Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in Chicago, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
The Turin Horse (2010)
Director: Béla Tarr
Movie review
From Time Out Online
Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr’s fable-like ‘The Turin Horse’ won a Silver Bear at the 2011 Berlin Film Festival. According to an introductory voiceover, it is inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche stopping a Turin cab-driver from whipping his horse; having put an end to the cruelty, the writer returned home to his mother and sisters and spent the next ten years until his death in demented silence – whereas, we’re told, it’s not known what happened to the quadruped in question.Whether the stark apocalyptic tale that follows this brief prologue is intended as a corrective to that uncertainty is unclear; the Berlin festival catalogue and some critics seem to believe the man and horse we first see returning to a remote farm on the Hungarian plains are those described by the narrator, though there’s no indication that the comments about Nietzsche have any link to the main narrative save that they point up the randomly chaotic, often bitterly cruel nature of existence.
The plot, such as it is, simply depicts six days in the life of the man – elderly, with one useless arm and, perhaps, one blind eye – and the grown daughter with whom he shares the cottage. They get up, get dressed, get water from the well, try to go to work – though the horse, ailing and refusing to eat, and an ever more violent gale prevent their doing so – eat (boiled potatoes only, using their fingers), stare out at the storm, and sleep. One day, a man visits to borrow brandy and speaks of the desolate prospects facing greedy, self-serving humanity; another day, a passing band of gypsies comes to the well but is driven away by the irate cottage-owner, leaving a religious tome for his daughter as recompense. That’s it, in terms of story – except that by the fifth day it feels as if the wind will never drop and the wretched pair will never be able to leave their home.
All this – which lasts two and half hours – is conveyed by around 30 long, elegant shots, beautifully lit and composed in monochrome by frequent Tarr collaborator Fred Kelemen; other regulars on board for what he has described as his last film include co-writer László Krasznahorkai (on whose novel Tarr’s masterpiece ‘Sátántangó’ was based), composer Mihály Vig (here contributing a dirge-like minimalist drone that matches the repetitively rhythmic raging of the tempest), and editor/co-director Ágnes Hranitsky. The slow pace, the generally miserabilist mood, the sparse dialogue and the focus on mundane quotidian domestic ritual will not be to everyone’s taste, and at times the sheer single-mindedness of the film threatens to slide into something like self-parody. Yet somehow it weaves its hypnotic spell: so bold are both the conception and execution of Tarr’s darkly cinematic elegy that the final scenes are as sobering as anything in his – or indeed anyone else’s – body of work.
Author: Geoff Andrew
Time Out Online Berlin Film Festival, 2011
Features
Gray's anatomy
James Gray wants to push buttons—again.
The next big thing?
Gigantic Releasing tries to rethink indie distribution…without movie theaters.
Red Diva: Lyubov Orlova, First Lady of Soviet Cinema
So you think you can dance, comrade?
Puppet master
Coraline director Henry Selick takes stop-motion animation into 3-D.
Socratic method
Laurent Cantet's approach on the set matches the message of his film.
Wander woman
Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy puts a Bush-era spin on the road movie.
Oscars
Read our interviews with the nominees, our reviews of the nominated films and more.
What do you think?
Post your review now