WordsBy

Jack Jones

Cinémoi reviews Béla Tarr’s final foray into filmmaking, The Turin Horse. A typically enigmatic and intoxicating journey through the suffering of a father, his daughter and their horse, this is Tarr’s conclusion on the matter of death‘s slow approach.

The Turin Horse

As a finale to a career, The Turin Hourse is the very definition ofthe bleakness and finality of life when it is close to beingextinguished. Director Béla Tarr, a forefather amongst the art housefilm world, harrowingly captures this very notion through the simpleimage of an oil lamp; flickering and covorting as a violent windthreatens to blow it out. But its extinguishment at the hands of a sudden force never happens. Rather, the slow and gradual loss ofoil, its life source, is the reason the lamp eventually burns out. This exactly mirrors the story of Ohlsdorfer, his daughter and their wearywork horse. Without their own life source, the horse, they are destined toendure extreme poverty and certain death.

For Tarr the routine and almost inevitable path towards death is what is fascinating. These people cannot escape their situation and appear ambivalent to their impending plight. This is their way of life and existence. Mortality, it seems, doesn’t enter their consciousness.

But like the oil lamp, the end is not quick or forthcoming. And in Tarr’s signature style of long, unwavering takes, you really feel every last grain oflife slipping away.

Though The Turin Horse is ostensibly a heavy andemotional piece, Tarr’s black comic humour isstill present. Less so than in his previous filmThe Man From London which, thanks to someodd dubbing, had an air of absurdity about it,The Turin Horse does have a few momentsthat provoke an almost guilty chuckle. Hard tocomprehend when you consider the film’sopening shot has the apocalyptic atmosphere of John Hillcoat’s The Road.

Indeed, this film has throughout its entirety afeeling of life on its last legs and a morbidnihilism that is as uncomfortable as it gets.A few introductory words are spoken as a windswept man and his beleaguered horse pulls a cart across a desolate terrain. The voice over tells a tale about how the famous philosopherFriedrich Nietzsche once saw the whipping of a stubborn horse in the street and that it so disturbed him that he lay silent and dementedtill the day he died. The voice then concludes:“We do not know what happened to the horse.”With little explanation we are left to assume thatthe travelling man and his horse are the verysame pair that so tormented Nietzsche until his death. From here, the narrative is solely

focused on the lives of the three wanderingcorpses; the man, his daughter and the horse

For those who are unfamiliar with Tarr’s sombertone, the overriding sensation may prove difficult.What exactly is he getting at? Not only isThe Turin Horse a depiction of a path towardsdeath, it is also a exercise in its monotony.At times it seems that Tarr has said all hecan on the matter after 90 minutes but isdetermined to make you feel every last breath.

Structuring the film over one week and a use oftitlecards to denote each day, you are ableto track the timeline of how close you are totheir end. But so mundane and indistinguishableare each of the days that frustration inevitablygrows. With repeating scenes of dining onboiling hot potatoes and the ceaseless battering of the wind outside their hut, this is a place that you’ll want to escape from pretty quickly.

Yet so magnetic and compulsive is the first90 minutes that you can’t look away. Andeven though Tarr has this view of making you

feel his films as much as you experience them,the method brings some masterful rewards.

Tarr’s continued collaboration with composerMihály Vig produces a majestically haunting score with which to pair to Tarr’s desolateimages. Like a slowly approaching train, Vig’sscore at times lingers then grows until itscreschendo. Ringing over and over in the manner of Tarr’s direction, this is a score thattells the story as much as the images.

Working again in monochrome photography,this is a very different style to that of the noir likemist of The Man From London. Shot morein the grainy quality of Tarr’s previous worksuch as Damnation and Werckmeister Harmonies, cinematographer Fred Kelemen -who also shot The Man From London - has produced some startling results. Inside the barnis a place draped in shadow, only lit by the aforementioned oil lamp, but still Kelemen isable to capture every wrinkle of each characters’ face and their creaking bodies.

All of these elements once again prove thatcinema is very much a collaborative form.

“this film has throughout its

entirety afeeling of life on

its last legs and a morbid

nihilism that is as uncomfortable as

it gets.”Nevertheless, Tarr is the man behind the curtainpulling all the strings and this is very much his vision. Tarr’s reach as a filmmaker undeniablyunique as his style has influenced even someof the great filmmakers of modern cinema.One advocate, in particular, has been Gus Van Sant who has adopted Tarr’s propendencyof long takes. The results can at times beirkesome as much as they are lingering andpoetic - see Last Days. And there aremoments when the message seems to be lost amongst the pretention. But once a film-maker such as Tarr stops making films, it’s time to sit and admire the craftwork and cherish thatcinema of this ilk doesn’t come around that often.

Tarr is a filmmaker like few others andfor his last film it seems that the directorhas said all he wants to say. An interestingdouble bill would be this and Steven Spielberg’smuch maligned War Horse, just to see how great filmmakers interpret the world in differentways and have differing sentiments of theworld is like. Oh, and the for the horses too.

The Turin Horse is in cinemas 1 June