The Turin Horse (2011) User Reviews

A moving piece, I would give a 10 if there was a 7th day

[dtopuz · 9/10 · 15 April 2011]

I watched Turin Horse the very day (2.April.11) and heard the director warning the already clapping audience "do not before you watch the movie". I was among the ones who were moved by the piece, not just because its originality, excellent cinematography, impressive music, the acting but because it really touched me from the very heart. I am not a fan of Nietzsche or literate on his works but probably I was in the right state of mind to get a meaning out of the movie in my life. Two main characters were holding on to life, in a loop-like setting. Despite the desperation of the situation, they were carrying on almost mechanically or instinctively to survive. The horse was everything for a living and when the horse was no longer, the universe would fall apart.

Special thanks to the director and the ones who financially supported this piece because it is one of rare films with originality value. And a comment for Ms. Alvarez's review, with respect to his opinion, it is clearly a flaw, his generalizing his point of view to majority of the audience in that theater. And where else audiences be able to see such films if not even at film festivals. If there are people seeing this movie as a torture they are always free to leave the theater.

While the director humbly accepts the existence of second opinions, why some audiences can't?

A misunderstood - but brilliant - film

[erejones · 9/10 · 9 January 2018]

I really liked this film. I didn't like watching this film. Tarr pushes the audience to the limit of their patience but after a while it gets under your skin. You fall into its all-encompassing, hypnotic pattern. It's humanity at its most bare - its most bleak. It is a look into humanity's most raw, pained existence. It emerges you. Philosophically rigourous, Tarr goes to great efforts to make the Nietzsche analogy and whatever you think of Nietzsche, or even if you don't, there's a bitter comedy to the way in which Tarr looks at the human condition here. It laughs in the face of meaning. Yet, paradoxically, it's a film of distinct humanity, as shown to us in the last scene. It won't be for everyone, I know. It's cinema at its most cutting; its most applied.

Two people pretend the world isn't ending.

[treywillwest · 9/10 · 18 April 2012]

Bela Tarr claims this will be his last film, and damn does it have finality written all over it. I guess there's few ways to be more final than to devote a work to the end of humanity. And I've never seen a film that struck me as more authentically apocalyptic than this one. It is immediately strange to say then, that one of the things that most impressed me about this juggernaut is its ultra-sly humor. Tarr really is a nihilist and a misanthrope, at least philosophically. The fall of our silly little species really is funny to him, in the darkest way possible, and in half audible beats he makes it funny for us too. All of the other species have sensed the death of the world and have, reasonably, stopped trying to survive. Only homosapiens, represented by a half-functioning horse-carriage driver and his daughter, are clueless enough to continue their wretched routine in the face of a blatant apocalypse. We, along with Tarr, laugh at, pity, and admire the duo for this all at the same time. This is why I call Tarr a misanthrope in philosophy only. In practice, he has love for his fools, even as he leads them towards annihilation. The film includes many references to cinematic finality as well. Fading lanterns, windows that show a world that is becoming not, opaque, all suggest an abandoned cinema. The empty shell of a cinematic artist imagining his own abandoned corpse.

Philosophy is Dead: The Turin Horse

[Monsieur_Arkadin · 14 September 2013]

I finally watched The Turin Horse recently. I had been meaning to get around to it for a long time. After seeing Damnation, which just didn't really click with me, I think I may have have subconsciously lowered The Turin Horse's priority level in my viewing schedule. However, the movie really worked for me. The last couple nights I couldn't sleep because I couldn't stop thinking about it. I never seemed to ever drift fully into sleep. I would kind of doze off, still thinking about it, only to quickly be aroused by my own thoughts and immediately struggle to try to fall back asleep.

The film was in many ways similar to Jeanne Dielman. It shows the overwhelming claustrophobia of a daily routine. How just making it through the basic chores necessary to live can be almost unbearable. It could become impossible to accomplish anything more, let alone find a way to assign some sort of meaning to our lives. But beyond that, it also had a significant underlying theme about class systems and a certain ease of life which allows us to become intellectuals.

Nietzsche had the luxury of being destroyed by his own philosophy. He had the luxury of feeling sympathy for the beaten horse. However, when that very horse is your livelihood and the ability to make it through life is barely possible and completely reliant upon that animal's compliance, the abstract philosophies sort of fade away. Sometimes the harsh realities of the world nullify philosophy. Even if it was coming from the "right" place.

There is a Louis C.K. joke in which he talks about the fact that he doesn't believe in hitting his children, even though his mother used to hit him. He notes that the difference is that he is wealthy and his mother wasn't. She couldn't afford the luxury of the moral high ground. She was tired and needed the most immediately effective option available. The same concept applies to the farmer's situation with the horse. In neither C.K.'s joke nor in Béla Tarr's film is this a justification. It is simply revealing that life is more complicated than our philosophies allow for.

The final aspect of the film which mystifies me are the meta-cinematic elements. The film is a bleak, pessimistic, and starkly final film. It is in many ways an antithesis to the slight beacons of hope offered in his earlier films. It is a film about giving up. Which is exactly what Tarr has done. He's given up making films. The horse quits working, eating, and living. The girl eventually gives up living. Even the earth appears to have given up. Life is over. The sun refuses to shine, lamps refuse to light, water wells refuse to give water. Tarr refuses to make more movies. There is nothing left to say. Philosophy is dead. Cinema is over. They've been snuffed out by what Tarr calls "the heaviness of human existence." All that remains is existing in a void of meaninglessness. However, even that seems nearly finished.

Tarr will bore some viewers, but he conveys /achieves everything he intends

[TheVictoriousV · 10/10 · 15 February 2019]

What makes Béla Tarr the unrivaled master of dread is his oneness. His characters sulk across squalid plains, plagued by endless winds, shot in gloomy black-and-white with extremely few but extremely graceful takes. With his final film, The Turin Horse, his focus is on the pointless human routine, depicted in an alternate past where the apocalypse approaches. The depiction of the inevitable end is minimalistic, showcasing no fancy Emmerich-tier special effects as the world simply surrenders to the void. The effect is a little more long-lasting than, say, the roller-coaster of a doomsday promised by 2012.

The film supposedly takes place after an event in 1889 where Friedrich Nietzsche, according to some, descended to madness after having witnessed the abuse of a disobedient horse on the streets of Turin. Somehow, this was the cruelty that pushed him over the edge, leading him to only speak four more words for the rest of his life: "Mutter, ich bin dumm"

When Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai, a frequent collaborator of Tarr, first heard the tale during the making of Sátántangó, he simply mused "So what happened to the horse?"

Know that this is a purposely slow and repetitive film, as is relevant for its message (not the most fun or optimistic pick for a movie night either), but this does not mean it is without value. As mentioned, it is outstandingly well-photographed (by Fred Kelemen) and the sense of dread is tangible, not to mention constant, thanks in no small part to its lighting and imposing sound design.

In the film, the world is facing destruction as some sort of perpetual storm is moving through the land. Its wind is heard constantly in the distance by the Stableman and his daughter (János Derszi and Erika Bók, both of Sátántangó); when it eventually stops, the silence is deafening and we somehow realize what must come next. Mihály Víg's depressing music isn't bad either, although perhaps overused.

The movie relies almost solely on the elements I mentioned above. Its dialogue is virtually non-existent and there isn't much to the characters - even though we feel their need to persist, fruitless though it is, and there is never the sense that they are simply actors. As we watch, we have very much entered an alternate past, one that is slowly putting an end to man and his daily existence. Some will get bored; others will see the purpose of the slowness, and despair. Or, as it might turn out, worry a bit less.

It is said that The Turin Horse is Tarr's final movie because he feels he has done what he can to change the world with his art, even stating that he no longer holds any such faith in his creations. He had come to realize that problems are too complicated for that and The Turin Horse is simply a reminder that the only certainty is doom (he has denied that this mindset is necessarily WHY he no longer wants to make movies).

Maybe this is a good reading of The Turin Horse. It is a movie that invites endless pondering, mainly for those who sit through it. I will say this: my guess is that those who do sit through it will find themselves enveloped by its distinctly bleak universe (its cinematography, sound design, and overwhelming atmosphere will make up for its repetitive scenes, purposeful and poignant as they may be) and discover a strange comfort in it.

Extraordinary and haunting film about the apocalypse...

[magus-9 · 10/10 · 16 February 2011]

For most of the film's length we watch a father and daughter's sparse and bleak existence in a remote farmhouse, blasted by an eternal wind. Only a couple of visitors come to break the near-silent existence of this couple and their ageing horse. Out of this silence and the wind and the darkness, an apocalyptic vision of a fallen, corrupt world emerges.

It's a unique and haunting film, like a filming of a near-wordless play of Beckett, stained with an indelible sadness and regret that our world cannot be saved from darkness. Along with SATANTANGO and WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES, this is another masterpiece from Bela Tarr and his regular band of collaborators.

Brilliant final(?) film for Tarr

[MartinTeller · 10/10 · 30 December 2011]

I can't organize my thoughts so I'm just going to spill them out and sort them out some other time. Although it is a shame (a tragedy) that Bela Tarr will make no more films after this, but perhaps it is a fitting end. A farmer (we assume... he has a horse but it's unclear exactly how he makes a living, if he does at all) and his daughter trudge joylessly through their monotonous routine. Getting dressed, schlepping water from the well, eating a meal of simply boiled potatoes, and for relaxation, staring out the window. Over the course of 6 days, we see -- in a manner mildly reminiscent of JEANNE DIELMAN -- the routine start to break down as some sort of vague apocalypse seems to be descending upon them. Life, what little is left of it, is draining out of the world. A neighbor delivers a monologue about the degradation of humanity, how the good people have quietly faded away while the rest debase everything they touch. A wandering pack of gypsies leaves the daughter ("eyes of the devil") a religious text. Is it these two particular people who are doomed, or being judged? Or all of mankind? Tarr, as usual, not only doesn't give answers, he doesn't even let you know if he's asking the question.

Which is to say, if you loved any of Tarr's previous four films, you will probably love this one, although it is his bleakest. The cinematography is, as one would expect, jaw-droppingly rich. From the opening shot of the horse defining the word "struggle", to Ohlsdorfer's sunken, skull-like eyes, to the spine-chilling image of the daughter's beaten-down face staring out the window, the film is loaded with stark, gorgeous, unforgettable visions. Mihaly Vig once again submits an incredible score, a funereal dirge that shares the soundtrack with the incessant howling wind. Tarr's films have a tactile effect, and here you can truly feel the bitter cold of the landscape and the house that surely does little to protect its occupants from the elements.

It's a haunting film, and perhaps Tarr's most difficult... although only a third the length of SATANTANGO, the repetitiveness gives it less forward momentum. But it completely worked its way under my skin. It's mesmerizing, thought-provoking, breathtaking. If Tarr makes another film, I'll be thrilled, but if he doesn't, at least he's left me some of the greatest works of art I've ever seen.

Potatoes

[fat-thor-163-288906 · 8/10 · 2 February 2019]

The way in which the characters eat their potatoes is fascinating. I'll never look at a potato the same.

Highly oblique existentialist parable

[oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx · 7/10 · 19 June 2011]

Tarr's self-proclaimed last film is as open to interpretation as any movie ever was. The film follows a man, his daughter, and their horse as they struggle to survive during hard times in the late nineteenth century. It's a simple, practically minimalist movie with all the repetition that aesthetic implies, gradually coming to a crescendo that's somewhat reminiscent on a small scale of the disharmony the develops in a previous film, Werckmeister Harmonies.

The idea for the movie came from an apocryphal story (Tarr doesn't label it as such) about Nietzsche's time in Turin, which relates how the philosopher broke down upon witnessing a carriage driver whip his horse. The filmmakers were interested to look at what happened next for the horse. They also see the incident as representing a sincere recantation of all his works by the philosopher (or heavily imply so). One can apprehend from listening to Tarr that he believes Nietzsche was little more than a psychotic, responsible for promulgating a decline in values. The film depicts such a decline, though any actual link to Nietzsche other than by free association and any substantive intellectual link to the Turin episode are tenuous at best.

Tarr announced in the Q&A following the UK Premiere of Turin Horse at the Edinburgh International Film Festvial, that he felt "something's wrong", in a grand sense. The Turin Horse reflects this concern. What exactly is wrong is left almost entirely up to you as the viewer to determine. There's one clear allusion to watching television, but other than that the symptomatology and etiology of modern malaise is open to question. You could say that was a weakness of the movie, someone who believes that free migration and rights for gays are the cause for societal decay, would be equally at home watching this movie as someone who points towards revolutions in social media and the society of spectacle.

Patricularly given that no root cause is identified, Tarr and co leave themselves open to charges of the familiar canard of archaism - supposing that the past was a safer more moral and ingenious place. The artist Jeff Koons has perhaps the best counterarguments to Tarr's perspective on modern life. His stated mission is to "remove bourgeois guilt and shame in responding to banality" (highlighting the snobbery of those who cling to traditional values), whereas Tarr's is perhaps to stoke it. I suppose what side you take depends on whether you see someone fragging on a PlayStation and think "good for them", or whether you bemoan their lack of appetite for self-improvement or meaningful interaction with others. In the Q&A at the Edinburgh Film Festival Tarr said that he thinks that people spend too much time stuck in front of screens waiting forlornly for something to happen, part of a sort of technological cargo cult if you will.

On a gut level I felt the film went quickly; although empirically it's well over two hours long, it's definitely mesmerising. I've felt for a time that the best way to appreciate Werckmeister Harmonies is as narrative music, as a kind of prelude and fugue, similarly The Turin Horse works well simply in terms of rhythm and visual tone, as a meaningless sketch of the interaction of three hardy entities.

'Visionary Miserablism'

[labanchrist-545-334368 · 10/10 · 13 July 2015]

Girl:What it is Papa? Father:I don't know.. It is my first Bela Tarr movie and I don't think that words can help me to write a review on 'The Turin Horse' and it is my first review. I have been watching movies since my childhood, reading literature and philosophy in order to understand human condition but the visual and sound sensation I have had with 'The Turin Horse' is matchless. There is a modern novel in which a girl commits suicide because she think that she had to brush her teeth everyday with the same brush. Bela Tarr's characters are eating raw potatoes everyday,fortunately they don't commit suicide but what is the point in living? Bela will compel you to think about it. Father: Eat. we have to... To be very honest 'The Turin Horse' is the most powerful work of cinematic art I've ever came across, it is not social but ontological rather cosmological. What it is to be human? Want to know? Go and watch it, the 'heaviness of human existence' to put it in Bela's words.

Depressively well-made

[benjaoming · 7/10 · 22 April 2011]

To summarize this review: It's not a movie for anyone. It either demands a fanatical devotion to Bela Tarr's style or Nietzsche's life and philosophy. The movie is both relevant and radical but it won't capture anyone.

I'm a huge fan of Werckmeister Harmonies. This movie possesses the same qualities, but the theme is the biggest obstacle, both for the audience and the movie.

As Bela Tarr unravels the mystery of Nietzsche's vanishing, he fantasizes about Nietzsche's meeting with the horse and the horseman that could have caused for his sudden collapse. What sort of universe could they have come from? We see the opposite of God's creation of the world unfold: Instead of six days of creation, we see six days of slow, eerie dismantling of the lives of two people living in an inverted paradise - a dry, desolate, barren land with only a relentless wind, dead leaves and life decaying everywhere. The movie does not try to explain anything in explicit language, but uses masterly b/w cinematography, sporadic musical compositions, and whatever preconceived knowledge the viewer might have of Nietzsche's teachings. There is no god or godly energy, only (as noted by another reviewer) a mechanical struggle for survival. Everything is hopeless, and the destiny of the father and his only daughter is just a silent, anonymous life without joy or pain. Their emotions almost never show, and communication is kept at a secret-like minimum. And it seems like an ironical gesture that right as you look for some sort of rational sense of what's going on, a Nietzsche-like man suddenly appears and explains his thoughts about everything in this, the movie's world. The horseman simply replies: "What rubbish", and you're left with only a slight conception of the massive philosophical teaching that the mystery man just gave. But after that, the movie seems to have more focus.

There are many things about the movie, that I understand better while writing this review, but I don't think everything needs to be said, and I'm sure Bela Tarr lovers will have a good time debating the symbolism and cinematic craft.

After seeing the movie, I feel terrible. I fundamentally disagree with the meaningless struggle that we see portrayed, but I'm grateful to find myself strong enough to not loose hope after such a gloomy experience. A big quality in the movie is the existential challenges it brings about, but I can only wonder why it didn't show even the slightest hint of hope to bring about something more than just a momentum of deep depression, unlike the epic and beautiful Werckmeister Harmonies. Anyways, well done Bela Tarr - I look forward to hear more insights about the theme of the movie.

A review

[bananasandtomatoes · 10/10 · 30 August 2018]

It is very hard to review a film like this.

It's one of the films that leaves a permanent mark on you. You think about it for days and days, and even after several months or years you remember it, and remember how it made you feel. And it made you feel bad. A feeling of impeding doom.

One of the films that are so magnificent, but are so hard to watch, that you're never gonna watch it again.

The ending is so powerful, that I set there as it ended and wept for a while without even knowing why I was weeping.

In short, it's a story about creating of the world, but in reverse - the destruction of the world through the eyes of two people.

6 days before apocalypse

[ilovesaturdays · 7/10 · 19 February 2023]

This movie depicts the apocalypse as it would have happened about 150-200 years back in the Hungarian plains. The horseman and his mare are presumably from the famous Nietzsche episode. Nietzsche saw the rough treatment of the animal & felt that it had to be the end of the world when man has to be so brutal to an animal. Apparently, Tarr ran with this idea & this movie is the result of that long run. It has been said that principles are the luxury that can be afforded only by the rich of the society. The oppressed folks can barely afford to eat 2 meals a day and therefore cannot afford to have principles. Through this movie, Tarr is possibly trying to show the horseman's life and point of view, not that the poor guy was shown to have any, struggling as he was with his daily existence. The horseman and his daughter are dirt-poor & their sole source of income is the mare. Perhaps this sense of impending doom forced the horseman to be brutal to the animal. Tarr also tried to do justice by Nietzsche and put before us a scenario wherein the end of the world as feared by Nietzsche was really nigh. The horseman's poor treatment of the animal could be seen to have stemmed from his own mistreatment by the society. The horseman and his daughter are shown to be some of the last surviving members of a world which is quickly spiraling towards doom, all in a timespan of 6 days! So, according to Tarr, the world ends just the way it began, at least according to the Christian version of origin of life. As with any natural calamity, the animal senses the doom before the humans do. Over the 6 days, the mare stops moving, then eating and finally drinking water too. The humans keep up their struggle for a bit longer. When their well dries up, they try to look for an alternative place to live, but they return soon, perhaps because as their neighbour had told them, the rest of the city has long been abandoned & is more uninhabitable than their present home. However, soon after their return, the sunlight goes away, followed by their lamps and finally the embers in their stove/heater combo. Forced to eat raw potatoes now, the daughter gives in to despair and her father follows soon after. For Tarr, the world really does end with a whimper!

You've got to have something better to do

[SteveMierzejewski · 2/10 · 28 June 2012]

I get real tired of pretentious critics trying to make something out of nothing. Experimental/artistic film makers get away with producing drivel only by using the naiveté and over-active imagination of viewers too afraid to look unsophisticated by telling the truth. I've gone to a number of such festivals and all I can say is that if you ever worry about having psychological problems, watch some of these experimental films. You will suddenly realize how normal you are.

I would love to see a movie based on Nietzsche's life. That's the lure that got me to watch the film. Don't be fooled. This is a misinterpretation of Nietzsche as looked at through the lens of existentialism. Nietzsche looked upward, not downward. Read Zarathustra. Sure, he criticized the fact that noble natures have been subsumed by Christian values, but that was because he reached for those higher values. This film glorifies the mundane. Nietzsche would never have done that.

After an hour of watching people eat a potato (utter nonsense), or enjoying the thrill of a wild trip to the well to get water, the film's most dramatic moment arrives. On a particularly exciting evening when the near-mute father and daughter are watching clothes dry (I only wish I was making this up) a guest arrives. He spouts off some viewpoints that are obliquely Nietzshean and leaves. Then, it's back to the potatoes, wind, dismal music, and clothes drying. The film follows six days in the lives of the world's most vegetative humans. In truth, you would get more emotional angst from a celery stalk. It is not filmed in real time, but it feels as though it is.

Oh yeah, the horse. The horse supplies the intellectual content for the film. The horse dreams of having an opposable thumb so that he can pick up a pistol and shoot himself. Since he cannot, he develops an elaborate scheme of making his owner so angry that the owner will do this for him. Alas, the plan goes awry when the owner realizes he is trapped in a huge philosophical dilemma: If I shoot the horse, I have no horse. To be or not to be, that is the farmer's question. Eventually, the horse, being a true stoic, understands that he can only control himself and not others. He, thus, decides to starve himself to death, as death by boredom would take too long. Does the horse succeed? Watch this two and a half hour film to find out.

So, in short, if you feel you have done something wrong and deserve to be punished, watch this film. Your sins and those of all your ancestors will be forgiven. Thus spake Zarathustra.

Heavy going perhaps, but a masterpiece

[Chris_Docker · 22 July 2011]

How can you make someone see what is staring them in the face?

Tarr is nothing if not serious cinema. It may not move, entertain or give you a thrill to the bottom of your popcorn. But it is also, for many cineastes, a standard by which other art cinema can measured. And if that introduction is overweening, perhaps it will deter anyone even vaguely faintly thinking about popcorn - but encourage serious-minded cinema-goers to consider dropping everything to see this.

Hungarian Grandmaster Bela Tarr uses a technique made famous by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky – that of incredibly long takes. We are forced to immerse ourselves in real time, to experience the minutiae of existence (and its totality) in the same way the characters do. But in terms of 'suspension of beliefs', Tarr goes one stage further than Tarkovsky. The latter's films were often connected with metaphysics and decorated with religious iconography; whereas Tarr eschews God and religion in favour of the people, in favour of human rights, in favour of righting wrongs, or simply in favour of what is most basic to any individual. At times seen as heavily political, his films are careful to portray only a 'documentarist' style reality. They are films designed to make you think, rather than make you entertained. In this respect, his work preserves a thread from the fierce artistic integrity of Godard - perhaps by way of Fassbinder, who would also at times exemplify a fierce minimalistic style.

In The Turin Horse, Tarr gives us a six-day prelude to an actual event that we never see. Even in those six days, nothing very much happens – yet you could probably write a Masters philosophy dissertation on that 'nothing very much.' The ontological lynchpin of the film is Nietzsche: in terms of storyline and also the dilemmas a viewer might confront.

Our movie begins by informing us of a well-known tale concerning the German philosopher. Nietzsche had caused a public disturbance – apparently by attempting to save a horse being flogged. Immediately afterwards, Nietzsche collapses and succumbs to mental illness. He will remain that way for the rest of his life. Tarr's film is an imagined reconstruction of the days leading up to the incident. It features the ailing horseman, his grown-up daughter, a visitor who provides the film's only monologue, and a brief visit by a band of gypsies. The horseman and his daughter live in the most spartan of conditions trying to survive, surrounded by a harsh and barren landscape. He probably would have rejected Nietzsche's philosophy, the rejection (or death) of God, and the idea of the 'slave-morality' dominating society. Indeed, the horseman dismisses the reflections of the visitor, whose thoughts are perhaps a shadow of Nietzschean ideas, as "rubbish." We can perceive a shift from classical belief to atheism as the ideas move quite politically: 'man is responsible for his own fate, but there is something greater that takes a hand' - yet that 'something' might be nature, rather than 'God' and it seems undeniably demonstrated in the harsh conditions that gradually drive the horseman and his daughter nearer extinction. Or it could, of course, be 'the ruling classes.' But this is not a film where intellectual arguments are expounded or debated. Most of the dialogue, in the rare instances where dialogue occurs, comprises an occasional monosyllable. The film is in black and white, and consists of merely thirty long takes – that would be excruciating were they not mesmerizingly beautiful. Each shot is perfectly composed, right down to the individual hairs on the horseman's Rasputinish beard. (This is one reason why it could not work as well on a small screen – the other being that its impact depends on being a captive audience.) As in The Man from London, Tarr uses environment as main 'characters' – the buildings, the landscape. They are 'major players.' This gives not only a tremendous sense of grandeur and majesty in simple images, but allows Tarr to convey a more cosmic point, even with such a miniscule budget. The characters each form a microcosm, doing what they do (what Man does) in order to survive. We are aware of the oppression and hardship of the plebiscite – oppression we can say is caused by 'conditions', but equally by the ruling classes. Dirge-like music, a daily meal of boiled potatoes eaten without cutlery, and a bleakness from which there is no apparent escape.

On the Second Day, the horse, once hitched, won't move. The daughter expresses some sympathy for its abject refusal. Yet the horse's gradual deterioration (to a point where it is starving itself to death) almost mirrors the plight of its owners. The horseman and daughter struggle against becoming dehumanised: he by fighting, she by gentleness. What does it mean to be human? As the wind whips dust across the landscape, she reads of the "holy places violated."

The downsides of The Turin Horse are that, given its minority-appeal audience, most people will only see it on DVD. The political landscape about which Tarr is so passionate demands extra study in order to be illuminated by the film. Nietzsche declared that art is the proper task of life, that it is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but a metaphysical supplement to nature's reality. But can The Turin Horse stand philosophically on its own merits? Some may feel that Tarr has indeed flogged his point to death, and fails to offer any man or super-man to triumph at the end of his inevitable Gotterdammerung.

Constant use of steadicam gives the impression that we are personally observing what happens - even when all motion stops and the last light is extinguished. Susan Sontag once championed Tarr as a saviour of the modern cinema. If she had lived to see this, probably his last film, she surely would probably have felt doubly justified.

Extreme Art

[jromanbaker · 10/10 · 13 April 2021]

This is a dark, pessimistic film which falls into what I call the category of 'extreme art'. It pushes as far as it can into desolation, in the same way that Samuel Beckett's texts and plays do, and as Kurtag does in his opera based on Beckett's 'Endgame'. Also in this category I would put Jean Genet's 'Funeral Rites' and Giacometti's sculptures, where mankind is reduced to its essence of presence. And so it is with this very fine film 'The Turin Horse'. Set on what I think are the Hungarian plains a man and his daughter eke out a living, and to do this they need their horse. The horse is dying, and slowly their lives shrivel into darkness. I am not sure if Bela Tarr signifies the dying of the light of cinema, and especially the kind of film which pleases the art house crowds. Paradoxically if that was his intention, the art house lovers have clearly loved this film as a work of art, which it undeniably is. The score which musically entwines itself around the sparse, but beautifully haunting images is one of the best I have ever heard, and the beginning of the film is enough in itself to make the film a visual masterpiece. An elderly man is driving his horse to its limit, and the grey trees and the fog and mystery will remain in my mind for a very long while. The slow but seemingly 'natural' torture of the man and his daughter's reduced-to-the-minimum lives is repeated over and over again, mesmerising and terrible to watch. They eat boiling hot food with their hands, a daily horror of the suffering of eating which I found hard to bear and had to turn my head away. This is a film at the end of human and animal endurance and after two and a half hours I felt faint. Extreme art it is, but to deny that it is pure art stripped to the bone would be wrong. Fine though it is, it is not for those who could or would not understand it, and to be brutal, extreme art in the examples I have given above are for a certain elite who will be patient with it, and endure it willingly. The more Tarr retreats from art the more art follows him, and my only criticism is that its very self consciousness as being great cinema somehow detracts from its terminal content. It is Tarr's final masterpiece, but others will come with other images that burn the mind, the heart and the senses. Excruciating images that have 'art' written all over them.

Bleak and Gut Wrenching

[Hitchcoc · 10/10 · 26 February 2018]

This film is so dark. As we watch this farmer and his daughter trying to stay alive by eating what appear to be potatoes or some sort of tubers, making enough from using an old horse to haul for others, one gets tired. This is a bit apocalyptic in that there seems to be nothing to strive for other than to get through another day. There is a danger around them but we don't know what most of the world is doing. One thing we notice right away is that there are no smiles--no joy of any kind. These are humans and like many animals; they could be found dead one day and it would be a fact of life and the rest of the world would go on. And to add a kicker, that horse is getting older and older.

A Journey of Despair

[Helbodk · 10/10 · 26 July 2011]

The moment I cast my eyes on the horse toiling through the storm, and my ears embraced the haunting score, I knew that something significant awaited me. I was completely spellbound by the beauty and ferocity of the images on the screen, and I felt myself floating side by side with the rhythmical motions of the camera. This scene alone would have been a profound experience, but what followed made the movie more than profound; a revelation.

Oddly I had never seen a film by Bela Tarr before The Turin Horse, as I have enjoyed films by Tarkovsky, Trier, Malick, Dreyer and many more. I knew his name, but had evidently missed out on one of the few true auteurs alive today. However, this made the two and a half hours even more compelling. Once again, I was reminded that the less information you have of a movie you are going to see, the greater the experience will become.

And what an experience it was! When the horse refuses to eat, and you realize that the relentless storm engulfing the house will never end, your heart starts to race, as you mentally prepare yourself for a journey towards a desperate end. You slowly glide, circle, zoom, stop and wonder, hand in hand with a cinematographer, who conjures up an endless series of deeply poetic black and white images, transcending space and time. Together with the father and daughter, you sit in silence and wait. And as the flames slowly die out, you drift into darkness; the final destination.

hoping the actual "end of the world" is this beautiful

[chuck-526 · 10/10 · 21 November 2012]

"The Turin Horse" is the end of the world, portrayed with an existentialist sensibility. To me, it's one of the best movies of all time.

It's B&W, which is appropriate for both its subject and the past time it portrays. The sound track combines diegetic sounds, spare music by Mihály Vig that's a mournful dirge in a style reminiscent of older Philip Glass, and just tiny bits of dialog. The setting is a run-down hovel and shed, apparently somewhere in Europe before 1900. An awful windstorm blows the whole time.

The "feel" definitely derives from Nietzsche. The philosophy is not sketched out in any simple outline though. If you're looking to bone up on Philosophy 101, look elsewhere.

The old man and his daughter who live in the hovel are obviously quite poor. They dress in barely adequate clothes, eat nothing but potatoes, and substitute a glass of brandy for breakfast food. The hovel has an uneven floor and no interior walls, most of what little furniture there is is very crude, the beds are lumpy, and the wood-burning cook-stove provides both the hot water and the heating as well as cooking the potatoes. A new hole for more ventilation and light has been knocked through a wall of the shed, but there's no glass in the irregular hole, and the stones that were removed are still tumbled about. Some scarecrows and a rake in the shed suggest they raise their own potatoes and straw; but nothing else, they are clearly not farmers.

Words between the old man and his daughter are so few we wonder why: Do they no longer have anything at all to say? Is their habit to not talk hardly at all to _anybody_? Do they not like each other?

One of the old man's arms won't move. He relies heavily on his daughter even for seemingly simple tasks like dressing, and despite his handicap works by driving a freight cart (which must be very hard for him to do well). His cart -apparently their sole source of income- is pulled by a sick old horse. The daughter is beyond marriageable age, but it doesn't much matter because there are obviously no suitors around anyway. Apparently nobody has planned for or given any thought to either extreme old age or a next generation. We know intellectually their situation is very precarious, that if anything at all goes wrong the whole thing will come apart.

And something does go wrong: their horse starts dying. That alone would push them over the edge, but the sickening horse turns out to be a signal for the end of the entire world. The next six days are rather like the Genesis creation in reverse. They lose the water in their well, then sunlight, then lamplight, and eventually even fire.

Béla Tarr, assisted by his partner and co-director Ágnes Hranitzky and his director of photography Fred Kelemen, uses his trademark very very long takes. Partly that's just his normal style, which probably echoes the very long sentences (several pages!) preferred by his writing collaborator, László Krasznahorkai. I found the long takes -besides just being an atypical stylistic choice- served some purposes. First, they give the viewer a first-hand experience of the monotony the story characters are mired in. And second, they introduce the viewer to characters and events very slowly in a very authentic way; this way the director doesn't need to "highlight" the most important aspects so you "get" them right away but instead can simply let you watch until you understand it all.

There have been some comments to the effect both that this is Béla Tarr's last movie, and that this is not really the end of the _world_ but rather the end of the _movies_. Who knows, although watching "The Turin Horse", one can't help but get the feeling it really is a "last" movie. A general idea of this movie has apparently been floating around for a very long time, beginning clear back before Béla Tarr's and László Krasznahorkai's collaboration on "Sátántangó". The movie is much less depressing than it sounds, partly because watching the man and woman persist against all odds is so inspiring.

What happened to the horse?

[stensson · 7/10 · 4 August 2013]

The story is well-known. Nietzsche hugged this mistreated horse in the street and went insane. But that's often told. Nobody has taken interest in the other part.

The farmer gets home. He lives with his daughter. They are waiting for destruction and become more and more aware of it. They even try to leave, because the horse is sick, but they can't. Their destiny is harsher than that of Nietzsche. For them it's a question of days.

Very little talking and maybe a little too much is left to the viewer, although 2,5 hours move fast. And you certainly can¨t take your eyes off the screen.

Eternal return and the lonely plateau of Hungary

[tohtorigonzo · 10/10 · 11 March 2015]

Someone said before me: "Cinema dies with Béla Tarr". I believe this to be completely reasonable view; and I'm afraid it is mostly true. If this the last Tarr I will ever see, I just can't express my profound sadness. Sadness that whispers me gently into sleep in a dark and hollow room I call home.

Béla Tarr is the voice in the wilderness, wilderness of most humane nature. He is the wind and wailing of - not only the lonely human, but also - the turbulent tides of Hungarian history and for that matter, the whole of Europe. The essence of Béla Tarr is in the way he creates macrocosm inside the microcosm of a single human being.

The wind in plateau keeps on screaming, silently whispering. Telling truths about ourselves, of other humans. Who we never quite seem to connect with. And the world keeps going on, after we are gone - the wind will be there. Probably the gypsies will also be there - still.

Tarr's human is almost always and everywhere lonely, he is strong and weak, but apart from all that he (or she) is always of the most nietzschean in stature. Proud and lost; lost because of his own inescapable condition. It's also about the eternal return and it's also about the potatoes. They sure are nice and warm, bring the warmth back into your freezing body.

I'm a huge fan of his Werckmeister harmóniák (2000) and Sátántangó (1994), though there is nothing wrong with his other work also - rest of his work just doesn't reach the highest peak of filmmaking. A torinói ló is a magnificent, almost indescribable finale to his career if that is how it's going to be.

Art with a capital A

[Buddy-51 · 6/10 · 27 March 2013]

Shot by cinematographer Fred Kelemen in glorious black-and-white, Bela Tarr's "The Turin Horse" is a movie more concerned with imagery and tone than with telling a conventional narrative. Indeed, a full twenty-one minutes have elapsed before a single line of dialogue has been spoken, and another six before we get a second (though there is some sparse voice-over narration). And that's about the average for this two-hour-and-twenty-six minute film.

The movie chronicles the daily life of a semi-crippled father (Janos Derzsi) and his weather-beaten daughter (Erika Bok) living in rural Hungary during the 19th Century. The movie does an effective job showing how, for most of our time here on earth, human experience has been a virtually nonstop battle against the elements - and a joyless, nay, soul-crushing, struggle for survival. The deliberate - some might even say funereal - pacing and lack of verbal communication between father and daughter certainly drive that point home.

We're delivered a brief respite from the redundant toil when a disgruntled neighbor wanders in and launches into a rambling diatribe on the metaphysical nature of social and economic inequality, but that doesn't last very long, and soon we're back to watching Bok hauling water, cooking dinner, tending the fire, dressing her father, etc and eating a diet that appears to be made up entirely of boiled potatoes. The movie also shows how, for many in the past and for many still living today, humans are always just one simple event - in this case, the drying up of a well, the sudden illness of a horse - away from full- blown personal catastrophe.

The movie is ostensibly based on an incident that happened to the great philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in 1889, when he intervened to stop a cabman in Turin, Italy, from beating his horse, an incident that so traumatized the writer that he took to his bed, became demented, and lived the rest of his life in the care of his mother and sisters. The movie extrapolates from that event to show us the life of that cabman and to speculate on what might have driven him to his mistreatment of the animal. Could it be the numbing sameness and unrelenting brutality of his life that led him to his actions? And could Nietzsche be speaking through the neighbor who comes to visit but cannot convince the father of the truth of what he is saying?

The stark landscape with its sparse vegetation and relentless, moaning wind becomes a major force in the drama as well as a key factor in these characters' lives.

Tarr's direction is hypnotic and artful, to say the least, and there's no denying that the movie does cast a spell of sorts over its audience. That's good because, otherwise, it would essentially amount to two-and- a-half hours of watching people doing chores. But you'll definitely be happier with your own lot in life after seeing it.

Great

[Cosmoeticadotcom · 9/10 · 1 February 2013]

The film is shown in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio, and its subtitles are white on black for the German and Hungarian languages spoken. As for the DVD features, they are solid. The first is s brief 12 minute short film Tarr made in 1978, called Hotel Magnezit which depicts an aging alcoholic who is persecuted by unknown others for alleged wrongdoings. It is not in good shape, visually, and the acting is very poor, to say the least. It's at best, a misfire. Then there is a near 50 minute long press conference at the Berlinale Film Festival, wherein Tarr, his three main actors, and his technical collaborators, answer question from an international group of reporters. While there are a few moments of insight, the stark contrast between the depths of the film and the insipidities of the assorted reporters makes for many awkward moments, where the viewer feels sorry for the questioner and senses the artists' frustrations. There is also the theatrical trailer, and a small booklet with a very poorly written and teeth-gnashingly trite essay, called Brute Existence: The Turin Horse, on the film by American film critic J. Hoberman. Finally there is an audio commentary by another notoriously bad American film critic, Jonathan Rosenbaum, that is one of the worst that you will ever encounter. It truly does seem that the Golden Age of DVD commentaries is at an end. Aside from the fact that the commentary has silent gaps, it also only runs less than half the length of the film because, as Rosenbaum says early on, he thinks the film needs no commentary. So, then why agree to do the damned thing? Let someone with more enthusiasm take over. As for the actual commentary? It's rather pathetic, for Rosenbaum adds almost nothing original, instead mostly reading others' critical opinions on the film, and then even relying on biographical and career information on Tarr from, of all places, the always unreliable Wikipedia. It's truly an astonishing train wreck of a commentary- one which Rosenbaum calls his first solo commentary, and hopefully, for the cineastes out there, what will be his last commentary. Aside from the absolute lack of anything meaningful to say on the film, Rosenbaum's nasal, screechy voice is a turn-off, but even more so is his constant pimping of his own career, and the fact that he is going to be teaching, in 2013 at a new film school Tarr is opening in Croatia. About the only positives that one can say of Rosenbaum's nearly 70 minutes of speaking is that he makes two salient points that few other critics have noticed: 1) that despite being labeled anti-Hollywood, Tarr's films are often shot on sets, and Rosenbaum claims this film was also shot on a soundstage. 2) He acknowledges that Tarr's camera is always doing something interesting to offset the seeming repetition of the activities the characters engage in, and this counterpoint between action and depiction helps craft a grand narrative from what seems to be little material. Other than these two points, Rosenbaum's relentless need to posit himself as an insider into indy film circles, and his utter lack of insight into the film at hand, make listening to the commentary a chore.

While the film was much honored at a number of the international film festivals it was shown at, it did not make the list for best Foreign Picture Oscars in America (surprise, surprise). Yet, despite this snub, The turin Horse is yet another great film in Tarr's canon, at least equal to Damnation and Satantango, clearly superior to The Man From London, even if it likely falls a bit shy of Tarr's greatest film, Werckmeister Harmonies. It is a brutally great work of realism in an oddly closed universe consisting of one windy plain (see the scene where the pair try to leave their home, only to wind up right back in it). Near the end of the film, the unnamed daughter asks of her father, or perhaps rhetorically (it does not matter), What is all this darkness?

Let me answer: it is art, child. Art.

enduring the end, darkness, long takes, and other critics' adulation

[Quinoa1984 · 7/10 · 12 June 2015]

A film like The Turin Horse makes me feel a little stupid. Perhaps I am just not 'getting' it, as apparently most critics did when they saw the film - presumably, according to the director (still in his 50's) his last). And it's not like I came to this filmmaker ignorant of his craft and style; sitting through all 450 minutes of Satantango was one of the most mysterious, satisfying if strange filmmaking experiences I've ever had, and that was not without its stretches of time without much "going on" as it were in the usual narrative sense.

The idea with The Turin Horse, co-directed by Agnes Hranitzszky, is that Frederich Nietzche saved a horse from being whipped in a town square in the late 19th century, and the horse was removed from its owner and given to another. Tarr could have filmed that sequence - which happened in real life, and further sounds to me like the dream sequence from Crime & Punishment involving a whipped horse, certainly from the opening narration a very cinematic and dramatic turn of events - but he chooses to go right into the story of this old farmer bringing the horse to his tiny not-much-of-a-farm with his daughter, and watch over the course of five/six days their downfall.

The thing you should know going into this, if you haven't seen Tarr before, is that he does long takes. All the time. Maybe the shortest shot in this runtime is about 4 minutes. It's certainly not easy to pull this off, everything has to be choreographed and timed just right, and that is certainly a testament to Fred Kinemen's cinematography. For me, actually, if it's anyone's masterpiece it's Kinemen's, who in black and white and usually in a camera that moves, gets the dust and wind and darkness and despair down just right visually speaking. There are many shots in the film, like the one where the farmer and his daughter, in the one sort of moment of story "progression", tries to get away from the farm to somewhere else, and the camera shows them off on the hillside, with a dead, lonely tree up top, and the wind blowing in the foreground. I can't fault visually speaking how it looks - just what is put into it, the content.

But why then say that this movie makes me feel 'stupid'? I sensed there was a greater, more profound message here, and I didn't 'get' it, I guess. Perhaps there's something to be said for this being some sort of transcendental experience or other, that what the movie is pretty much 'about' - the pitiless routines of cooking food, fetching water from a well, trying to make a horse eat, putting on clothes - is supposed to make us hypnotized. The sort of real-time, meditative, sort of deadpan and minimalist filmmaking of Satantango had that too, as I'm sure Tarr's other films do, but there was more going on there, more to actual see and note in the characters. Maybe that's part of the point, that this farmer and his daughter, without any electricity or books (well, until a gypsy happens to give one to her, not a long story, they happen by the house in one of the only times other humans interact with them) or any curiosity past living from one day to the next, have made this life and eventual death for themselves. And I can be mesmerized watching routine; Jeanne Dielman is one of the highlights of 1970's French cinema.

So what's missing here? Is it missing in myself to not meet the material more than halfway? I don't know. There may be something that Nietzsche is used as this catalyst for the story at all - that there's something to these lives 'Between Good and Evil', or to his philosophy expressed here. Maybe it's about how the breakdown of the world is meant to be comparable to Tarr seeing the breakdown of cinema, with himself leaving the medium (at least for the time being). And to be fair, as more 'things' happen to this father and daughter, I started to get more intrigued. I wanted to meet the film more than halfway, as this director is the epitome of uncompromising, dead-serious art house filmmakers. And there's just enough for me to recommend it to die-hard admirers of this sort of rigorous filmmaking with maybe like 50 shots in the whole run time. I simply wish there had been a sliver more 'there' there in terms of these two people, despite that being the point of the nothingness of existence and so on.

30 takes in 146 minutes will test the audience's patience, but The Turin Horse is more mesmerizing than dull

[chaz-28 · 5/10 · 20 November 2011]

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 publicly 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.