"The Turin Horse" is the end of the world, portrayed with an existentialist sensibility. To me, it's one of the best movies of all time.
It's B&W, which is appropriate for both its subject and the past time it portrays. The sound track combines diegetic sounds, spare music by Mihály Vig that's a mournful dirge in a style reminiscent of older Philip Glass, and just tiny bits of dialog. The setting is a run-down hovel and shed, apparently somewhere in Europe before 1900. An awful windstorm blows the whole time.
The "feel" definitely derives from Nietzsche. The philosophy is not sketched out in any simple outline though. If you're looking to bone up on Philosophy 101, look elsewhere.
The old man and his daughter who live in the hovel are obviously quite poor. They dress in barely adequate clothes, eat nothing but potatoes, and substitute a glass of brandy for breakfast food. The hovel has an uneven floor and no interior walls, most of what little furniture there is is very crude, the beds are lumpy, and the wood-burning cook-stove provides both the hot water and the heating as well as cooking the potatoes. A new hole for more ventilation and light has been knocked through a wall of the shed, but there's no glass in the irregular hole, and the stones that were removed are still tumbled about. Some scarecrows and a rake in the shed suggest they raise their own potatoes and straw; but nothing else, they are clearly not farmers.
Words between the old man and his daughter are so few we wonder why: Do they no longer have anything at all to say? Is their habit to not talk hardly at all to _anybody_? Do they not like each other?
One of the old man's arms won't move. He relies heavily on his daughter even for seemingly simple tasks like dressing, and despite his handicap works by driving a freight cart (which must be very hard for him to do well). His cart -apparently their sole source of income- is pulled by a sick old horse. The daughter is beyond marriageable age, but it doesn't much matter because there are obviously no suitors around anyway. Apparently nobody has planned for or given any thought to either extreme old age or a next generation. We know intellectually their situation is very precarious, that if anything at all goes wrong the whole thing will come apart.
And something does go wrong: their horse starts dying. That alone would push them over the edge, but the sickening horse turns out to be a signal for the end of the entire world. The next six days are rather like the Genesis creation in reverse. They lose the water in their well, then sunlight, then lamplight, and eventually even fire.
Béla Tarr, assisted by his partner and co-director Ágnes Hranitzky and his director of photography Fred Kelemen, uses his trademark very very long takes. Partly that's just his normal style, which probably echoes the very long sentences (several pages!) preferred by his writing collaborator, László Krasznahorkai. I found the long takes -besides just being an atypical stylistic choice- served some purposes. First, they give the viewer a first-hand experience of the monotony the story characters are mired in. And second, they introduce the viewer to characters and events very slowly in a very authentic way; this way the director doesn't need to "highlight" the most important aspects so you "get" them right away but instead can simply let you watch until you understand it all.
There have been some comments to the effect both that this is Béla Tarr's last movie, and that this is not really the end of the _world_ but rather the end of the _movies_. Who knows, although watching "The Turin Horse", one can't help but get the feeling it really is a "last" movie. A general idea of this movie has apparently been floating around for a very long time, beginning clear back before Béla Tarr's and László Krasznahorkai's collaboration on "Sátántangó". The movie is much less depressing than it sounds, partly because watching the man and woman persist against all odds is so inspiring.
It's B&W, which is appropriate for both its subject and the past time it portrays. The sound track combines diegetic sounds, spare music by Mihály Vig that's a mournful dirge in a style reminiscent of older Philip Glass, and just tiny bits of dialog. The setting is a run-down hovel and shed, apparently somewhere in Europe before 1900. An awful windstorm blows the whole time.
The "feel" definitely derives from Nietzsche. The philosophy is not sketched out in any simple outline though. If you're looking to bone up on Philosophy 101, look elsewhere.
The old man and his daughter who live in the hovel are obviously quite poor. They dress in barely adequate clothes, eat nothing but potatoes, and substitute a glass of brandy for breakfast food. The hovel has an uneven floor and no interior walls, most of what little furniture there is is very crude, the beds are lumpy, and the wood-burning cook-stove provides both the hot water and the heating as well as cooking the potatoes. A new hole for more ventilation and light has been knocked through a wall of the shed, but there's no glass in the irregular hole, and the stones that were removed are still tumbled about. Some scarecrows and a rake in the shed suggest they raise their own potatoes and straw; but nothing else, they are clearly not farmers.
Words between the old man and his daughter are so few we wonder why: Do they no longer have anything at all to say? Is their habit to not talk hardly at all to _anybody_? Do they not like each other?
One of the old man's arms won't move. He relies heavily on his daughter even for seemingly simple tasks like dressing, and despite his handicap works by driving a freight cart (which must be very hard for him to do well). His cart -apparently their sole source of income- is pulled by a sick old horse. The daughter is beyond marriageable age, but it doesn't much matter because there are obviously no suitors around anyway. Apparently nobody has planned for or given any thought to either extreme old age or a next generation. We know intellectually their situation is very precarious, that if anything at all goes wrong the whole thing will come apart.
And something does go wrong: their horse starts dying. That alone would push them over the edge, but the sickening horse turns out to be a signal for the end of the entire world. The next six days are rather like the Genesis creation in reverse. They lose the water in their well, then sunlight, then lamplight, and eventually even fire.
Béla Tarr, assisted by his partner and co-director Ágnes Hranitzky and his director of photography Fred Kelemen, uses his trademark very very long takes. Partly that's just his normal style, which probably echoes the very long sentences (several pages!) preferred by his writing collaborator, László Krasznahorkai. I found the long takes -besides just being an atypical stylistic choice- served some purposes. First, they give the viewer a first-hand experience of the monotony the story characters are mired in. And second, they introduce the viewer to characters and events very slowly in a very authentic way; this way the director doesn't need to "highlight" the most important aspects so you "get" them right away but instead can simply let you watch until you understand it all.
There have been some comments to the effect both that this is Béla Tarr's last movie, and that this is not really the end of the _world_ but rather the end of the _movies_. Who knows, although watching "The Turin Horse", one can't help but get the feeling it really is a "last" movie. A general idea of this movie has apparently been floating around for a very long time, beginning clear back before Béla Tarr's and László Krasznahorkai's collaboration on "Sátántangó". The movie is much less depressing than it sounds, partly because watching the man and woman persist against all odds is so inspiring.