A film for anyone who feels that Samuel Beckett is just too flippant in his view of the human condition, Tarr’s latest is about as bleak as cinema gets. But, in paring down his familiar long-take style to the barest bones, Tarr and regular collaborators Agnes Hranitzky, Laszló Krasznahorkai and Fred Kelemen have come up with a gauntly beautiful, stripped-down quintessence of the director’s style. A formidable event movie for the festival calendar, the film will be a challenging sell, depending on Tarr’s auteur status and devoted fan base to see it through.        Shot in a mere 30 long takes, The Turin Horse begins with a voice-over (Mihaly Raday) on black, explaining the back story: in Turin in 1899, thephilosopher Nietzsche witnessed a horse being whipped, and subsequently retreated into silence and madness. “We do not know what happened to the horse,” the voice tells us… Visually extraordinary, shot by Kelemen in graduations of grey as much as in black and white, the film returns to the blasted plain landscapes ofSatantango, but also - like Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon - echoing the early 20th-century images of German photographer August Sander. Composer Mihaly Vig contributes an intermittent score, leaden with organ and abrasive violin, that alludes to folk music while also invoking therepetitions of minimalist composers such as Steve Reich. The omnipresent sound of a raging gale has a quasi-musical presence of its own.        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. via: Screen Daily
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A film for anyone who feels that Samuel Beckett is just too flippant in his view of the human condition, Tarr’s latest is about as bleak as cinema gets. But, in paring down his familiar long-take style to the barest bones, Tarr and regular collaborators Agnes Hranitzky, Laszló Krasznahorkai and Fred Kelemen have come up with a gauntly beautiful, stripped-down quintessence of the director’s style. A formidable event movie for the festival calendar, the film will be a challenging sell, depending on Tarr’s auteur status and devoted fan base to see it through.
        
Shot in a mere 30 long takes, The Turin Horse begins with a voice-over (Mihaly Raday) on black, explaining the back story: in Turin in 1899, thephilosopher Nietzsche witnessed a horse being whipped, and subsequently retreated into silence and madness. “We do not know what happened to the horse,” the voice tells us…

Visually extraordinary, shot by Kelemen in graduations of grey as much as in black and white, the film returns to the blasted plain landscapes ofSatantango, but also - like Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon - echoing the early 20th-century images of German photographer August Sander.

Composer Mihaly Vig contributes an intermittent score, leaden with organ and abrasive violin, that alludes to folk music while also invoking therepetitions of minimalist composers such as Steve Reich. The omnipresent sound of a raging gale has a quasi-musical presence of its own.
        
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.

via: Screen Daily