The Turin Horse
15
Why watch?
“Oddly, but somehow satisfyingly, The Turin Horse, Béla Tarr’s final film, was the first of his I watched and its impact on me was profound, as I expect his films are on anyone who’s seen them. But lucky me! to hit on what is I think the very pinnacle of his many cinematic achievements, an awe-inspiring, dread-inducing final statement, but one centred around a precise theatricality, containing so much humanity. It is not, however, necessarily a part of humanity that we’d readily acknowledge in ourselves. But if you know, you know. In The Turin Horse, Tarr and co-director Ágnes Hranitzky have distilled its characters (us) into a relentless, ever-circling cycle of existence and burden, their bleak lives immersive and to be endured, in the same way we experience Tarr’s films and which, if we’re honest with ourselves, mirror our own. What’s not to like?”
Robb Barham,
Operations & Programme Manager
More cinema of despair this Bleak Week
Taking its cue from Nietsche’s famous encounter with a mistreated horse on Via Carlo Alberto, The Turin Horse depicts the aftermath of this seemingly innocuous but destructively profound confrontation.
Raw, compelling and emotionally devastating, Béla Tarr’s final film is a daringly original and searingly vivid work of artistically precise, philosophically rigorous filmmaking that has left audiences the world over gasping for breath. This work is also committed to Tarr’s ‘remodernist cinema’ that seeks to capture the rhythm of life in real time and to raise a sharp awareness of the moment.
Details
