A Hungarian Filmmaker and his Italian Story about a German Philosopher

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.

It's been described as a "radical and terrifying journey towards the end of the world." Set in 19th century Italy, Hungarian filmmaker, Béla Tarr's 2011 film, "The Turin Horse" traces the events following German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche's tragic encounter with a horse-driven cab in the Italian city of Torino that eventually led him to be bed-ridden for the next 11 years of his life until his untimely death in 1900.

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.

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.

Opening Scene-

Click here to watch "Turin Horse" on iTunes.

Comments

7 Days - 7 Women: Interview with Actress Sabrina Impacciatore

Photo by Rossella Vetrano On Day 6 of our series, 7 Days - 7 Women, in which we are profiling seven strong, talented women working as filmmakers, writers or visual artists, we talk with actress Sabrina Impacciatore about the diversity of her roles. Whether she's playing a devoted mother trying to protect her child, Jesus Christ's "Veronica" in Mel Gibson's controversial film, "Passion of the Christ" or a young woman coming of age, Impacciatore escapes into the life and mind of each character she takes on, sometimes so deeply that she believes she is actually them. It's a fine line between reality and fiction, but she treads it carefully and anyone watching her performance benefits from her emotional connection to the character that she becomes. I spoke with Impacciatore at the 2010 Open Roads: New Italian Film series in New York City. We talked about her lifelong dream of becoming an actress. She also gave me some insight into the diff

A Conversation with Taylor Taglianetti, Founder of NOIAFT

A new platform has recently been launched that promotes the work of Italian Americans in film and television. The brains behind the initiative is a young, passionate woman who is taking the support that she received early on in her journey and paying it forward. With origins in Basilicata and Campania , Taylor Taglianetti is a proud Italian American from Brooklyn, New York. She is currently a senior at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, graduating in January 2020. She is majoring in Film and Television and minoring in the Business of Entertainment, Media and Technology. Taglianetti aspires to be a feature film producer and bring great stories to the big screen. In addition to running NOIAFT, she is currently a Development Intern with Silver Pictures, the production company that produced the Lethal Weapon and The Matrix series. Last summer, she was a development intern with Maven Pictures, the Academy-Award winning production company behind Still Alice and The Kids Are All Right .

Anna Foglietta: Actress and Activist with Old School Elegance

One look at actress Anna Foglietta in her any of her roles, and the Golden Age of Italian cinema comes to mind. Among Italy’s most sought-after actresses today, Foglietta brings to the table a classic eloquence of yesterday while representing Italy’s modern woman. Born in Rome in 1979, Foglietta began her career in 2005 with a role in the RAI television series La squadra . Her character Agent Anna De Luca had a two-year run on the series as she was transitioning to cinema with Paolo Virzì’s 2006 ensemble project 4-4-2- Il gioco più bello del mondo . Since then, she has become one of Italy’s most diverse actresses, transforming herself into interesting, layered characters for comedies and dramas alike. Aside from a small part in Anton Corbijn’s 2010 film The American starring George Clooney, Foglietta’s work began reaching mainstream American audiences in 2015. As Elisa in Edoardo Leo’s 2015 comedy Noi e la Giulia , Foglietta showed her funny side playing a goofball pregn

A Conversation With the Man Who Played Pasolini's Christ

There have been countless cinematic interpretations of the books of the Bible, but few have stood the test of time. One that qualifies as a classic is Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1964 “Il Vangolo secondo Matteo” (The Gospel According to St. Matthew). Considered by the Vatican to be among the best film adaptations of one of the Gospels, Pasolini’s 1964 film was shot in the regions of Calabria, Puglia and Basilicata. In an interview with RAI television while on location in Matera, Pasolini talked about the reasons for shooting there. “I chose two or three places in Basilicata. One is Barile, a town of Albanians. I needed a place for Bethlehem. Another location is Matera because it reminded me of Jerusalem,” he explained. Pasolini’s interpretation of St. Matthews’s Gospel is pure, with no added commentary. He said that he followed the Gospel word for word without adding a single syllable. He explained in the interview that his idea to make the film happened by coincidence. “In October of 19

Michelangelo Frammartino's "Il buco" — Unearthing our past

When a team of speleologists descended 700 meters into the Bifurto Abyss in Cosenza, Calabria, in 1961, they discovered that the underground caverns were the third deepest in the world and the deepest in Europe. Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Frammartino retraces that mission six decades later with a cast of locals and their livestock in his latest documentary, “Il buco” (“The Hole”). Inspiration for the film came while he was on location shooting his 2007 documentary, “Le quattro volte” (“Four Times”). Officials in the Pollino mountains, which stretch between Calabria and Basilicata, showed him what appeared to be just another sinkhole. Frammartino failed to understand their enthusiasm until they tossed a large stone into the void. It disappeared without making a sound. He was so overcome by the experience and the eerie landscape, he was haunted for years, compelling him to make his current film, one of many rooted in nature. “I was born in Milan, but my family is from Calabria. My pa

Italian Cinema Today

Search This Blog