Facing Bela Tarr’s Final Film, ‘The Turin Horse’

Based on a scenario by longtime Tarr collaborator Laszlo Krasznahorkai,The Turin Horse begins by recounting an anecdote to explain its title: While walking in Turin in 1889, Nietzsche saw a cab driver thrashing his horse, and threw himself between the animal and the whip. The philosopher then collapsed and spent the rest of his life in quiet dementia, mostly in the care of his mother and sister.

The plot, such as it is, simply depicts six days in the life of the man – elderly, with one useless arm and, perhaps, one blind eye – and the grown daughter with whom he shares the cottage. They get up, get dressed, get water from the well, try to go to work – though the horse, ailing and refusing to eat, and an ever more violent gale prevent their doing so – eat (boiled potatoes only, using their fingers), stare out at the storm, and sleep. One day, a man visits to borrow brandy and speaks of the desolate prospects facing greedy, self-serving humanity; another day, a passing band of gypsies comes to the well but is driven away by the irate cottage-owner, leaving a religious tome for his daughter as recompense. That’s it, in terms of story – except that by the fifth day it feels as if the wind will never drop and the wretched pair will never be able to leave their home.

All this – which lasts two and half hours – is conveyed by around 30 long, elegant shots, beautifully lit and composed in monochrome by frequent Tarr collaborator Fred Kelemen; other regulars on board for what he has described as his last film include co-writer László Krasznahorkai (on whose novel Tarr’s masterpiece ‘Sátántangó’ was based), composer Mihály Vig (here contributing a dirge-like minimalist drone that matches the repetitively rhythmic raging of the tempest), and editor/co-director Ágnes Hranitsky. The slow pace, the generally miserabilist mood, the sparse dialogue and the focus on mundane quotidian domestic ritual will not be to everyone’s taste, and at times the sheer single-mindedness of the film threatens to slide into something like self-parody. Yet somehow it weaves its hypnotic spell: so bold are both the conception and execution of Tarr’s darkly cinematic elegy that the final scenes are as sobering as anything in his – or indeed anyone else’s – body of work.

Aside from a strong and increasing wind, The Turin Horse could be set in the same empty spot asWaiting for Godot. Like Beckett's play, Tarr's film is about the daily lives of two isolated people, occasionally interrupted by visitors. One difference is that, where Beckett's characters are locked in their routines, Ohlsdorfer (Janos Derzsi) and his unnamed heir (Erika Bok) are being blown out of theirs. The duo's harsh world is getting harsher.

It's not just the wind, underlined by Mihaly Vig's minimalist score. The horse is acting strange, and the well is going dry. At times, it even seems that the sun has gone out. As in Tarr's more elaborately plotted 2000 masterpiece, Werckmeister Harmonies, a great disaster looms off-screen.

The two peasants' visitors bring alarming messages, though they're vague. An acquaintance arrives to buy some liquor, and warns that greedy humanity is doomed. Later, some gypsies pass though, and the man drives them off, although perhaps too late. They give the granddaughter a book that Tarr has described as a Nietzschean "anti-Bible."

The bleakness is unrelenting — yet that's probably not why The Turin Horse has prompted so many audience walkouts. The film is structured as the events of six days, and each chapter promises to repeat the same obsessive depiction of simple acts: fetching water, chopping wood, eating potatoes and helping Ohlsdorfer, who has a lame arm, get dressed and undressed. The movie oppresses less through gloom than with repetition.

And yet there's enormous variation within the tight confines of this parable, in large part because of the compositions and cinematography. Tarr and his veteran cameraman, Fred Kelemen, employ long hand-held camera takes. (There are only about 30, averaging roughly eight minutes each.) The film was shot in and around a farmhouse, built for the production, that is essentially one large room and an attached stable. The way the characters (including the horse) move through this space creates a sense of intimacy and completeness.

As for the horse - which figures less than expected - it is mostly a solemn, impassive background presence, and a focus for the enigmatic drift of the film. Is the horse a repository, like Bresson’s donkey Baltasar, of human suffering? Or does it embody the universe’s absolute implacable indifference to humanity? The Nietzsche prologue, seemingly tangential to the main action, enigmatically bolsters the effect of parable.

Tarr has announced that this will be his last film, and indeed it’s hard to imagine where he could go from here. It’s a shame to think of this heroically uncompromising director shutting up shop, but if he does, The Turin Horse is a magnificent farewell - although the film ought perhaps to be accompanied by a warning for the depressive.