Color: Black and White

award. The movie stars János Derzsi, Erika Bók and Mihály Kormos in the lead roles. Vintage Tarr, The Turin Horse is shot in monochrome by Tarr's regular cinematographer Fred Kelemen, with only 30 distinct shots, most of which last for more than five minutes, spread over a runtime of about 150 minutes.

while Ágnes Hranitzky is movie’s co-director. Dubbed as Béla Tarr’s apparent swansong (as Tarr himself has expressed that he intends it to be his last film), The Turin Horse was premiered at the 2011 Berlin International Film Festival where it won the

January, 1889 in Turin, Italy, wherein a German Philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche , on witnessing the brutal whipping of a stubborn horse by its old, disgruntled master, makes a conscious effort to protect the horse from the merciless assault by putting his arms around its neck before himself succumbing to a state of sustained dementia that eventually consumes him a decade later. The fate of the horse, however, remains a mystery. The Turin Horse speculates, in a six-day-long sequence, what might have actually happened to the horse, its master and his daughter subsequent to the event described in the narrative. In the six-day sequence that’s presented in form of six chapters, Tarr captures their solitary, austere and mundane lives by fixating on the tedium of events that constitute their daily routine: the girl goes to the well to fetch water, dresses and undresses her father, cooks potatoes, eats them (without adding salt or spices) with his father who tops it up with Palinka—a traditional Hungarian fruit brandy. Tarr eloquently refers to it as the “heaviness of human existence”. The stark manner in which Tarr prophesies the eventual doom of his hapless characters almost has a poetical touch to it—a characteristic that’s highly reminiscent of Shakespeare’s King Lear

In The Turin Horse, Tarr’s prime focus is not on portraying the eventuality of death—which he leaves it to his viewers' imagination—but is rather on capturing the monotonous drudgery associated with human life. Béla Tarr says, “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.” Death is a certainty that none can defy and yet we deliberately live in ignorance without giving any consideration to the eventual dooms that awaits us all. This consistency of life is seldom touched in cinema and that’s where The Turin Horse excels as a remarkable work of cinema. In The Turin Horse, the master and his daughter, who live in a remote, dilapidated farmhouse, are not symbols of human hope for survival, but are embodiments of human despondence that has crept into their systems through years of relentless struggle against their fate and mother nature which has not only lacerated them physically but has also scourged them mentally. It’s seems that the fate of the master and his daughter is inexplicably tied to that of the horse—a gritty, faithful beast which, after having served its masters day in and day out for years, has finally reached a stage where it is no longer good enough to fulfill their quotidian requirements. The incessant gale that blows across the arid landscape serves to testify the inexorability of the notorious forces of nature in humbling their greatest adversary: human. In The Turin Horse, we witness the treacherous forces of nature casting a rattling blow to both the human and the equine resolve alike.

The Turin Horse is only the first Béla Tarr movie that I have had the privilege of watching. And, I must admit that it is unlike anything I have ever experienced before, a devastating experience that shall stay with me for the rest of my life. The Hungarian auteur is ubiquitously renowned for highly unconventional, metaphysical works which being high on abstract symbolism, à la Tarkovsky , are driven by spontaneity rather than the plot. Like Tarkovsky, Tarr too relies on long continuous shots to impart detail—a trait that has helped him gain mastery over mise en scène, more commonly referred to as the articulation of cinematic space. In Tarr’s existentialistic world there’s no place for the ramblings of the divine. A man must come to terms with the harsh realities of his mortal existence and must not hope for any external intervention to bail him out of his misery or to help him attain salvation, for the omen is omnipotent and omnipresent and there’s no escape from the maw of endless darkness. The sooner he accepts his fate the lesser would be the extent of his suffering. Despite this axiomatic consistency, Tarr’s characters have a strong sense of dignity that doesn’t let them give up until the very end. In The Turin Horse, the father-daughter dyad despite realizing fairly quickly that their doom is nigh—from the very moment the horse refuses to take orders—still continue with their hopeless struggle until the very end. In its constant refusal to eat the food offered by its masters the incapacitated horse too demonstrates a sense of heroism that one generally expects from Tarr’s characters.

While the Hungarian auteur has called it quits primarily because of being disconcerted by the growing commercial trends in cinema that has transformed the medium into a market which imposes censorship on moviemakers robbing them of their creative freedom and also because of his grave fear of repeating himself he has left behind a great legacy for the next generation of filmmakers. However, the good news is that Tarr would continue to guide the young upcoming moviemakers in their endeavors to serve the medium. Tarr will be running an academic film course at the University of Split, Croatia which, according to Tarr, will serve to be a kind of laboratory where people can work and create together. The three-year course will intake 16 international students in its first year and will feature the likes of Jim Jarmusch Tilda Swinton , Fred Kelemen and Jonathan Rosenbaum as lecturers.

The Turin Horse: The Arrival of Gypsies

The Turin Horse: The Paranoid Visitor

Through the medium of The Turin Horse, Béla Tarr portrays the grim picture of the world that owing to human exploitation is on the brink of annihilation. The Turin Horse despite having echoes of Bergman, Bresson and Tarkovsky has a typical, bizarre outlook

—

augmented by minimal use of dialogue

—

Santiago

in Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Manand the Sea . Mihály Vig's requiem-like orchestral score, in great unison with the dramatic howling sound of the incessant gale, portends to the impending doom that awaits the movie’s hapless characters—a symbolism for the Armageddon that awaits us all on as we continue to tread the paths of destruction. The Turin Horse's hypnotic, evocative black and white cinematography is first-rate and more than makes up for the sparsity of dialogue. The apocalyptic monologue delivered by the paranoid guest who visits the old master's farmhouse in want of Palinka also alludes to the self-destructive ways of the humans. The arrival of the gypsies, whom the old master unceremoniously drives away, marks the beginning of the end for the father-daughter dyad.

The Turin Horse: The Old Master Drinks his daily doze of Palinka

Overall, The Turin Horse with its eerie, melancholic and stark motifs serves to be one of the most uniquely refreshing experiences of our time. The Turin Horse is a fine example of auteristic mastery demonstrated by an artist extraordinaire who's at the height of his powers.

The movie is definitely not meant for those who look up to cinema as a mere mode of entertainment, for they are bound to be engulfed in boredom of the highest order. Those who are accustomed to Tarr’s profound, albeit peculiar style of moviemaking are ought to be delighted by the Hungarian master’s swan song. Also, those who are not averse to experimentation in cinema and are willing to delve deep enough to be able to experience the new highs and lows of cinema will be rewarded to the fullest. The Turin Horse is a great means to get acquainted to Béla Tarr’s oeuvre before exploring his more intimate works like

Sátántangó (1994)

and

Werckmeister Harmonies (2000)

.