Review : "The Turin Horse" (2011) - movie by Béla Tarr

There are movies ... and then there are audio-visual statements, that deal with foundational aspects of the human experience. "The Turin Horse", certainly belongs to the latter group. What the director is trying to accomplish here, is nothing less than an alternative version of an "apocalypse". He combines both religious -and philosophical aspects, using a famous incident where the German philosopher Frederich Nietzsche defends a horse in Turin from being beaten by its owner, by hanging onto its neck, as a springboard for a reverse reeling of genesis.

This is a meditative movie and if you are not the type of person who enjoys this kind of experience (over more than two hours) you are likely one of those, this movie points at, though very delicately and at times quite cryptically. We see two individuals, an older invalid man and his young daughter, sticking strictly to their daily chores in order to make their existence stay above subsistence. The narrator has told us about the Nietzsche incident but not connected us directly to the situation this couple is in. Apparently this is after the incident and not in Turin but in a remote part of Hungary. This is not important as the story could unfold anywhere I suppose.

The run-time is separated into six parts each representing a consecutive day. The number "six" is not apparent to the viewer before the movie ends, but other clues to, yes the christian genesis, appears also, but in reverse order (as far as I can judge). The horse stops "working", eating and drinking, the well runs dry, the light disappears on the sixth day. It is pretty obvious after some time, what religious references, the storyteller wants us to catch. Heaven or god´s presence is represented by the omnipresent storm that relentlessly rages outside, and when we do not hear the storm, we hear a haunting, repetitive score that spells, not exactly impending apocalypse but rather a slow strangulation into death.

At the same time, it is less obvious, how philosophy intertwines with this narrative, but it does. Most prominently in the slightly out of place looking guest coming for booze about mid way through. The father figure is able to perform basic small-talk at the start, but it quickly ends up as a monologue, that neither the father or the daughter, has any clue about its meaning or importance. They have their daily busy work, their booze and maybe the faint traces of a god as they stare motionless and ignorant out the window at the "heaven" but without engagement, direction or purpose. The philosopher, which the guest represents, maybe not exactly Nietzsche as he never drank, but a general warning from those who have the helicopter view of the human experience.

I will not go into quoting directly what is stated, but it most certainly refers to the philosophical enlightenment followed by idealism and the non-existence of individuality and responsibility for a secular form of ethics in the face of the demise of Christianity. In stead collective monster appears, that feeds parasitically on all individuals, even the parasites themselves. This is my interpretation I admit, but even if the monologue is quite cryptic, it does revolve around these concepts. Certainly the constant tug of war between god or no god and that is where Nietzsche comes in.

It is clear that the philosopher speaks for deaf ears, as father and daughter keeps going back to their chores as programmed robots. They do not gather the clues as the viewer does, but just keeps going until the ultimate closure of literally a human singularity of nothingness. The characters do not die, I think that is important, but the storyteller certainly wants you to understand what might be in store for us all and figuring out what is going to follow after that is of the utmost importance.

It is hard to give a movie like this a character and maybe it is rather futile and ridiculous, given the seriousness of the subject and the ability to weave such a complex story with so few tools. That must be applauded in my view. In any case this is not a movie that anyone sitting through it will soon forget. It grabs you and forces you to bring your own mind into it. The long takes (only 30 of them), are there to force you to enter the stage and fill in the holes that the director has left open for you and maybe slightly guided you towards. This means that it is only a boring movie if you do not have a mind that can fill in the blanks but needs to be dumbed down with constant stimulation. This was one of the cornerstones of Nietzsche´s critiques of the, by religion and alcohol, self induced coma, to remove you from experiencing the human condition. Maybe adding something to the spartan picture portrayed here will make you enter the experience and start taking part in finding the "meaning" even if it is not there.

10/10