The Turin Horse

http://cineuropa.org/it.aspx?t=interview&lang=en&documentID=198131 .Béla Tarr • Director by Vladan Petkovic 04/03/2011 - Hungarian auteur Béla Tarr won the Silver Bear at the 2011 Berlinale for his latest film, The Turin Horse. He speaks about his poetics and why he intends to stop making films Cineuropa: Where did you get the idea to start the film with the Nietzsche anecdote and what was the writing process like? Béla Tarr:: [My regular screenwriter] László Krasznahorkai was reading some fragments of his work at a theatre evening in 1985 and in the end he read the Nietzsche story that finished with this question, “What happened to the horse?” The question moved me. I spoke to Laszlo and we wrote a short synopsis. So, the horse has an owner and this owner is maybe as famished as the horse. There’s his daughter and somebody is falling out of this triangle. When one of them is out, the relationship is over. It’s really quite simple. But that was in 1990, when we were making Satantango, and we put it away. Then, we had a big crisis when shooting The Man from London [trailer] and for a year we were trying to get the production up. It was very hard for me. Laszlo was very generous and he wrote the text for The Turin Horse [film review, trailer, film focus]. It was a prose text. We didn’t need to make it into a script. We had the concept and the dramaturgical structure. I don’t need a script. When we were looking for funding, we just sent that text to everybody. How do you start making a film? When you’re doing a movie, you don’t do theories. I just look for locations. A location has a face – it’s one of the main characters. So I found this little valley in Hungary and the lonely tree. There wasn’t a house, we had to build it. I hate artificial sets, so we made a real house out of stone and wood. We also built the well and the stable. This is your bleakest film yet. Why did you decide to make such a dark film? The Turin Horse is about the heaviness of human existence. How it’s difficult to live your daily life, and the monotony of life. We didn’t want to talk about mortality or any such general thing. 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. Do you feel this heaviness yourself? Is it a reason to end your filmmaking? No. All the films we [Tarr and regular collaborators Krasznahorkai, Ágnes Hranitzky, Fred Kelemen and Mihály Vig] have done are a part of a long process. In my first film I started from my social sensibility and I just wanted to change the world. Then I had to understand that problems are more complicated. Now I can just say it’s quite heavy and I don’t know what is coming, but I can see something that is very close – the end. Before the shooting I knew this would be my last film. What is the book the Gypsies give to the daughter? It’s an anti-Bible. It’s about how priests close churches because people are sinning. We have to close the churches. We have to tear them down. In the text the daughter reads there are some references to Nietzsche, but the text is original, by Krasznahorkai. The visitor is clearly a Nietzschean character, judging by his monologue. He is a sort of Nietzschean shadow, we had to show that, but he had to differ from Nietzsche. Our starting point was Nietzsche’s sentence, “God is dead”. This character says, “We destroyed the world and it’s also God’s fault,” which is different from Nietzsche. The key point is that the humanity, all of us, including me, are responsible for destruction of the world. But there is also a force above human at work – the gale blowing throughout the film – that is also destroying the world. So both humanity and a higher force are destroying the world. Is the end of the film your vision of the apocalypse? The apocalypse is a huge event. But reality is not like that. In my film, the end of the world is very silent, very weak. So the end of the world comes as I see it coming in real life – slowly and quietly. Death is always the most terrible scene, and when you watch someone dying – an animal or a human – it’s always terrible, and the most terrible thing is that it looks like nothing happened. http://cineuropa.org/f.aspx?t=film&l=en&did=141680 NIETZSCHE'S HORSE by Béla Tarr synopsis Freely inspired by an episode that marked the end of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s career. On January 3,1889, on the piazza Alberto in Turin, a weeping Nietzsche flung his arms around an exhausted and ill-treated carriage horse, then lost consciousness. After this event – which forms the prologue to Tarr’s film – the philosopher never wrote again and descended into madness and silence. From this starting point, The Turin Horse goes on to explore the lives of the coachman, his daughter and the horse in an atmosphere of poverty heralding the end of the world. The Turin Horse opens with an anecdote from Nietzsche’s life, read over a black screen. The story is that Nietzsche was walking the streets of Turin and encountered a driver of a hansom cab having trouble with his horse. The horse wouldn’t move and the driver started whipping it. Nietzsche intervened, hugged the horse and started crying. After the incident he went crazy and lived for another ten years, taken care of by his family. In the film’s opening shot, we see an old man (Janos Derszi) pulling a horse and cart through what looks much more like Hungarian plains than Piedmont, in a howling wind that carries dust and dry leaves throughout the film. He arrives at his desolate, decrepit house where his daughter (Erika Bok) is waiting for him. A narrative title informs us it’s The First Day, and such titles will separate all six segments of the film. For most of The Turin Horse we are watching their repetitive daily routine. The daughter wakes up, goes to the well for water, cooks potatoes they eat only with salt and with their hands, wakes father and dresses him (his right arm seems to be paralyzed). On the first day, he tries to take the horse out, but it won’t budge. On the second day, a stranger (Mihaly Kormos) arrives and tells the story of higher, mysterious forces driving the world to its end – such ideas of incomprehensible, impending doom are behind the stories of Satantango, Werckmeister Harmonies and The Man from London as well. Now the horse won’t even eat. On the third day, a bunch of gypsies arrive and head straight for the well. The old man chases them away but one of them shouts, "We’ll be back! The water is ours, the earth is ours..." On the fourth day the well has gone dry. The fifth day ends with sudden darkness – a spectator actually thinks it’s a fade to black, but the world itself seems to have gone dark. Perfect framing of the black-and-white photography, long takes, dramatic music covering even the most banal scenes and very little dialogue – all these characteristics of Tarr’s work are present in The Turin Horse. If the Hungarian auteur always shows us the world at its bleakest and most desperate, here he seems to have gone to the absolute extreme. There is not a glimpse of hope in The Turin Horse, and as Tarr said at the press conference, "Kundera wrote of the unbearable lightness of being. This film is about unbearable heaviness of life." The Turin Horse was co-produced by Hungary’s TT Filmmuhely, Switzerland’s Vega Film, Germany’s Zero Fiction Film, France’s MPM Film and US company Werc Werk Works. It is handled internationally by Films Boutique. See also Nietzsche's Horse [HU, FR, CH, DE] (2011) - Film Profile, Film Review, Film Focus . The Turin Horse From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Redirected from A torinoi lo) Theatrical release poster Directed by Béla Tarr Ágnes Hranitzky Produced by Gábor Téni Written by László Krasznahorkai Béla Tarr Narrated by Mihály Ráday Starring János Derzsi Erika Bók Mihály Kormos Music by Mihály Víg Cinematography Fred Kelemen Editing by Ágnes Hranitzky Studio T. T. Filmműhely Distributed by Másképp Alapítvány Cirko Film; The Cinema Guild (U.S.A.) Release date(s) 15 February 2011 (2011-02-15) (Berlinale) 31 March 2011 (2011-03-31) Running time 146 minutes Country Hungary Language Hungarian The Turin Horse (Hungarian: A torinói ló) is a 2011 Hungarian drama film directed by Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky, starring János Derzsi, Erika Bók and Mihály Kormos.[1] It was co-written by Tarr and his frequent collaborator László Krasznahorkai. It recalls the whipping of a horse in the Italian city Turin which is rumoured to have caused the mental breakdown of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The film is in black-and-white, shot in only 30 long takes by Tarr's regular cameraman Fred Kelemen,[2] and depicts the repetitive daily lives of the horse and its owner. The film was an international co-production led by the Hungarian company T. T. Filmműhely. Tarr has said that he intends it to be his last film. After having been postponed several times, it premiered in 2011 at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival, where it received the Jury Grand Prix. The Hungarian release was postponed after the director had criticised the country's government in an interview. Themes[edit]Director Béla Tarr says that the film is about the "heaviness of human existence". The focus is not on mortality, but rather the daily life: "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."[4] Tarr has also described The Turin Horse as the last step in a development throughout his career: "In my first film I started from my social sensibility and I just wanted to change the world. Then I had to understand that problems are more complicated. Now I can just say it’s quite heavy and I don’t know what is coming, but I can see something that is very close – the end."[4] According to Tarr, the book the daughter receives is an "anti-Bible". The text was an original work by the film's writer, László Krasznahorkai, and contains references to Nietzsche. Tarr described the visitor in the film as "a sort of Nietzschean shadow". As Tarr elaborated, the man differs from Nietzsche in that he is not claiming that God is dead, but rather puts blame on both humans and God: "The key point is that the humanity, all of us, including me, are responsible for destruction of the world. But there is also a force above human at work – the gale blowing throughout the film – that is also destroying the world. So both humanity and a higher force are destroying the world."[4] Production[edit]The idea for the film had its origin in the mid 1980s, when Tarr heard Krasznahorkai retell the story of Nietzsche's breakdown, and ended it by asking what happened to the horse. Tarr and Krasznahorkai then wrote a short synopsis for such a story in 1990, but put it away in favour of making Sátántangó. Krasznahorkai eventually wrote The Turin Horse in prose text after the production of the duo's previous film, the troublesome The Man from London. The Turin Horse never had a conventional screenplay, and Krasznahorkai's prose was what the filmmakers used to find financial partners.[4] The Turin Horse was produced by Tarr's Hungarian company T. T. Filmműhely, in collaboration with Switzerland's Vega Film Production, Germany's Zero Fiction Film and France's MPM Film. It also had American involvement through the Minneapolis-based company Werc Werk Works. The project received 240,000 euro from Eurimages and 100,000 euro from Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg.[5] Filming was located to a valley in Hungary. The house, well and stable were all built specifically for the film, and were not artificial sets but proper structures of stone and wood.[4] The supposed 35 day shoot was set to take place during the months of November and December 2008.[6] However because of adverse weather conditions, principal photography was not finished until 2010.[7] Director: Bela Tarr. Hungary-France-Switzerland-Germany 2011. 146mins Viewers are used to expecting severity from Hungarian maestro Belá Tarr, but in The Turin Horse (A Torinoi Loi), he surpasses himself with a minimalistic drama that is stark even by the standards of his Satantango and Werckmeister Harmonies. 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. 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. The body of the film depicts what we can assume to be the horse’s subsequent career - although this is a matter of conjecture. In chapters set over five days, the action - such as it is - takes place at a farmhouse in a brutally windblown landscape, where an elderly man, named at one point as Ohlsdorfer (Derszi) lives with his daughter (Bók) in bitterly austere conditions. In the first extended shot, the horse pulls Ohlsdorfer’s car along a country road. Thereafter, the film follows the two human characters’ daily routine in great precision and with deliberate repetition: every day, they wake, the man dresses, his daughter walks to fetch water from the well, and eventually they sit down to a daily meager repast of boiled potatoes. Barely a word is said. This gruelingly monotonous routine is interrupted by two events. First, a neighbour (Kormos) arrives to buy some palinka (liquor) and delivers an extended rant about how the world is collapsing in an unstoppable circuit of degradation and acquisition. Second, a group of gypsies pass through, leaving the daughter a religious book which she later reads. Meanwhile, existence on the farm is changing irrevocably. The horse refuses to pull its wagon, and then to eat - and that’s the start of the forces of entropy setting in. Finally, the film’s ostensible realism is replaced by a startling shift into a metaphysical, and indeed meta-filmic, key. Viewers may emerge variously bored, puzzled, mesmerised or thrilled by the audacity of a film that dares to take cinema back to a bare-bones language reminiscent of the silent era. The film owes something to the genre of hard-times rural realism (eg. the Tavianis’ Padre Padrone) but distilled to a sparse, ritualistic drama that demands great precision from the cast, who are required to behave rather than act in the usual sense. 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. Production companies: T.T. Filmmuhely, MPM Film, Vega Film, zero fiction film International sale:s Films Boutique, www.filmsboutique.com Producers: Gábor Téni, Marie-Pierre Macia, Juliette Lepoutre, Ruth Waldburger, Martin Hagemann Screenpla:y Béla Tarr, Laszló Krasznahorkai Cinematography Fred Kelemen Editor/Co-director: Agnes Hranitzky Production designer: Sándor Kállay Music: Mihály Vig Main cast: Erika Bók, János Derzsi, Mihály Kormos, Ricsi