous (which, unfortunately, we are used to) life. It’s like looking in the mirror and seeing ourselves in detail. We see its pettiness, its absurdity, and without disappointment we realize its end, because we understand that nothing began.
However, I cannot call this picture gloomy. It is unique in that everyone can find what they want in it. Someone will plunge into all the existentialism offered by the author, and someone will see in this film a kind of impetus to the fact that in his colorless life you need to change something, perhaps also proposed by the director.
After such films, they return to reality for a long time. Oppression, heaviness and despair - the film breathes these emotions; it is imbued with melancholy through and through.
It is impossible to take your eyes off the screen from the first second. All episodes are a continuation of the thoughts of the viewer and the impetus to their appearance. Black and white stream of everyday frames. The head is filled with images and torn from the stubborn “look, look how pathetic you are”. The viewer of his own free will comes to a dead end, and resembles the same horse that refused to go.
We are all particles in the dust storm of the universe. Nothing significant is happening and cannot happen. The viewer is not interested in what's next - but on a subconscious level he understands that the world is, too. Unfortunately, this is no longer a movie. Does it matter what you cook for lunch, what table you sit at? In this tape, everything is ostentatious, unnatural, unnatural, and even Erica Bock, the lead actress, goes on camera. And her father does not care about himself - the habit of breathing, nothing more.
Humanity is morally deaf and blind, we mentally answer “I don’t know” for fear of admitting anything. "Let's sleep" is the best excuse we'll hear in two and a half hours twice - which is unusually much given the amount of dialogue.
Every day it becomes more difficult for heroes to go, but neither their actions nor their sequence change. Habits are so few that they seem very significant, and in the eyes of the viewer it is ridiculous. The camera does not move from top to bottom, and not even at eye level, but from the ground – a person must be “great”, how.
The viewer looks at all this from the outside and thinks: no, this has nothing to do with me, but at the same time he understands that this is the main mistake.
Remember the story? The main character of the film beat a horse. Over there. Who is he to judge? What is your life worth, from beginning to end? Bela Tarr also deals with matters of religion, discussing the works of the righteous. It is known that when there is emptiness around, people turn to faith. But who should speak of righteousness? And the director shows the viewer the gypsies who drained the well, but gave a random counter Holy Scripture.
Some people may think the film is long. How long? Not interested? What is so interesting about your own life? Can I get up and leave from any moment? Really? And if you raise your hand to rewind this film, think about the fact that with the same ease could rewind your life.
You know, sometimes it takes a lot more energy to stop than to keep going by inertia. The horse seems strange to people who are used to cheating themselves day in and day out. At least the horse has the power to stop.
What do the heroes of the Turin Horse do? For six days God created the world.
Every day they eat potatoes as if they were deciding the fate of humanity. And in the same way, we all have meaningless conversations about the everyday and the secondary, imagining ourselves kings of the planet.
They put on layer by layer, hiding, becoming a little less vulnerable, because the wind is stronger.
They look out the window and do not take a step to open it. A small window to follow the world from the inside, from a limited framework of everyday life.
On the fifth day, they moved, but brought the same thing with them. They changed places, but not themselves. They were left without water and light, mired in their own ignorance. Finally, they say, "tomorrow." What exactly do you want to change?
People think that everything is allowed to them. One of the heroes will say, "The world is worthless." Everything they touch—and they touch everything—is devalued. Touch, seek, devalue.” But the voice of reason is always almost silent, and this traveler leaves, paying the masters in a more understandable way - not with knowledge, but with money thrown on the table.
If people only spoke when they had something to say, they would talk even less. This film cannot be shortened. You should be sick of your own insignificance.
I can watch this movie from the outside, but I will not call it a favorite. He is complex and depressing with his truthfulness. And yet he's the only one of his kind. Undoubtedly.