Out of the 50-odd 2011 releases I’ve seen, these five films have made my year. A Separation and Senna are probably the two I’d put at the very top of the list, having responded quite strongly to them emotionally, while the other three are more aesthetic choices.
Bleak and austere, beautiful and hypnotic, there’s very little dialogue but plenty of stunning shots & some great acting (Michelle Williams really shines in this and Bruce Greenwood is unrecognizable). This is definitely going to be on my Best-of-2011 list. About the polarizing ending: the last shot is exactly what I had imagined the film would end with.
Full-blown intrigue and romanticism, women at their most delicate fainting right left and center, some awesome tracking shots and camera angles, tons of characters, locations, languages, sub-plots, costumes, and some seriously grandiose interiors. And all that over 4.5 hours.
“In Turin on 3rd January, 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche steps out of the doorway of number six, Via Carlo Albert. Not far from him, the driver of a hansom cab is having trouble with a stubborn horse. Despite all his urging, the horse refuses to move, whereupon the driver loses his patience and takes his whip to it. Nietzsche comes up to the throng and puts an end to the brutal scene, throwing his arms around the horse’s neck, sobbing. His landlord takes him home, he lies motionless and silent for two days on a divan until he mutters the obligatory last words, and lives for another ten years, silent and demented, cared for by his mother and sisters. We do not know what happened to the horse.”
These are Béla Tarr’s introductory words at the beginning of his film, which picks up the narrative immediately after these events, and is a meticulous description of the life of the driver of the hansom cab, his daughter and the horse.
Director Béla Tarr says that the film is about the “heaviness of human existence”. The focus is not on mortality, but rather the daily life: “We just wanted to see how difficult and terrible it is when every day you have to go to the well and bring the water, in summer, in winter… All the time. The daily repetition of the same routine makes it possible to show that something is wrong with their world. It’s very simple and pure.” Tarr has also described The Turin Horse as the last step in a development throughout his career: “In my first film I started from my social sensibility and I just wanted to change the world. Then I had to understand that problems are more complicated. Now I can just say it’s quite heavy and I don’t know what is coming, but I can see something that is very close – the end.”
According to Tarr, the book the daughter receives is an “anti-Bible”. The text was an original work by the film’s writer, László Krasznahorkai, and contains references to Nietzsche. Tarr described the visitor in the film as “a sort of Nietzschean shadow”. As Tarr elaborated, the man differs from Nietzsche in that he is not claiming that God is dead, but rather puts blame on both humans and God: “The key point is that the humanity, all of us, including me, are responsible for destruction of the world. But there is also a force above human at work – the gale blowing throughout the film – that is also destroying the world. So both humanity and a higher force are destroying the world.”
Just like the gale, the music by Mihály Víg has a relentless, monotonous and haunting quality that sucks you in.
