Erik's brief thoughts on "The Turin Horse"

      You have to admire a horse that realizes the world is a lost cause and doesn't deny the inevitable. Bela Tarr's latest and supposedly last film, The Turin Horse, is a black and white minimalist gem, encompassing no less than Friedrich Nietzsche, God, and everything in-between. Focusing on a sickly horse cabby and his diligent, hard-working daughter, the film, set over six days ("and on the sixth day God created...."), focuses on their daily household routines as a disastrous dust and wind storm howls ferociously outside. When their horse refuses to eat or trot forward into town, the cabby and his daughter remain stranded in limbo, forced to make do with what they have.

     One of the most pleasurable — and, it must be said, fun — aspects of the film is how Tarr repeatedly relishes camera placement, each time shooting these routines with the actors from either a different angle or on the opposing person's face. Physical choices by the actors are crucial: look at how the father picks up and eats the potatoes, the duration of time it takes, and how the daughter cleans up after him. Tarr indicates dread by slightly altering these routines as the film progresses, i.e. the various trips to the nearby well, the physical labor necessary to prepare the horse for travel, etc. Tarr portrays the ordinary and then slowly extracts from it.

      Neither force-fed nor intentionally oblique, Tarr's narrative becomes clearer once a drunken neighbor stops by desiring some brandy. Given a monologue representing a good portion of the film's spoken words, this man rants on the Godless nature of our times and the rise to power of the indecent — the noble people neglect to see the change occurring. He has a point. As the family later encounters traveling gypsies looking to steal some water, the feeling of a developing apocalypse becomes mutual. Towards the end of the film, the water disappears almost as quickly as the light of the earth, as even the candles do not find it necessary to stay lit.

      Pessimistically existential at times, The Turin Horse is a film as complex as you'd like it to be. The religious symbolism is plentiful, the powerful score indicating intense despair, and the lasting action we are ultimately left with is that of surrender. When the family attempts to take shelter somewhere else, the horse's unwillingness leads them back to where they started. And on the sixth day, food is seen as a delayer to the inevitable. The horse's outlook was correct from the start.


Highly Recommended