5/10
It is rare to see movie walk outs; people will usually stick
out rough films until the end because they willingly paid to be there. It is rarer still to see walk outs in an art
house theater because the patrons typically have more experienced expectations
on contemplative and metaphorical features.
The Turin Horse will split audiences right down the middle. Some will be mesmerized with the incredibly
long takes, crisp black and white cinematography, and the relentless but futile
struggle of the characters. The other
half of the audience will groan, comment to their neighbors, drop their head in
the hands, and a few baffled theater-goers will just give up and leave.
The beginning monologue describes the alleged events which
led to Friedrich Nietzsche’s mental collapse.
He walks out of his house in Turin and witnesses a cabman whipping his
horse for being disobedient. Nietzsche
runs up to the horse, hugs it, and then spends his next 10 years in the care of
his mother and sisters deep in mental illness.
The film asks, “But what happened to the horse?” Nietzsche is not a character in The Turin
Horse nor is it set in Italy; the majority of the time, you will only see an
old man, his daughter, their obstinate horse, and their rural Hungarian farm
house.
The opening scene is a single shot held for minutes with no
interruptions. An old man, Janos Derzsi,
rides on a cart pulled by a horse in a truly blinding wind storm. Dirt flies in his face and stings his
eyes. The horse sometimes stumbles and
trips as he is not whipped by the man on the cart, but by the wind trying to
push him backwards. The camera watches
them from the side, moves back behind some leafless trees, pushes all the way
up until it almost brushes the horse’s nose and then repeats the process. All the while, a monotonous organ and string
melody repeats itself as if it is a cadence for the distressed travelers.
Back at the farm, the man’s daughter, Erika Bok, meets him,
separates the horse from the cart, and they then spend the next two and a half
hours of the film taking care of the horse, fetching water, boiling potatoes,
getting dressed and undressed, and then doing all of that again. There is precious little dialogue between
anyone except when a neighbor drops by to borrow alcohol and wax philosophy,
and when a band of gypsies briefly invade the family’s water supply.
The audience waits for something to happen, expects
something to happen, and little by little begin to realize that what is
happening is just everyday life. The
director, Bela Tarr, says The Turin Horse is about the “heaviness of human
life.” Life does seem particularly heavy
for these two characters as they fumble about in the wind storm to get water,
try to get the horse to eat, and carry out even the simplest chore. Tarr does not just glance over these chores
either. After 146 minutes, the audience
will know exactly who boils the potatoes, how each of them will eat them, where
they hang their clothes, and how to hook the horse up to the cart. In 146 minutes of film, there are only 30
takes. In an era when most movie scenes
may last for an average of seconds, the scenes in The Turin Horse average
almost five long minutes each.
The description here sounds harsh, but I assure you it is
accurate. Also, I was one of the
audience members who was more mesmerized by the routine movements than
exasperated. I will not recommend very many
people go and sit through The Turin Horse, but I warn you not to run away from
it either. It is a very difficult film
to sit through. I do not judge those who
left the theater before the film was over, I understand their disbelief. However, when you consider that the director
is slowly showing characters get worn down and begin to give up, he succeeds in
showing that everyday life is a struggle to fight against.
Surprisingly, The Turin Horse won the Jury Grand Prize at
the Berlin International Film Festival and is Hungary’s entry for the 2012 Best
Foreign Film Oscar. Bela Tarr said
publically it will be his last film so I wonder if these prizes and accolades
are for the film itself or to celebrate a retiring director. I assume the critics and specialized film
festival public truly care for The Turin Horse, but I warn you, it will test
your patience and your preconceptions of how much a film is truly plot driven
or just about the audience sitting back and watching.
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