The Turin Horse (Bela Tarr)

[B-side]

IMDb

[Watashi]

Brightside fail.

[B-side]

Brightside fail.

I didn't think it'd be an issue if I took the liberty of adding the film's poster instead of Raiders having to do so. He's going to add the poll, right?

[transmogrifier]

I didn't think it'd be an issue if I took the liberty of adding the film's poster instead of Raiders having to do so. He's going to add the poll, right?

He'll have to now, but you should do it when you start the thread.

[B-side]

He'll have to now, but you should do it when you start the thread.

Ah, OK. I read that he wanted us to leave the first post blank, and I guess I conflated that with leaving it without a poll as well.

[EyesWideOpen]

You also went away from the suggested format where the first post has:

Title
Director
Imdb page link
poster

[B-side]

You also went away from the suggested format where the first post has:

Title
Director
Imdb page link
poster

The title and director are in the title of the OP. I can include an IMDb link, no problem.

[Raiders]

The title and director are in the title of the OP. I can include an IMDb link, no problem.

Why you gotta be difficult, B-side? :P

[StanleyK]

I can't even imagine how anyone would be a 'nay' on this film.

[B-side]

Why you gotta be difficult, B-side? :P

If that's a problem, I can take that into account in the future, certainly. Obviously you're free to edit the OP as you see fit. I guess it just strikes me as a bit redundant.

[Derek]

I can't even imagine how anyone would be a 'nay' on this film.

Clearly they'd have to be someone who does not respect the art of peeling a freshly boiled potato by hand.

[Boner M]

New trailer (yoo-hoo, Spinal):

[youtube]KYBCNTzQ31c[/youtube]

[lovejuice]

Immense cinema.

I have a discussion with my friend whether it "looks" like a great artist's last movie -- whether it actually is is up to Tarr -- and I don't think so. In fact, its minimalism and despairing atmosphere appear more like work of a first time director, a first time director who's reallllllly good at what he's doing.

[Qrazy]

Immense cinema.

I have a discussion with my friend whether it "looks" like a great artist's last movie -- whether it actually is is up to Tarr -- and I don't think so. In fact, its minimalism and despairing atmosphere appear more like work of a first time director, a first time director who's reallllllly good at what he's doing.

He's been pretty adamant these days that it is his last and he wants to teach film now. Perhaps in a decade he'll have a new story he wants to tell though.

Your bolded sentence doesn't really make much sense imo.

[Spinal]

I can't even imagine how anyone would be a 'nay' on this film.

Maybe they're gypsies and just want to spoil things for kicks.

[Spinal]

[youtube]m6235pICmsk[/youtube]

[Boner M]

That actually played before The Turin Horse at MIFF.

[Kirby Avondale]

I don't know. What's the ratio of walking to standing still?

[Raiders]

I gotta admit, I'm still taking this one in but... it kind of felt like a self-parody, even complete with some obvious comedic moments.

[Boner M]

I gotta admit, I'm still taking this one in but... it kind of felt like a self-parody, even complete with some obvious comedic moments.

It definitely treads the line. But so do lots of great Major Statement films (Tree of Life, for one).

[Raiders]

It definitely treads the line. But so do lots of great Major Statement films (Tree of Life, for one).

I don’t know… I keep reading comparisons to Malick’s film but frankly I don’t see it. For me, Malick’s film felt like his most intimate yet and had such a great specificity in its characterizations and particularly in its locale. It doesn’t have the stretches of land of Badlands or Days of Heaven, the war fields of The Thin Red Line or the mock-Eden of The New World. Where before Malick was roaming and searching the Earth as much as his characters for the great truth of existence and of life’s fragility and nature, with this film he radically shifted the focus rather squarely on the people and small-town suburbia. The film openly and directly asks the question that Malick’s films have always struggled with and embraced, that of the identity of the Great Other; is it God and his grace given to mankind that we wander through, or it nature and her vastness and equal parts love, warmth and coldness that we struggle and live within? It never feels like parody but simply the very culmination and perfect distillation of his themes and his final and ultimate traverse of the link between the natural world (from its very creation to its destruction) and the infinitesimal existence of mankind and in the end he doesn’t so much answer the grace vs. nature question as he does link the two as part of the same system and cycle of life. I think this is why he is now so free to work on many projects all at once and why they each seem rather unique within his oeuvre; his completion of this film has perhaps completed these questions he has been dealing with for four decades (though only time will really tell—maybe he will just take them in a new direction).

In contrast, Tarr’s film strikes me as a filmmaker at his wit’s end looking into the abyss and like Nietzsche, going a little mad. The film feels like a dirge by a great filmmaker who has become obsessed with the end of things, with death itself and the vastness and hopelessness. It feels a bit insincere in its austerity and the ritual of life chastised by glib moments and cosmic jokes embodied by a band of bizarre gypsies, wells and booze running dry. It is a 2 1/2 hour film comprised of just 30 shots, its unblinking despair is both almost humorously bleak and actually quite profound. Yet, I don’t think the style of the film, that of long takes of monotony and mundanity, accomplishes anything not already achieved by the likes of Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, only she was able to instill a momentum and uneasy suspense that Tarr’s dreary repetition fails to really capture. It is a film by a legendary filmmaker that has all the tools, but feels like a bit of a lark when held up against something like Werckmeister Harmonies, another film concerned with no less than the apocalypse and the fragility of human existence and the cosmic structure we are found within. That was a film worth comparing to Malick as it openly and directly considered the nature of the universe (from the very first scene no less—a wonderful orchestration of celestial movement) all the way down to the false prophets we consistently follow from religion (unseen master whose servants mindlessly incite hatred) to politics. In the end of that film, Tarr again showed a man who had peered into the vast nothingness (embodied in part by a large ogre of a whale) and gone insane. This time though, I was left relatively unmoved and the thoughts in my head were closer to the MIFF sketch “The Potato Peelers” than they were to the endless thoughts and praises after viewing Tarr’s earlier film.

[baby doll]

Man, how 'bout those textures? Like remember when that chick left the horse in the barn and closed the door, but there was totally this gap in the wall behind the horse letting in some light and creating a back lighting effect so that you could totally make out the outline of the horse in the darkness? That was like so totally awesome.

[EyesWideOpen]

This was my first Tarr and looks like he's not for me. I almost never give up on a movie but I made it about 45 minutes and saw I still had an hour and 45 minutes to go and I realized I would rather go wash dishes then keep watching this movie.

[Melville]

Loved it. The world as wind and struggle. Amazing potato eating.

[Boner M]

Loved it. The world as wind and struggle. Amazing potato eating.

The steam from the potato was like charcoal-drawing Michael Bay 'splosions.