It's been a tough couple weeks watching the images of people- children in particular- suffering through war and natural disasters. First, we saw the heartbreaking image of a toddler being pulled from the wreckage of a bombing in Aleppo, Syria. Little did we know it was just the beginning of a week of similar images.. children being pulled from collapsed buildings after the earthquake in Amatrice, Italy. Some children made it out alive, while many others didn't. Among the images that struck me the hardest was a rescue worker reassuring an elderly woman buried in rubble, the rescue of 10-year-old Giulia and the countless shots of dogs- whether they were being rescued, helping with the rescue or sitting by the coffins of their masters. The dogs in particular that were rescued made me curious about their backstories and that reminded me of a clever, dark and mysterious film I saw a few years ago by Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr. So, I thought it would be an appropriate way to come back from such a devastating and dark week that we will certainly never forget.
The story recounts the events of January 3, 1889 when Nietzsche was strolling through the streets of Torino and encountered a cab driver having trouble
with his horse. The horse wouldn’t move and the driver started beating it.
Nietzsche was mortified by the abuse of this innocent animal and tried to stop
it. As the story goes, he hugged the
horse, started crying and fell to the ground. The incident left a permanent
psychological scar on the German philosopher. Shortly thereafter, he was diagnosed with chronic mental illness from
which he would never recover.
Screenwriter László Krasznahorkai
approached the story from the angle of "whatever happened to the
horse?". The film addresses that
question in a fictionalized tale of what may have occurred. In eerie scenes of dust and dry leaves
circling and engulfing the vast landscapes of howling wind, "The Turin
Horse" carries the signature of its director, Béla Tarr, who is known and
revered for his incomparable style of long takes, black-and-white photography
and little or no dialogue. This style can immediately be seen in the trailer for the film. If you are familiar with Tarr's style of
filmmaking, the trailer will make sense.
If you are not, it may raise some questions.
Personally, I have always seen a strong parallel between Béla Tarr's work and the films of Pier Paolo Pasolini. The two directors always seem to portray the world in its most grim and desperate moments. They present people living with the bare essentials and trying to make ends meet in the gravest of circumstances. In a simple yet strong statement about his film, the Hungarian auteur described "The Turin Horse" as "a film about the unbearable heaviness of life and the monotony of life." If you were to keep that statement in mind while considering the work of Pasolini, "Mamma Roma" and "The Hawks and the Sparrows" in particular, you would undoubtedly see the similarities in their work.
Personally, I have always seen a strong parallel between Béla Tarr's work and the films of Pier Paolo Pasolini. The two directors always seem to portray the world in its most grim and desperate moments. They present people living with the bare essentials and trying to make ends meet in the gravest of circumstances. In a simple yet strong statement about his film, the Hungarian auteur described "The Turin Horse" as "a film about the unbearable heaviness of life and the monotony of life." If you were to keep that statement in mind while considering the work of Pasolini, "Mamma Roma" and "The Hawks and the Sparrows" in particular, you would undoubtedly see the similarities in their work.
Three years in the
making, "The Turin Horse" is reportedly the last film for Béla Tarr as a director. Since then, he has produced a number of projects. Fans of his work embraced this
film as the curtain went down for one of Europe's most admired
directors.
Comments
Post a Comment