From: JP VANDERKOK <vanderkok@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 2:51 PM
Subject: turin horse
To: vanderkok@gmail.com
11/9/11
MY REVIEW OF TURIN HORSE,
PRODUCED BY BéLA TARR
(Pic: The"Hungarian master of miserablism", Béla Tarr;
pic by Vander, 11/09/11)
(Viewed at the Chinese 6 on Hollywood Blvd, AFI film festival )
Re the TURIN HORSE, what an intense film, ...totally silent, B&W ...begins with some credits, I think it said January3, 1889, (?) quote of Nietsche (in reference to his horse parable)..horse refused to move, owner starts whipping it, Nietzsche stops the man, ..(just words talking about it, not an actual scene, something about "says his last two obligatory words, & then lives ten more years"), ..then footage begins with a man on a buggy pulled by horse,..this actually lasts for a long time, with intense music (stringed instrument) see...[youtube=]
There is stark black & white scenery, very windy, leaves blowing, horse struggling to keep going ...finally arrives at an old run down house & stable..there's a woman here...takes a while to figure out the relationship, but becomes clear, she's his daughter. They rarely talk. In fact, there was no dialogue for about the first 15 minutes of the film. Finally, the first two words are "It's ready" , when she puts a boiled potato (nothing else) on the table for him to eat. He eats it with his bare hands. Apparently potatoes are all they have to eat.
Then she says, vaguely "What's it all about?" (Referring to life in general?) And he says "I don't know. Go to sleep." Next morning, she's the first awake, opens door to howling wind, walks outside w/ 2 wooden buckets, fills them at the well. She comes back in & he sits up on the bed. He being elderly, she helps dress & undress him every day. I also notice a rough pair of wooden shoes by his bed. They go out to the barn, but the horse is not cooperative. The wind is always howling (funny, during the Q&A somebody asked "How long did the storm last?" Thinking it was a real wind storm. Ha ha. The famed producer, Béla, said, "That was a stupid ol' wind machine." ).
Back in the house, the old man chops wood with an axe. The daughter hand washes clothes. Every scene is prolonged & the sound emphasized, even when they are just sitting, staring out the window. It is very intense , even powerful in a simplistic way, with none of the usual quick transitions & predictability of so many films. The one surprising piece of dialogue is the old man saying "f--k" every now & then (was that word even used pre-1960's? Seems like even foreign films feel obliged to include the f word in their movies. The word is SO OVER-USED everywhere these days, from ghetto grade school kids to corporate executives, to Jay Leno talking to President Obama) it has become boringly mundane, although because it seems anachronistic here, it has a little humorous punch to it, & I heard a few laughs) Now the old man is punching holes on a belt.
The next day, after a similar morning routine (getting water from the well, checking on the horse, taking a shot of brandy), an old man with a cane stops by and asks for a refill of his brandy bottle, which he pays for. Then the two men sit & converse for a while. The visitor says something about the "self god" & about the world being "debased"...& something about accepting "no god" ("neither god nor godly") ..he goes on & on, the father says very little. Then he stands up & walks out, the last shot of him thru the window walking slowly with his cane into the distance, wind blowing fiercely.
The brandy becomes a daily ritual, with prolonged shots of the bottle in the morning after father & daughter take a shot. One day (& this is all in a total span of 5 or 6 days) a group of gypsies come riding up in a wagon. They take water from the well. The father tells the daughter to go out & scare them away, but they start playfully harassing the daughter. So the dad comes out with an axe & threatens them, but not before one of them gives the girl a book. Back inside the girl opens the book & starts reading aloud. It may be a Bible. It has religious language of some sort, maybe Revelations, nothing that I immediately recognized.
By the way, all the dialogue is in Hungarian with English subscripts. Also, the horse has stopped eating. Sick? Giving up? Then, the well runs dry, so they pack up apparently intending to leave. And they are shown traveling into the distance. I thought this might be the end, but then they are shown coming back to the cabin, without explanation. Maybe they realized it was too far, that there was no hope with a weak horse, but the visitor with the cane walked somewhere (couldn't they walk as far?). So they unpack their things.
Since they have no water, they eat their potatoes raw (can't boil it, but why not bake it, they still have fire), with bare hands. The lamp goes out. He tells her to fill it with oil. She says, "it's filled." NO wick? He tries.
It won't start. He says "Let's go to sleep." Now I am writing without the notes, a day later. I can't remember the exact ending but I remember her face staring out the window, hopeless.
Then Béla came back out (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0ee67Xdwfc ). He's a bearded fellow, somewhat short, a little gruff. I think everybody felt a bit stunned by what they just saw. This was not your formula film made for commercial success. I recognized it as something much different the moment it began. INTENSE is the best word I can think of. POWERFUL, also (fragment for effect). I had several questions but would have needed to speak to him personally abut it. That's the thing I dislike about the large Q&A Sessions. You have a certain "type" of people in the audience who limit authentic conversation.
So I just listened. Somebody asked why this is his last film? (Which he apparently announced ). He scoffed a little & said in his style of honesty he was "sick of this question" but then said he's come "full circle" and doesn't want to "make s--t" .He apparently is content with the quality of what he's done and doesn't want to degrade his legacy by just putting out film for the sake of producing film. Fair enough. I respect that.
One lady asked whether he was influenced by artists (such as Flemish, I think she added) and if so, who? He kind of shrugged, and seemed to jeer a little bit, and simply said yes he was influenced by painters but did not want to name any (elsewhere, he does say he's influenced by painters in a interview, see below) .He seemed to want to avoid over intellectualizing the movie, which I appreciate. It is what it is.
So many in the movie-watching atmosphere around Hollywood want to prove their cinema prowess by asking or answering questions with cinematic jargon, but it too often misses the larger point & purpose of WHAT IMPACT, if any, does this film have on a person intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, affectively, etc? Walking away from the movie & a year or ten from now, what difference will this movie have made for me as a person and for people in general ? Will it make me a better person? That's what I always try to ask after a movie (& I rarely go to movies anymore) .
More often I read about them or hear about them. Too often they have a specific liberal agenda. I didn't get that feeling with Turin Horse (albeit, apparently, Béla is a "proud liberal" & even criticized his own government for its opposition to liberal intellectuals). Bella seemed to want to talk about the simple & plain life & death aspects of the movie (i.e. re death "It's acceptable but unacceptable", as simple as that). And that about sums it up, You really get a very stark & honest feeling about life & death & everything else. There's NO AMBIGUITY. A bottle of brandy is a bottle of brandy. A horse is a horse. A potato is a potato. A woman is a woman. A man is a man. It was sort of REFRESHING.I almost started thinking of reformed theology as I watched & wondered if the Hungarian Reformed church influenced Béla at all, but apparently he's not a believer.
I would definitely recommend this film, but you have to be WILLING to suffer with it. Your average movie-goer will quickly complain, "This is boring..." and will notice the lack of sexuality & nudity (thank you), and thankfully a lack of homosexuality, lack of profanity (except the anachronistic F word by the old man) , lack of violence (except the threatening gesture with the axe by the old man), & lack of almost all cheap techniques used today to captivate today's audience. I walked OUT on two other AFI films because of the junk they dumped on the audience (most of whom accept it, but not I), but I stayed for the entirety of Turin Horse. It was honest, intense, & powerful, a very rare simple but true message. Thank you Béla Tarr.
As for the religious ramifications, even though Nietzsche is known for his "death of God" comment & apparent atheism or agnosticism,& even if Bella is in agreement with such, this film did NOT fill me with hopelessness, but JUST the OPPOSITE. It shows that we are TOTALLY at the MERCY of something else much larger than ourselves. In Turin Horse, perhaps Bella portrays the "something else" as merely nature, but TO ME it points to GOD: Father-Son-&-Holy Spirit.
A portion of another review:
'....universe's absolute implacable indifference to humanity? The Nietzsche prologue, seemingly tangential to the main action, enigmatically bolsters the effect of parable." bolsters the effect of parable." Almost as an indirect answer to those questions, the "Director's Notes":"Our film follows up this question," wrote Tarr in 2007. "What did in fact happen to the horse? Olsdorfer, the carter, and his daughter live out their lives on their farmstead. They subsist on hard work: their only source of income is the horse and the cart — that's what they live on. The father takes on carting jobs, his daughter takes care of the household. It's a very meager life and infinitely monotonous. Their practiced movements and the changes in seasons and times of day dictate the rhythm and routine which is cruelly inflicted on them. The film portrays mortality, with that deep pain which we, who are under sentence of death, all feel."
http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/berlinale-2011-bela-tarrs-the-turin-horse
Also see http://mubi.com/cast_members/4125
Béla said "... [the Hungarian] government despises intellectuals "because they're liberal and oppositional; they call us traitors to the fatherland." Tarr also criticizes the government's severe cuts to support for the film industry, which has prompted the Hungarian producers union to counter that Tarr actually receives "significant subsidies" himself. Even as government supporters criticize Tarr for his comments, others are going after him for distancing himself from the interview: "I'll not fight, discuss or argue in this way. I find it very degrading that all this is smearing the reception and success of the film and dragging it down to the level of everyday politics."
http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/berlinale-2011-bela-tarrs-the-turin-horse
Opening scene of Turin Horse is on YouTube gives you a good feel for what I am talking about (same link as above) :
(By the way, if you search YouTube, there also seems to be a spoof clip, with some musicians & a dolphin, which has nothing to do with this film)
Here's an interview with Béla, in which the interviewer asks him why people come away with a religious feeling from his films despite Bella's disbelief in God. Bella talks about the "dignity" of all human beings. He also mentions being influenced by painters.
Other films by Tarr include:
- Családi tűzfészek / Family Nest (1977)
- Szabadgyalog / The Outsider (1981)
- Panelkapcsolat / The Prefab People (1982)
- Őszi almanach / Autumn Almanac (1985)
- Kárhozat / Damnation (1988)
- Sátántangó / Satan's Tango (1994)
- Werckmeister harmóniák / Werckmeister Harmonies (2000)
- A londoni férfi / The Man from London (2007)
- (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9la_Tarr )
Finally, you can see Béla Tarr as I saw him after the screening of Turin Horse at (vid by Vander)
-Vander-
http://www.HEARINGtheWORD.posterous.com
TAGS: Bela tarr, Béla Tarr,Pécs, budapest, Béla Balázs Studios,Családi tűzfészek,Szabadgyalog, The Outsider,Rainer Werner Fassbinder,Sátántangó, Cannes,Susan Sontag ,Gus Van Sant, AFI, OSCARS, ACADEMY AWARDS, HORSE, KOK, VANDERKOK, VANDER
