Turin Horse at Berlinale 2011

A torinói ló (2011/TARR/Hungary) photo : Fred Kelemen

Tarr Béla : "Normally, my films don’t have a message. The camera is an observer that captures the atmosphere of a moment and reacts to life. I don`t want to give the audience a message, I want to show it my image of the world. The camera has an objective point of view, I can only show you reality. Cinema is not like literature: It shows you only what is in front of the lense. You can`t fake it. [..]

Nothing in my films is accidental. I hate contingency, mostly I know the whole film from beginning to end. When I close my eyes, I see the movie. I know what the script is, I know what the set is and I know who the actors are. If I change something, it is only to give the actors the opportunity to stay natural and spontaneous. I keep strict control over the camera work. [..]

To me, actors are not really acting. I always tell my actors to do instead of playing. I as the director need to generate the right atmosphere for the scene. That is why a world star can act beside a woman from a factory who has never acted before: They are in the same situation, and they need to listen to each other. If they listen to each other, the scene becomes real. [..]

The problem is that most films follow the same pattern: Action, cut, action, cut. They only watch the story line. But story is not only human actions, everything can be a story. A man waiting at a corner can be a story. There is many things that are important in real life but that filmmakers find boring. I don`t think that these things are boring. In my films, I want to be closer to life than to cinema. [..]

I think that this film has a special position in my work. I started working on my first feature film 34 years ago. It has been a long way, and this film has changed something. The circle is closed."

interview of Tarr Béla by Konstanty Kuzma at East European Film Bulletin (15 Feb 2011) 

Entretien de Bertrand Loutte (Arte, 16 février 2011) 5'32"

voir aussi:

• Press kit [PDF]
• Press conference (Berlinale, 15 Feb 2011) video 47'17"
• Michel Ciment - 61e Berlinale (France Culture, 19 Février 2011) webcast 59' [MP3] 
• The Turin Horse completed! 
• Tarr Béla quits cinema? 

New possibilities in film language (Tarr)

Tarr Béla : “I’m able to tell you only one thing. What we are trying to do is more and more and more pure cinema, which is maybe less and less and less story, less and less details, and of course, I really would like to go deeper and deeper and deeper in the human soul. I want to understand something because I’m always just discovering, discovering, discovering something, some new thing, some new possibilities in the film language. Of course, I keep some things but I’m always finding new things I can use. I really like to listen to people. I don’t like the artificial anymore. I want to go in like a miner, deeper and deeper. That’s what I think. That’s why I think I can do it always in one way if I’m more and more simple. What we are doing, it’s really on the edge. It’s a risk.”

cited at Cine Foundation international (not to confound with Cinéfondation), date unknown.

The Turin Horse completed!

Vlog de Michel Reilhac > Béla Tarr - Le cheval de Turin - Budapest from ARTE FRANCE on Vimeo.

Michel Reilhac (Arte producer-distributor, not of this film though) went to Budapest on August 18th to watch the final cut of Tarr's latest (last?) film : The Turin Horse (A Torinói ló). It clocks at 2h30'. Can't wait. Not selected for Venice?

The Films of Sharunas Bartas

Lithuanian auteur Sharunas Bartas is the kind of filmmaker one would immediately be tempted to label “pretentious” and “self-indulgent” because there is absolutely no concession whatsoever that he gives to the viewers in terms of the narrative, artistic, political and personal ambitions of his films, burying them deeply within their part-hyper real and part-surreal constructs. All his films have hinged themselves onto a particular moment in Lithuanian history – the nation’s independence from the USSR, just prior to the latter’s complete collapse – and they all deal with the loss of communication, the seeming impossibility of true love to flourish and the sense of pointlessness that the political separation has imparted to its people. The characters in Bartas’ films are ones that attempt in vain to put the dreadful past behind them, traverse through the difficult present and get onto a future that may or may not exist. With communication having been deemed useless, they hardly speak anything and, even if they do, the talk is restricted to banal everyday expressions. Consequently, Bartas’ films have little or no dialog and rely almost entirely on Bressonian sound design consisting mostly of natural sounds. Also Bresson-like is the acting in the films. There are no expressions conveyed by the actors, no giveaway gestures and no easy outlet for emotions.

The outdoor spaces are deep and vast in Bartas’ films while the indoors are dark, decrepit and decaying. The landscapes, desolate, usually glacial, nearly boundless and seemingly inhospitable, are almost always used as metaphors for a larger scheme. His compositions are often diagonal, dimly lit and simultaneously embody static and dynamic components within a single frame. Interestingly, his editing is large Eisensteinian and he keeps juxtaposing people, their faces and landscapes throughout his filmography. But since the individual images themselves possess much ambiguity of meaning, the sequences retains their own, thereby overcoming the limitations of associative montage. Another eccentric facet in Bartas’ work is the amazing amount of critters found in his films. There are puppies, kitten, frogs, seagulls and flies seen around and over his characters regularly. May be, not considering the specific connotations that these creatures bring to these scenes, the intention is Eisensteinian here too – to indicate that the characters have been reduced to a level lower than these beings, unable to either communicate with each other or be at peace with nature, devoid of the notions of nationality and politics.

In many ways, the cinema of Bartas stands in between that of Andrei Tarkovsky and Béla Tarr – both filmmakers concerned with chronicling life in a communist state. While the childhood memories, existential crisis and spiritual yearning in Bartas films directly has its roots in Tarkovsky’s films (all the films starting from Mirror (1975)), the visual (dancing in entrapping circles, meaningless glances and chatter over banquets and eventual self-destruction of the drifting characters) and aural (the Mihály Vig-like loopy and creepy score consisting of accordions, accentuated ambient noise) motifs, stark cinematography and political exploration are reminiscent of Bartas’ Hungarian contemporary. But, more importantly, it is the attitude towards his characters that puts him right in midpoint between Tarr and Tarkovsky. Bartas’ work has so far been characterized by two impulses – a warm nostalgia and sympathy for his characters that betrays the director’s hope and love for them, as in Tarkovsky’s cinema, and an overpowering cynicism, clearly derived from the (post-neo-realist) films of Tarr, that keeps remarking how the characters are all doomed and done for. This (unbalanced) dialectic is evident in Bartas aesthetic itself, which employs copious amounts of extremely long shots and suffocating close-ups. In the former, characters are seen walking from near the camera and into the screen, gradually becoming point objects eaten up by the landscape while, in the latter, Bartas films every line and texture of their faces with utmost intensity in a way that obviously shows that he cares for them and the pain that they might be experiencing. This conversation between optimism and pessimism towards his people also places him alongside the Armenian filmmaker Artavazd Peleshian – another historian of traumatized lives in a Soviet state before and after independence.

Praejusios Dienos Atminimui (In Memory Of The Day Passed By, 1990)

One of the finest films by Sharunas Bartas, In Memory of the Day Passed By (1990) is a somber, evocative mood piece set in post-independence Lithuania and opens with the image of large flakes of snow moving slowly along a river. This is followed by a shot of a woman and her kid walking on a vast, snowy plain and moving away from the viewer until they become nonentities assimilated by their landscape. This pair of shots provides a very good synopsis of what Bartas’ cinema is all about. The rest of the film presents us vignettes from the daily life of the people living in the unnamed city, possibly Vilnius, and from the garbage dump outside it. One of them presents a tramp-like puppeteer wandering the streets of the city without any apparent destination. Like the puppet that he holds, the people around him seem as if their purpose of living has been nullified, now that the national strings that had held and manipulated them so far have been severed. Consequently, there are many shots that deal with religion and the intense Faith that these people seem to be having, perhaps suggesting a yearning for the replacement of a superior power that guides them. Bartas suffuses the film with diagonal compositions indicative of a fallen world – a world that can go nowhere but the abyss. Appropriately, the film closes with a variation of its opening image: flakes of snow flowing downriver – an apt metaphor for the many nations that would drift without a base after the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Trys Dienos (Three Days, 1991)

Three Days (1991), Bartas’ maiden feature length work, unfolds in a harbor town in Lithuania where two men and a women search for a shelter in the largely uncaring place, possibly to make love. The first Bartas film to feature his would-be collaborator (and muse) Yekaterina Golubeva, Three Days plays out as a post-apocalyptic tale set in an industrial wasteland, complete with decrepit structures and murky waters, where both positive communication (Even the meager amount of dialogue in the film turns out to be purely functional) and meaningful relationships (Almost everyone in the film seems to be a vagrant) have been rendered irrelevant. Every person in this desolate land seems to be an individual island, stuck at a particular time in history forever. The visual palette (akin to the bleached out scheme of the director’s previous work) is dominated by earthy colours, especially brown, and the production design is highly redolent of Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979). The actors are all Bressonian here and do no more than move about in seemingly random directions and perform mundane, everyday actions. Like in Bresson’s films, there is no psychological inquiry into the characters’ behaviour and yet there is much pathos and poignancy that is developed thanks to the austerity of Bartas’ direction and the intensity of Vladas Naudzius’ cinematography. The film is titled Three Days, but it could well have been titled ‘three months’, ‘three years’ or even ‘eternity’ for, in the film, all time is one, the notion of future nonextant and hope for escape futile.

Koridorius (The Corridor, 1994)

If Three Days presented people stuck in time and moving aimlessly through desolate landscapes, The Corridor (1994) gives us ones stuck geographically and drifting through abstract time. Bartas’ most opaque and affecting film to date, The Corridor is a moody, meditative essay set at a time just after the independence of Lithuania from the USSR and in a claustrophobic apartment somewhere in Vilnius in which the titular corridor forms the zone through which the residents of the building must pass in order to meet each other. Extremely well shot in harsh monochrome, the interiors of the apartment resemble some sort of a void, a limbo for lost souls if you will, from which there seems to be no way out. Consisting mostly of evocatively lit, melancholy faces that seem like waiting for a miracle to take them out of this suffocating space, The Corridor also presents sequences shot in cinema vérité fashion where we see the residents drinking and dancing in the common kitchen. Of course, there is also the typical central character, played by Sharunas Bartas himself, who seems to be unable to partake in the merriment. Conventional chronology is ruptured and reality and memory merge as Bartas cuts back and forth between the adolescent chronicles of the protagonist, marked by rebellion and sexual awakening, and his present entrapped self, unable to comprehend what this new found ‘freedom’ means. Essentially an elegy about the loss of a sense of ‘being’ and ‘purpose’, The Corridor remains an important film that earns a spot alongside seminal and thematically kindred works such as Paradjanov’s The Color of Pomegranates (1968) and Tarkovsky’s Mirror (1975).

Few Of Us (1996)

Few of Us (1996) is perhaps the least political of the already highly noncommittal works of Sharunas Bartas. Not that this film does not base itself strongly on the political situation in Lithuania, but that the now-intimate backdrop of independent Lithuania is transposed onto a remote foothill in Siberia where a tribe called the Tolofars maintains a spartan life style. It is into this rugged, almost otherworldly land that the beautiful protagonist of the film (Yekaterina Golubeva) is air-dropped like an angel being relegated to the netherworld. She seems as isolated from the people of this land as the Tolofars are from the rest of the world. However, as indicated by the incessant cross cutting between the worn out terrain of the village and the contours on Golubeva’s face, this mysterious, hostile and unforgiving landscape is as much a protagonist of Bartas’ film as Golubeva is. With an eye for small and intricate changes in seasons, terrains and time of the day comparable to that of James Benning, Bartas pushes his own envelope as he lingers on eyes, faces and landscapes for seemingly interminable stretches of time. Each image of the film carries with itself an air of a still paining, vaguely familiar. All this sure does bring to surface the experimental and, I daresay, self-conscious nature of Bartas’ work, but what it also does is familiarize us with the hitherto alien and draw connection between this abstract representation of protagonist’s cultural disconnection in Tolofaria and the typical Bartas territory of desolate, directionless lives lead by the people of post-Soviet Lithuania.

A Casa (The House, 1997)

The House (1997) opens to the image of a mansion as the narrator reads a confessional letter written to his mother about their inability to communicate with each other. The house and mother are, of course, metaphors for the motherland that would be explored in the two hours that follow. It seems to me that The House is the film that Bartas finally comes to terms with the trauma dealt by the country’s recent past that he has consistently expressed in his work. Consequently, the film also seems like a summation of the director’s previous films (One could say that the characters from Bartas’ previous films reprise their roles here) and a melting pot of all the Tarkovsky influences that have characterized his work (especially the last four fictional works of the Russian). Shot almost entirely indoors, The House follows a young man carrying a pile of books as me moves from one room of the Marienbad-like mansion to the other, meeting various men and women, none of whom speak to each other and who might be real people of flesh and blood, shards of memory or figments of fantasy. The house itself might be an abstract space, as in The Corridor, representing the protagonist’s mind with its spatial configuration disoriented like the chessboard in the film. Furthermore, one also gets the feeling that Bartas is attempting to resolve the question of theory versus practice – cold cynicism versus warm optimism – with regards to his politics as we witness the protagonist finally burn the books, page by page, he had so far held tightly to his chest.

Freedom (2000)

Sharunas Bartas’ chef-d’oeuvre and his most accessible work to date, Freedom (2000) is also one of the most pertinent films of the past decade. Taking off from the wandering trio setup of Three Days, Freedom begins with a chase scene right out of genre cinema transposed onto Bartas’ highly de-dramatized canvas. The two men and women seem to be illegal immigrants who are on the coast guard’s wanted list. If The House was national politics distilled into a claustrophobic setting, Freedom is the same being set in seemingly limitless open spaces. The most rigorous of all Bartas films, Freedom is the kind of film Tarkovsky might have made had he lived to see the new century. Like the Russian’s characters, the people in this film are all marginal characters (and are often aptly pushed from the centre of the frame towards its margins) who want to escape the oppressive, unfair politics of this world and become one with nature and the unassailable peace it seems to possess. Alas, like in Blissfully Yours (2002), they are unable to depoliticize their world and start anew. The tyrannical past is catching up with them, the present is at a stalemate and is rotting and there is no sight of the future anywhere. Bartas expands the scope of his usual investigation and deals with a plethora of themes including the artificiality and fickleness of national boundaries, the barriers that lingual and geographical differences create between people and the ultimate impermanence of these barriers and the people affected by it in this visually breathtaking masterwork.

Septyni Nematomi Zmones (Seven Invisible Men, 2005)

The most unusual of all Bartas films, the pre-apocalyptic Seven Invisible Men (2005) starts off like a genre movie – a bunch of robbers trying to evade the police after stealing and selling off a car. It is only after about half an hour, when one of them arrives at a farm that is near completely severed from the rest of the world, that the film moves into the world of Bartas. Seven Invisible Men is the most talkative, most rapidly edited and the most politically concrete of all the films by the director and that may precisely be the idea – to serve as a counterpoint to all the previous movies. All though there is too much talk in the film, rarely do they amount to meaningful conversations, bringing the characters back to the hopelessness of the director’s earlier works. Like Freedom, all the characters here are people living on the fringes of the society – con men and ethnic and religious minorities – who seem to have sequestered themselves with this settlement of theirs. All these characters seem to be trying to escape their agonizing past and the politics of the world that seems to give them no leeway in order to start afresh (The heist may have been the last attempt at escape), in vain. In the final few minutes that recall Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice (1986), we see the house, in which the characters have been living in, burn down to dust. But, unlike Tarkovsky, it is Bartas’ cynicism that overwhelms and he sees his characters as ultimately self-destructive beings that have lost all control of their lives and hope for a better future.

Werckmeister Homage

Werckmeister Harmonies cited in pop culture by The Simpsons, Tarr Béla came a long way!

The Simpsons (2010/Groening/USA) Season 21, Episode #19

Werckmeister Harmonies (2000/Tarr/Hungary)

Satantango - La león

Split screen comparison of the opening sequence of both Satantango (1994/Tarr/Hungary) and La león (2007/Otheguy/Argentina) by Michel Reilhac (Arte, France) 16 Mar 2010 [FRENCH]

Werckmeister Harmonies

Pick up the ordinary film that chronicles the rise of fascism prior to the second world war and you know what to expect – a nation penalized for the first war, a corporal in resentment, his becoming a key figure, formation of ideology, those mesmerizing speeches, rise to power and finally, the ruthless extermination of humans. Well, you know the routine. Rare is the case that such a film is historically inaccurate or morally flawed, but what is troubling is that a single person is made the focal point of such monumental passages of history – as if satisfying our need for a villain as we do for a hero. Not that I am in defense of any such individual, but how on earth can a single person independently cause the galvanization of a whole nation? However convincing his words and however significant his moves are, it is finally the mass and the intentions that run through it that make it possible. From what can be seen as an adversarial position, Béla Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) chillingly exposes the other side of the loudspeaker – a film that is to the ordinary documentary what Goodfellas (1990) is to The Godfather (1972).

Like most films by Tarr and similar directors, Werckmeister Harmonies does not rely heavily on its plot. Based on a book, The Melancholy of Resistance by László Krasznahorkai, Werckmeister Harmonies plays out in an unnamed town in an unnamed country in an unspecified year (though images indicate a year in the eighties). The whole town seems to be in a state of total fear and insecurity after the arrival of a certain circus whose performers include a dead white whale and a man called The Prince. Unrest ensues as the town mailman János Valuska (Lars Rudolph) witnesses the place fall apart, unable to do anything about it. János is the epitome of curiosity and learning about nature and creation for him seems to bring abundant joy. He often attends to György Eszter (Peter Fitz), a music theorist whose interest lies in exposing mistakes of the past. At this terrible time, Tünde Eszter (Hanna Schygulla) – the Satan figure of the story – tells Valuska that she would restore “order and cleanliness” within the town if only he gets her ex-husband, the theorist, to gather a few important signatures. But “order” too, seems to be a subjective term.

Werckmeister Harmonies does form an interesting companion to Tarr’s magnum opus Sátántangó (1994) in some ways. While Sátántangó is about the disintegration of a collective will due to fear, passivity and plain ignorance, Werckmeister Harmonies is about the formation of one because of the same factors. The characters, too, seem to repeat themselves across the films. The working class in Werckmeister Harmonies (the foreign workers) succumbs supposedly to the speeches of The Prince owing to its ignorance and social condition whereas, in Sátántangó, the same group (farmers) buckles under the conflict between personal and collective will and, simply, the inability to adhere to an objective. The inebriate doctor – the only sign of intelligence in Sátántangó – is not much different from the music theorist here. Tarr teases us with questions about the role of intellectuals in revolution in both films. Both the doctor and the music theorist, perhaps disillusioned by the state of the affairs, force themselves to become apolitical and into a personal shell out of which they come out only in order to maintain it so (The doctor leaves the house to get his quota of booze whereas the theorist, to avoid the return of his wife to his house). And the only “sane” person – Futaki in Sátántangó and János here- who sees the misfortune coming is completely helpless and battered about by the mindless workers and the spineless intelligentsia.

The element that seems to be a new addition in Werckmeister harmonies is the tangible presence of a middle class. Leftist filmmakers have maintained that the prime reason for the rise of fascism is the complacent nature of the bourgeoisie and the political and social passivity that it seems glad to wallow in. Here too, the bourgeois seems unwilling to give up that position. They are never seen outdoors in the film, they are contented with having sex and delivering monologues about the state of the world. Neither are they desperate and active enough to be The Prince’s followers nor do they seem capable of pursuing higher interests. The doctor notes about the farmers in Sátántangó: “They haven’t a clue that it is this idle passivity that leaves them at the mercy of what they fear most”. But here, it seems like it is the middle class that is too short-sighted to see the doom heading towards them and hence too happy maintain status quo.

In the film, The Prince apparently quotes that people who are afraid do not understand. Tarr too seems to be concerned with the notion of fear, ignorance and violence being stimulants of fascism and presents them as the three sides of a triangle with each one perpetuating the others. Being the Wong Kar Wai of monochrome, Tarr employs black and white colours extensively and in an expressionistic fashion to juggle with the ideas of ignorance and knowledge, fear and courage and war and peace. János’ shuttling between his desire to learn and the inertia imposed upon him by the townsfolk culminates in his witnessing of the inevitable streak of violence. In what may be one of the most effective and chilling depiction of violence in cinema, we see the rabid folks enter a hospital and put down its inhabitants. There is complete detachment by the camera which continues to track away as ever to leave a lump in your throat. It’s a sequence that is so stunningly choreographed that it almost deserves to be called beautiful despite its nature.

In his superb article on the ontological entities of the filmic medium, Mani Kaul reflects upon the Deleuzian theory of time and movement in cinema. Watching Tarr’s later films, now, seems like a practical demonstration of the theory. It is a unanimous opinion that it is Tarr’s shot composition – seemingly endless, rich in detail and “atmospheric” – that captures the attention of the viewer first. Where other films subordinate time to the action and space under consideration, Tarr’s sequences have time as the primary axis on which movements are choreographed. Instead of questions like ‘What will he do next?’, we are forced to ask questions like ‘When will this motion end?’. What this does in essence is to make each second of the sequence precious and the audience conscious of the same. And why this seems to work exceedingly well in films like Werckmeister Harmonies is because it provides that sense of impending doom – of the inevitability of a massacre – throughout the film.

Tarr presents us an utterly bleak world where death seems to be the only destination for all its inhabitants. He creates a colourless land that is flat, barren and infinite – an isolated world where almost no two social classes are seen in the same frame, except János himself who seems to percolate everywhere. In my favorite of the 39 shots in the film, János and the theorist walk without speaking a single word for a long time. Tarr, unusually, frames them both, in profile, in the same frame such that they seem stationery with the world moving behind them – choking them into the frame and sealing the fate of their journey. The world in Werckmeister Harmonies is devoid of any notions of Faith and Karma. It’s a Godless universe like Tarr’s own (as the director has claimed in interviews). But perhaps there is God here, but not one that goes by the conventions. Towards the end, when János tries to flee the town, an enigmatic black helicopter – a possible nod, along with the army tank in the town, to the Spider God of Through a Glass Darkly (1961) and Silence (1963) respectively – forces him to return back. It’s worse than God’s indifference, it is Satan’s Tango. It is in this instability where people like The Prince – a distorted version of the circus director, whose troupe is the whole town – take advantage, create a symphony of destruction and well, play God.

But that is the exact kind of narrative that seems to suit our “ordinary documentary”. The Prince can easily be called the root cause of the entire disturbance, but that would only be too easy. We actually never know if The Prince (or the whale) is responsible for it at all. The whale is dead and hence a mute observer and The Prince, who speaks in a foreign language and whose words we obtain only secondhand, isn’t even seen in the film. In what may be a “whale” of a Macguffin, Tarr tempts us to pin the blame on the two foreign entities. But it eventually becomes evident that it is the people themselves – the workers and Tünde Eszter – who are the fascists, taking the mute and the invisible “guests” as pretext for violence. Violence that exterminates the apathetic bourgeois, persuades the hermetic clerisy out of its shell and makes the working class the pawns of a power game. One may remember Tarr’s sarcastic take on “Let there be Light” in Sátántangó, where the doctor seals off every possible entry of light into his hut (and where this film seems to take off from, in a way). At the end of Werckmeister Harmonies, the only survivor in this war, Tünde Eszter, who is the most patient and diabolically thoughtful of all the characters in the film, goes on to rule. I can see Mr. Tarr chuckling as he quotes “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth”!

UNSPOKEN Journal - now online

The first and only issue of the UNSPOKEN Journal (EDIT 2010: moved here; EDIT 2011: now offline) is finally completed, you can read it online, and print it out at the website. Thanks a lot to our guest editor Yvette Biró who directed this special issue dedicated to Tarr Béla, and to all our contributors who kindly replied to our request : Robert Davis, Matthew Flanagan, Edward Howard, Ian Johnston, András Bálint Kovács, Pacze Moj, who developed their interpretation of what is Contemplative Cinema in Tarr's films. And our apologize for the submissions that couldn't make the final line up for various complicated reasons.

Table of content Béla TARR :

• Timeless Time, Yvette Biró
• Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky in Conversation with András Bálint Kovács
• The Dieppe Switchman, András Bálint Kovács
• Confined Space, Yvette Biró
• Seeking Order in Disorder : Béla Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies, Ian Johnston
• Piercing the hermetic skin of Sátántangó, Robert Davis
• “The Style's Function” : Narration in Béla Tarr's Sátántangó, Matthew Flanagan
• Damnation, Edward Howard
• Family Nest, Pacze Moj
• Hands & Faces : Family Nest Photo-essay, HarryTuttle

ANNEXE

• Vital Rhythms, Edwin Mak

Unspoken : Tarr
May 2009
Editors : Yvette Biró, Edwin Mak & HarryTuttle

Related:

• Unspoken Journal - now offline (March 2011)

Satantango at 15

Yesterday, was the 15th anniversary of Béla Tarr's greatest masterpiece, Sátántangó, which world première was held on February 8th 1994 in Hungary.

Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote an article on this occasion for a Hungarian newspaper and it is published on his website too. Read it online here.

According to IMDb, it has been screened in only 7 countries (at festivals), of which only 3 gave it a (limited) commercial distribution. Hungary and The Netherlands in 1994, and France in 2003. I hope this info is incomplete. I believe there was a couple of exceptional screenings in NYC a few years ago.

Let me know where and how you could discover this rare and epic film yourself, if you had the chance to experience it.

UNSPOKEN: Debut Issue, Last call.

After some minor delays, UNSPOKEN journal is back in ignition, with a new extended deadline and a new guest-editor too. The list of confirmed contributors is looking good, but the call is still open––as a last call––to all.

+ + +

Dear Unspoken Contributor,

We are delighted that you have expressed interest in contributing to the debut issue of UNSPOKEN.

As you will already know this issue is dedicated to the great Béla Tarr. But we are equally happy to announce Yvette Bíro, esteemed screenwriter and peer of Tarr, as our guest-editor. Bíro's writings and films chart a startlingly lucid and compelling course through aesthetic and philosophical landscapes. UNSPOKEN is inspired by such explorations and seeks further adventures of this uncharted cinematic and theoretical terrain.

Advice and what we need from you:

Confirmation
If you have not done so already, please provide in an email your chosen topic with a title (and abstract of 250 words if possible), and a short biography for us to credit you by.

Deadline
Writing deadline is now 15th March 2009.

Style
Please place all references in endnotes. Minimum length for articles and book reviews are 2500. Critical and research essays is 3000 – 6000. There are no hard restrictions on style, but we would discourage obfuscatory temptations. Where possible, the pleasurable side of rigor is infinitely preferred.

Contact for editors and submissions: unspokenjournal@googlemail.com

We eagerly look forward to your submissions.

Best wishes,
Yvette Bíro, HarryTuttle and Edwin Mak

Béla Tarr 2008 interview on French radio

Radio interview by Laure Adler on France Culture (09-24-2008) 45' [FRENCH-ENGLISH]
[My translation]


Laure ADLER: [..] Staying with poetry, meditation and the importance granted to the flow of time, we propose you to listen to the Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr on the occasion of the release of his film, based on a Georges Simenon adaptation, L'homme de Londres (1933).
Béla Tarr, thank you very much to be here with us tonight. The Man From London (2007), which premièred at the Cannes festival two years ago, is finally released on French screens now, and it's the occasion for our radio program to try and understand your universe.
Firstly, I would like to know if you went to the movies very young?

TARR Béla: Yes, often times. When I was a kid I liked to go to the movies. But I have to say, I don't anymore now.


ADLER: Why? Because you're busy doing your own films?

TARR: No. Because often I have the feeling that the audience laugh while I want to cry. that's the reason I prefer to watch the movies alone, or with friends around me.


ADLER: You like very much John Cassavetes, I believe, who influenced you a lot?

TARR: I like his movies. You know, everybody used to say him and I had something in common. But when I finally saw his first movies was in the 80ies. I grew up in Hungary, and it was a socialist country back then. It was a closed country, and we had no chance to watch a lot of things. Only towards the mid 80ies could I discover the great movies famous around the world, but we couldn't watch them.


ADLER: Let's talk about your universe, Béla Tarr. When we watch your films, we enter a landscape often devastated, where rain pours like in the Bible. We have the feeling it will never stop, that everything will be overflown. Men have worn out (?) faces. Women are totally broken by life. I have the impression you've had several lives. I believe you've been a worker.

TARR: Yes, I've been a worker. You know it was a long journey. When I was young, I was a very strong leftist. It was also a very strange situation. I grew up in a socialist country, then I became leftist who rebelled against this feudalistic system. I was 16, it was a time when the whole philosophy, the culture of the 60ies came to Hungary. And it was this atmosphere I breathed. The reason why I went to the factory and became a real worker was very simple, I wanted to know how was real life. Then I made a 8mm movie when I was 16, with Gypsy workers. Then I had some trouble. After high school, I wanted to go to college, but was refused because I wasn't a fan of the "system". that's how my life started, like a black sheep. Until now I'm still a black sheep. sometimes I'm terribly glad I'm still a black sheep, but sometimes it's very boring.
You know, the documentary style I began with, was a mix between documentary and fiction. And of course, at start I wanted to change the world. Now that I'm older, I have to recognize that I'm not capable to change the world. The world is stronger than me. Cinema is not enough for a change. I became more and more desperate. I saw that problems were not only social but ontological. Thus my cinematic style comes from my vision of the world.


ADLER: We have the impression you had several cinematographic lives. There was the beginning after the factory, a cinema socially involved, like Ken Loach : Family Nest (1979), The Prefab People (1982). Then you worked collectively with friends. And because of the Hungarian censorship you went to Berlin. this is where began a new cinematographic era, a new way to see the world and to film it. How? and why?

TARR: This is definitely not true. This was the idea of an American critic, his theory. A very good critic. Jonathan Rosenbaum from Chicago [read here]. It was his idea. It's not true. Step by step, from movie to movie, each one generates the next one. Of course I had some influences, maybe from the landscape, maybe from the weather, maybe a stroll around the corner. I must tell you that in my life, in my brains, in my style, I see the continuity. No breaking point, nothing. Because he hadn't seen some experimental stuff I did for the Hungarian TV, Macbeth (1982)...


ADLER: ...with a plan-sequence of 67 min. Which was a sort of fracture. I know you're one and only person, a filmmaker who continues to film the world. But there has been some changes...

TARR: But you know this is a process, step by step. If you watch The Man From London and my first movie, The Family Nest... the extreme close ups on this family, on this woman's face, it's a very long uncut shot, in 1967. Thirty years later, in The Man From London you see the same extreme close up on a woman's face in long take. There are common details, but of course I'm not doing the same movies. A lot of things have to change. You know, when you climb up the stairs, on and on, at some point you have to come back down. That's the point when I want to finish the film. That's why I really want to make the next film [The Turin Horse (2009)], which will definitely be the last. And I really want to tell everything I know about cinema, about life, about words, about people, about the world. And after I'll stop it.
I don't like to speak about movies, because for me the movies are pictures, books, songs, noises and the eyes of people... As an example, in Werkmeisters Harmonies (2000), there is a man who watches the eye of a whale, and the film is about what he feels, that why I can't explain you. For The Man From London, I can't tell with words what Ms Brown feels, but you can see it in her eye at the end of the movie. that's what I love about movies. you can show a lot of things that can't be put into words.


ADLER: Your cinema seem like an initiating and ontological quest, there is no scenario, but it talks to our subconscious or our unconscious. do you agree that your cinema invites us for an introspective trip inside our souls.

TARR: Let me tell you the truth, when I'm watching a movie, I'm after only one thing : I don't lie. It's the main issue. And the rest follows. All of my sensibility and my nerves must feel people. If I'm not able to feel your pain, in this case making a movie is out of question. If I see somebody who is being humiliated now, it hurts me. That's all. From the start till now, I'm always doing the same movie, a little differently, like you say. The main issue is human dignity.


ADLER: Your films today are in a sumptuous Black & White, which I would qualify of "charcoalish" for the lack of a better word. But before that you used colour. Notably in Almanac of Fall (1985), bathed in blue and pink-red. You first explored the possibilities of colour, before you definitively adopted this Black & White. why?

TARR: In the mid 80ies, Kodak changed the colour material, they are doing polyester-based film stock, and the colours are totally different. Everything looks like plastic. I don't like it.

ADLER: So Black & White is the antithesis of lies to you?

TARR: It's not that simple. I like B&W movies. I did some colour stuff with Macbeth, or Journey on the Plain (1995) for Hungarian TV, I shot them in colour. I had the feeling I had to use colour. I use colour when I want to show you something with colour. But if I don't need to show you an image with green, red or blue, in this case it's better to use B&W. Because I can play with B&W. Your eye always look at the brighter part of the screen. It's amazing how I'm able to play with the grey scale. And I have the courage to leave half of the third of the screen completely black. You know I could paint with light, with black and white and all the spectrum of greys. I try to paint. that's what I like to do.


ADLER: Some people say you're a filmmaker very abstract. But, personally, I believe you're a filmmaker very lyrical. Your themes touch me very deeply. For instance the unrequited love of a man for a woman he waits for desperately. For example the story, rarely made in movies, of the hatred of a son for his mother. The story of these people who follow blindly a false guru. Do you agree that in your cinema there are themes that are universal?

TARR: "Universalism" is a very dangerous word. I don't like to use it. The universe is too vast and we're too small. But I agree with you, I'm not abstract. I prefer doing very simple movie, but with a different logic. If you are a filmmaker you have to show what's around you. And I see just simple human situations. And I see some real emotions. I see real human tragedies. That's what I want to show you. I want to show you the life of normal people. They are not running up and down the streets with guns. I say no. What I try to do is to listen and show you the eye of people who touch me. Or I'll move the camera and you'll see the landscape behind. I want to show you real emotions. I place my actors within real situations, and they are not acting. They are. nothing abstract. Nothing real, of course. This is not simply realism. I don't know how to call it.


ADLER: As you show us the real life of people, you also show us landscapes, animals... but the soundtrack of your films, made with street music, gypsy music, cabaret music, musics we can hear in the streets, composes a mental universe constitutive of your art. How do you work this soundtrack.

TARR: I proceed with the same manner. We cannot use the original sound on location because a film set is terribly noisy. I'm the loudest because I'm always shouting directions. The other reason is the international cast [in The Man From London]. Everybody acts in their own language, and it really looks like the tower of Babel. Concerning the music, we're recording it before the shooting. I'm working with the same composer for 25 years. He's a poet, Rock n' Roll musician, an artist. We are very good friend. He understand exactly what we want. He wants the same thing.


ADLER: when we watch Sátántangó (1994), like I had the privilege to see it, because it was released on DVD, we are offered a long invitation to voyage. Because it lasts 7 hours. It's sequenced, chaptered. Like a sort of testimony of the Western world that used to be Communist, where moral values collapsed. Do you agree? Why certain of your films are so long?

TARR: What do you mean by long?

ADLER: I mean, since you say you're philosopher, I have the impression you've read Heraclitus a lot, we are immersed in a river that has nothing to do the time we endure. But it's a time we choose to live with you.
TARR: I don't know. What you say is really nice. I'm blushing.
At the time when Hungary and other new states joined the European Union, in may 2004, the omnibus project from Copenhagen gathered filmmakers from the European Union, and I did the one for Hungary. It lasted only 5 minutes! One take. I'm terribly proud of this movie.

ADLER: You can.

TARR: because it looks like a haiku. Sátántangó is really long. But the duration matches your intention. I can't accept when somebody ask me to make a movie that lasts between 1h½ and 2h. It's ridiculous. It's like if Tolstoy was told War and Peace is great but if you could reduce the Peace part... The War part is very interesting, but the Peace part is boring...

ADLER: ...so you compare yourself to Tolstoy?

TARR: NO. I just make this analogy to show haw stupid it is. For example, a painter paints miniatures and sometimes they make a large painting. To me, the short film length is like a Haiku. And it's the same working process and the same effort as the 7h long Sátántangó. I grew up in a communist country and I know very well the communist censorship. I also know the Western censorship. And I can tell you there is this censorship of the free market, and to me it's the same shit.


ADLER: We know that the shooting of The Man From London met a lot of difficulties... (shooting issues). Then the premature death of your producer, Humbert Balsan, we loved so fondly. Then your film has been cancelled. But finally it carried through. The Man From London, it's a book written by Georges Simenon in 1933. I wanted to know why you decided to pick Simenon?

TARR: I like to read. My ideal holidays is to be sitting at home in the summertime, in the garden (because I live in a smaller town in the country). One night like this, I've read this book by Simenon. What stroke me most was the atmosphere. It's night, somebody sitting in a cage alone. Nothing's happening. The city sleeps. The sea waves noisily. This is the image that touched me. This is not just a criminal story. What is important is that it's a man over 50ies, his life is very monotonous, he spends all his time working, then goes to the pub, the goes home. The small old routine. And that's his life. This is life.

ADLER: And he has a daughter. He doesn't want her to end up like him.

TARR: Yes, exactly. but He never thinks about it because he has accepted his fate. It's the order of the world. What was interesting to me, was to observe what happens when this man meets the temptation. He gets the chance to do something and to give something. Observing how he is rewarded and how he loses in the end... This is a kind of destiny. This is a very human, normal and profound story. I love these people and I can show them on the film, to convince you to love them too.
Then I began production of the film. One day I got a phone call from Humbert Balsan, he said OK to join the production. Two days before the first day of shooting, we heard the news from Paris that he passed away. We shot 9 days, and afterwards the French bank cut the funds and we had to stop the shooting. I was certain we'd finish this film. Firstly for Humbert. Secondly because we spent a lot for money for the set. And it's public money. He trusted me, so I had to honour the contract. And thirdly, if a man starts something he must finish it.

ADLER: ... a woman likewise.

TARR: Yes of course. You know, I love women. If you watch my movies, you'll see that I respect them and love them very much.

ADLER: .. that's right. More than men. Anyway The Man From London has opened in France now, it's a beautiful film, and it is dedicated to : Humbert Balsan. Infinite thanks Béla Tarr.

TARR: thanks a lot.

• Repeat of the broadcast on 9 March 2011, with added material about The Turin Horse at the end of the interview (France Culture, 9 Mar 2011) [MP3] 45' 

Review Of Damnation

Copyright © by Dan Schneider

Bela Tarr became the most well known Hungarian director of films with the 1987 release of Damnation (Kárhozat). And, it’s no wonder. While not an inarguably great film, it is certainly close, and a good case for its greatness can be made. More cogently, the film showed Tarr as a filmmaker who is singular, despite some manifest parallels to the work of Andrei Tarkovsky and Theo Angelopoulos. This 117 minute long black and white film, shown in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio is similar, in structure, to Tarkovsky’s Stalker, and in pacing to Angelopoulos’s films, although its visual imagery is straight out of the Italian Neo-Realism of the 1940s and 1950s.

The film opens with a long slow pullback from a hot of a tramway of mining buckets moving back and forth, suspended over a bleak landscape, part of a small mining town. The sounds of the mechanized drudgery set the tone for the film, and as the camera pulls back from the buckets we see that we are inside an apartment, looking out the window at them. The camera then pulls even further back and around the silhouetted of a man’s head. The slow reveal moves from almost a documentary-like feel to one of utter expressionism, as it finally ends, and we see a man shaving with a razor. This break, several minutes into the film, ends a shot that is almost a mirror image of the final shot of Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger. Antonioni, of course, is another filmmaker that Tarr is often compared to, and without a doubt, there are also similarities. Like the Italian cinematic master, Tarr’s shot is, at once, the essence of simplicity, but also complexity and duplicity, for, while we start out with what seems an objective documentary shot of an industrial landscape, suspended in mid-air, it soon morphs into what seems to be a subjective shot of a character looking hopelessly out of a definite place. But, then, as the camera pulls back behind the putative eyeline of the silhouetted figure, the shot again becomes objective and omniscient, then switches to a more conventional shot of the main character, whom we learn is called Karrer (Miklós Székely), shaving. Then, we see, as the camera, again pans behind him, how his reflected image disappears behins the imposition of the darkness Karrer’s body casts, until his face is swallowed by his body’s darkness.

Within the first few minutes of the film, two themes emerge. The first is that Tarr is challenging concepts of the viewer’s perspectives and assumptions, and the second is that his main character is a man whose essence is slowly disappearing, even before we get into the main thrust of the film’s tale. Then we get shots of a car in front of a dilapidated apartment building, only to have it pull back and reveal Kerrer, again, spying on the car’s occupant. As the man leaves, Karrer goes into the building to see a woman (Vali Kerekes), an ex-lover (presumably) of his whom he is still obsessed with, and wife of the man with the car, feeling only her love can save him from a life of seeming unemployment (we never see Karrer do anything of a positive note- work nor otherwise), staring at the buckets that pass by his apartment window. She sings at the town’s grimy bar, the Titanik, and dreams of making it to the big cities, so she can have comforts, with or without her husband (György Cserhalmi), or Karrer, whom she treats like a pathetic insect. Instantly, we know what the relationship between these two is. By visually presenting Karrer’s seamier insecure side with visuals, and seeing the faux confident posturing of the slatternly singer, with almost no words, Tarr has set up a universal situation, familiar to lonely men and manipulative women worldwide.

Throughout the rest of the film, a simple tale plays out. Karrer is given an opportunity to earn money smuggling things for the local bar owner (Gyula Pauer), but instead pawns off the opportunity on the singer’s husband, so he can be out of town more, and he try to restart their romance. The husband warns Karrer away from his wife, even though he views him as no threat, and takes the smuggling gig. Numerous scenes depict the suffocating life the people in this town lead, at the end of the Communist era. Karrer eventually gets the singer back in to bed, after a physical fight (although both what we see of their lovemaking, and the way it is presente4d- via peepholes and mirrors, makes it one of the least erotic sex scenes ever filmed- despite its nudity), but loses her affection soon afterwards, even as he ignores the potential of a deeper relationship with another woman (Hédi Temessy) who seems to have feelings for him, and always has a kind word for Karrer, and a spiteful, if accurate, opinion of the self-centered and vain singer. When the husband returns, things sour between Karrer and the singer, and when she ends things, after some well composed and choreographed shots, he eventually finks on the singer and her husband, telling the authorities of the husband’s role as a smuggler, and gets his revenge that way. He also turns in the bar owner, for his part in the scheme, and the fact that the singer let him do her while Karrer and the husband fought about the wife. In a sense, if one understands what the system was in Communists states of the last century, the ending may have been predictable. But, the results of how it affects Karrer are not. He seems to slowly lose a grip on reality, and in the final scenes of the film, in a hellish junkyard, he ends up on all fours, barking and driving away a stray dog that, along with some others, has spent the film scavenging through the wasteland looking for scraps of food in the gloomy rain that pervades almost every scene. Karrer is not only still a loser, and a bigger one than at the film’s start, but he has set up people and ruined their lives, not content to be alone in his own misery, but needing to have company in his swill.

The film is, despite its black and white, dark and sodden landscapes, amazingly beautiful. Rarely has the geography of the human mien been captured so wrenchingly, whether in the faces of the main characters, or in shots that seem to be social commentaries that underscore and play out against the main narrative, and featuring people who are never seen again. There is almost a clinical aspect to the way that Tarr pores over not only the human aspect but also the ruins of a small town. Yet, never is it technically clinical. The slow motion of camera movements away from the seeming center of the story is something that few filmmakers do, Yet Tarr does so, not only with ease, but a purposiveness that hints at the fact that the putative focus of that is just that, putative, and of no more genuine interest than a small portion of a derelicted building he turns his camera on.

The DVD, put out by Facets Video, has a good transfer, although, here and there, there are some flaws and splotches. The film’s subtitles are in white, but unlike the often unreadable subtitles The Criterion Collection uses on black and white films, Facets uses a black outline around the white lettering so that the words stand out very well. There are no features to speak of, and the only ‘extra’ is a small booklet that features some pretty good essays on Tarr and his canon. The film’s screenplay, by Tarr, adapted along with László Krasznahorkai, from Krasznahorkai’s novel, is the sort that most critics would not rave over, because it is not larded with dialogue that sets the mind ablaze, nor is its pacing something that most video game addicted Americans will find stimulating. But, like Last Year In Marienbad or 2001: A Space Odyssey, the film’s screenplay is key to its greatness, for its holds together the often conflicting images, which would fall to anomy without the script. The pair, Tarr and Krasznahorkai, have become Europe’s latter day film-novelist equivalent to the 1960s pairing of filmmaker Hiroshi Teshigahara and novelist Kōbō Abe. The cinematography, by Gábor Medvigy, is suoperb. Often in black and white films, especially those of recent decades, the use of that palette has no real significance, for all it does is present a blanched world. Tarr and Medvigy, however, make full use of total blackness, and its interruptions, as well as the plenum of grays that run between it and its antipodes, showing the superfluity of color in many films, and just how effective black and white cinema can reflect dreams, their lack, and the horror that fact can present. In this sense, Damnation truly is a horror film, with its desolated urban landscapes (which were a set, not real), often shown at odd angles, often reminding a well rounded cineaste of earlier horror films like Vampyr, Frankenstein, The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari, or many other German Expressionist films from the silent era.

As wonderful as the cinematography is, I must, however, return to the screenplay, and compare this film with another film about a near-sociopathic loner, filmed a dozen years before this one, in color, but mostly at night, so that the color was minimized. I refer to Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, for like Damnation, much of the film follows the singular lead character, who is rapt by his reflection in mirrors and windows, who is obsessed with a woman who disdains him for dreams that she will never achieve. While Taxi Driver is, for most of its length, a film that deals with the impotence of the modern man, at least Travis Bickle (portrayed by Robert De Niro) eventually shoots his load. Karrer does not. In fact, he is so impotent that he is reduced to arguing with a feral dog, one who, when we see them muzzle to muzzle, we are not quite sure if Karrer may even attempt to sexually mount. This is another way in which Damnation can make its claim to being a ‘realistic’ horror film.

Yet, Taxi Driver provides another ‘in’ to how Damnation works, the cinema of misdirection. There is a scene in the Scorsese film where, after Bickle has taken Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) to a porno flick, he tries to apologize and call her from a payphone in a shitty hallway of a tenement. As we hear only his end of the conversation, the audience can tell that Betsy is brushing him off, and the camera ‘looks away’ from the internal angst of Bickle, and down the corridor, out into the bright daylight. We hear Bickle deal with his rejection, but we do not see it. Similarly, Damnation uses the same technique, although it is used repeatedly, and not with such dramatic emphasis as Scorsese used it. In a number of scenes, characters walk in to and out of frame, and the camera lingers on a structure of building, and even looks in a direction away from it, to see dogs, or insects, or the beading of rain on a window, as if to subtly suggest that the ‘story’ we feel the film is about is not necessarily the only thing of concern to the film. The most damning shot in Damnation, of this sort, is at film’s end, after Karrer has scared off the wild dog, and walks off, leaving the film to end pondering the rain, mud, and destruction, in a scene that reminded me of the end of Ursula LeGuin’s The Lathe Of Heaven. In an earlier shot, the camera slowly pans through the local bar, from Karrer, and the husband and singer conversing, to follow the husband as he speaks to the bar owner in back, and then around the pool room, past Karrer and the singer, and back to the husband’s return. This plays out over several minutes, even as we hear Karrer and the singer speak. Yet, the most interesting things in the shot are nor what is said, but the little and manifestly predictable habits we see totally minor characters engage in, even over such a brief time. After all, it’s a pool bar, and whether in Hungary, Chicago or Singapore, they have their own rules of etiquette, so to speak.

Naturally, most critics, even those who praised the film, barely got what the film is about, and often imbued blatantly wrong ideas from the barest of threads. Instead, they digressed on to treatises about Tarr’s conflicted take on existence, his being an anti-Communist zealot, or his merely being derivative of earlier directors, especially the nominally similar Tarkovsky. Where Tarkovsky is explicitly spiritual, Tarr is overtly materialist. His characters not only reject inner lives, but they are seemingly incapable of understanding what they are. Karrer, as example, reiterates his desires for a ‘life’ with the singer, unawares that what he has, pathetic as it is, is still better than nothing, and that if he ever got his wish, it would likely only hasten the end of that relationship. The singer cares nothing of anyone but herself, and her husband veers between testosteronic threats and an impotence of mind that equals Karrer’s. Only the woman played by Hédi Temessy shows any depth, yet she is not only marginalized by Karrer’s lack of attention to her feelings and entreaties, but by her own inability to see that she is as rote a creature as the others are, despite her ability to see the Möbius Strip life she, and the others, inhabit. In this way, Orson Welles’ The Trial is the most direct antecedent for Damnation. The Kafka tale is as circular, if a bit grander, but nonetheless fatal.

Too many critics and filmgoers (even twenty years ago) have too delimited an idea of narrative, and what it is and can do, to appreciate an artist like Tarr, who exploits those very conventions, but not in radical antitheses, but in sly digressions to the next door, so that what the viewer is left with is not a conventional tale, but a story that almost ghosts its essence upon the expected. Dourness becomes a thing to marvel, and beauty becomes a thing tossed aside, and the camera often makes the viewer question their import, something few works of art do, taking too much for granted. When the camera focuses on something, therefore, it is not the thing in front of the eyes that is the subject, but the watcher behind. This subtle displacement of the everyday is a thing that adds psychological heft to the film, even though not in a manner discernible to most arts lovers. Often, silly appellations like a ‘noir Angelopoulos’ are used, even though their utterers have not a clue what such a claim means.

Damnation is a film that achieves greatness in many moments, but sometimes does not know when its points have all been made. The slight excesses of lingerance are the only down sides to a film that is a terrific document of the human creature; one that still has relevance to its viewers, as well as its viewed.

[Originally posted at Blogcritics]

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Announcement: Unspoken Cinema Journal. Call for submissions.

Unspoken Cinema Journal

Bela Tarr issue – Call for submissions

To coincide with recent remarks made by Béla Tarr, that his next film may be his last, Unspoken Cinema Journal is delighted to dedicate its inaugural issue to the uncompromising Hungarian master.

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Unspoken Cinema Journal is a quarterly periodical devoted to scholarship, discussion and the promotion of contemplative cinema. Despite its elusive definition, we recognize contemplative cinema as one that departs from the safety of neorealism and transcendental style; to fearlessly explore the undrawn aesthetic boundaries of minimalism, mutism, existentialist and materialist film. We also recognize contemplative cinema as a truly transcultural cinematic avant-garde.

Our intention is to deliver as rich and engaging exploratory film criticism in this field as possible. Unspoken Cinema Journal encourages written and image (still) based submissions from a wide range of styles. We welcome established contributors as much as lesser known cinéphiles. Accepted formats include: polemical writing, manifestos, photo essays, transcribed interviews, traditional academic essays and journalistic reports. We advance no restrictions on ideological or hermeneutic approach. Unspoken Cinema Journal is also committed to open access, we believe that content should be accessible to the widest online readership.

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Suggested – but not exhaustive – topics for the Béla Tarr issue:

Responses to journeys and travel in Tarr’s cinema; constructions of spatio-temporal geography. Explorations of the (a)political and historical landscape of Tarr’s world. Tarr’s cinema versus the conventions of commercial infrastructure. Image essays on Tarr’s cinematographic discourse: A camera as stalker, voyeur or omnipresence. Retrospectives and overviews of Tarr’s cinematic legacy. We are especially interested in contributions on Family Nest (1979) and The Man From London (2007).

Style guidelines

Articles, reports, transcriptions 800 - 2500 words and essays 3000 - 6000. Submit as A4 word format (double-spaced), using MLA referencing style.

Deadline for issue 1 is 19th January 2009, although we will continue to accept for future issues. All successful contributions shall appear at the forthcoming website.

All contact, enquiries and submissions: unspokenjournal@googlemail.com

image: Flickr.

Tarr Béla quits cinema?

Supportive Petition for Tarr Béla

In the September issue of Cahiers (#637), one of the best filmmaker working today, Béla Tarr, casually declares at the end of an interview being fed up. He wants to end his career after his next film (in production now in November 2008) which will be his last. Tarr Béla, the Hungarian auteur who gave us : The Man From London (2007), Werckmeister harmóniák (2000), Sátántangó (1994), Damnation (1988), Almanac of Fall (1985), The Prefab People (1982), Family Nest (1979)...
Excerpt from the end of the interview (my unauthorized translation), by Cyril Neyrat and Emmanuel Burdeau made in Paris, on June 26, 2008 :

[about The Man From London]
Cahiers : you suppressed almost all dialogue from Simenon's novel. The lines remaining are very strong, and performed with power. Where from does this excess of emotional expression?
Tarr : I maybe come back to my roots, Family Nest, my first movies in which I was very expressive. I admit I feel deeply fed up. I'm going to quit cinema, but not right away.

CdC: why fed up?
Tarr: I can't stand this fucking polite equality, "petite-bourgeoise", existing in the world. This deal between the poor and Society, how they are forced to accept this order, and we accept this shitty world, it's unbelievable. So no, I have to show what is really going on : people are fed up, their emotions are strong, powerful. And the question is : how these emotions are exploited, controlled, before the big bang.

CdC: Do you really mean to quit cinema?
Tarr: Yes. I just want to make one last film.

CdC: Do you have a scenario?
Tarr: Absolutely. I intend to start shooting in October. When you'll see it, you'll understand why it can only be my last film. I will shoot it in Hungary. Only 3 protagonists, a very small budget, a film very simple. Even more simple, purer.

CdC: What will you do then?
Tarr: Oh, I have plans. No, I don't want to die. I like life, I appreciate it, of course. I know very well how shitty it is, but I'm able to appreciate it. On one condition : that I'm able to do something. Or else..."

This interview is very disturbing, and I'm surprised Cahiers didn't even investigate the point, left him hanging there without trying to find out what he really meant by this. He also declared in a screening of The Man From London, in Paris (Sept 8, 2008) :

"he wanted to paint, take photographs and write in the future, avoiding the role of 'burned out director'."

In another interview for the French website DVDrama (19 Sept 2008):

Tarr Béla : "I never compromised. If one day I had been stopped to do what I wanted, then I would have aborted the film,thus cinema altogether. I disagree with the idea that a film should be made at all costs because it is necessary to make a film, and in fact to sell out to the system. [...] By the way, I think my next feature film will be the last one and the pinnacle of my career.

DVDrama: Why the last one?
Tarr : Because I'm appalled by today's cinema. I think spectators want less and less a demanding cinema. [...] During all my career I made sure never to underestimate the capacity of the audience and I made films for those who like that, because I think they deserve it that such cinema must exist.

DVDrama: Should this renunciation be perceived as despair?
Tarr: Maybe, yes, but it's also because my cinema requires too much money and that I always used to push the rules in each new film, inventing ideas of mise en scène, while developing my own style. [...] With The Man From London, I realised that I maybe reached the limit of my capacity to renew myself and to create new forms.

I don't know what are his motivations, if it's personal or if it's the struggle of making films in the margin... he probably knows what he's doing. The publicity stunt to boost his next film is highly unlikely.
Anyway, I'm disheartened at the idea that there will be no more masterpieces made by Tarr Béla, for us to anticipate and discover and explore and enjoy... after that last one. It's impossible. We need a Tarr Béla working to show there is light. Personally I believe he is the most sophisticated filmmaker in the world today. He's like Tarkovsky in his time, the one who understands the medium the best and pushes it where nobody else led it before, because he masters camerawork, photography, direction and timing so perfectly. He's a genius and we need many more of his films. Let's just tell him that he's not replaceable.

If only to show him support and love, I would like to propose to readers of Unspoken Cinema, and every admirer of his oeuvre in the world, to pass on a symbolic petition asking Tarr Béla to reconsider his decision, if it is even possible. The idea of a petition might sound ridiculous, but I prefer this gesture to the late regrets of an obituary, looking back with nostalgia on all the unfinished projects.
In any case, we need to get together, and make sure to give a triumphant reception to his next film, if it happens to be his last. Maybe a Tarr Béla blogathon would suit this event.


Please sign here to show your support, pass it on to everyone and share your opinions on the situation.

Tarr's universe

"Out of Tarr's universe"
A poetic look at the work of Hungarian film director Béla Tarr.
By Nadine Poulain (in filmwaves #34, Autumn 2007)

excerpts (my emphasis) :

[foreword]

"Instead of deconstructing Bela Tarr's films the following essay aims to capture the uniqueness and intensity of his work. Meaning and interpretation is left to the individual. Film as experience.

Endless rain
Mud's soft embrace
Gravity, weight, physical being
Black and white
or rather an infinite graduation of greys"

(...)

"Tarr's universe, where the story is bare, a secondary thing. It provides the structure for the subtle to unfold. Locations are equal to characters. We contemplate them, have time to become familiar with their peculiarities. Often we arrive at a location before the characters enter the frame, stay there after they have left. Temps mort, our breeding ground, has never been more alive. Scenery and natural elements tell their own stories, in their own time. Breathing still lives that sometimes get invaded by the characters. We do not have to follow, as they walk in and out. Off-screen noise, off-screen action, reminds us of the world beyond the frame. A camera that reveals, while at the same time denying. Attention is drawn to what escapes our gaze. It is self-conscious directing. The frame always also refers to what lies outside of it, to the subjective nature of cinematic reality."

(...) [describing the scene in Damnation with the couple in the room at the break of dawn] :

"Content with one frame, we rest. We become familiar with this side of the room, while we wonder how the rest looks, who the woman is. A reversed opening shot, leaving us in a state, where we cannot locate ourselves. We experience a slight tension from being denied, rather than exposed. The singularity of the shot refers to all there could be. It speaks of literature's great potential: to evoke.

The absence of the cut. Raw and unfiltered time. Our eyes travel over space that constantly opens up. We gain what editing takes away: the chance to find relevance and emphasis ourselves. Meditative, contemplative, demanding: the long take, cinema of continuity. Information, cut replaced by confidence in transcending the passive viewer position. We enter into a partnership, re-seeing and re-exploring. We feel the presence of the characters. Real life. People who are never more or less than a part of their environment. We get to know and understand them, through spending time with them and the world they are living in. In respectful distance, we observe. Slowly they reveal their personage."

(...) [describing Estike's journey in Satantango, the girl who tortures the cat] :

"To share silence, to become comfortable with the absence of words, it is intimacy that unfolds. Inner states are accessed through a detour. Her opaqueness does not burden us with outer manifestations. Immediate exhaustibility is denied, emotional involvement counterbalanced. This distance in reverse brings us closer to her, for it is from our own depth that we have to draw.

Tarr's universe, an intense and honest engagement. Sensibilities and interest for the banal, the every day, meditated through style. Visual pleasure. Immaculately composed, brilliantly photographed. A graceful camera. We come closer to life, while at the same time maintain a reflective distance.
Tarr's universe, where dark images alternate with light ones, become all the darker after the pale and misty. Where words are rare, not to be wasted. At times they follow one another, form a denseness that plays off the silence preceding and following. We glide through space, endlessly stalking, then motionless we rest. The dance of opposites. Impact in relation to the other. Each long shot establishes a sense of materiality, a temporal denseness. It emphasises the moment, concentrates on the singular. Action, sound and camera work in their repetition form rhythmical patterns. Caught in the drama of the moment, perception for change is heightened. The cut, a major event."

(...) [describing the music speech scene in Werkmeister Harmonies] :

"Then we travel back and embark on another journey around the head of the speaker. One circle after the other. Camera movement and speech take on a sense of materiality. What will happen next? when? We are caught in the drama of the moment, its monotonous denseness.
Restless we drift through space, soak up each syllable, just to rest motionless again, enjoy the silence after anew.

We are in Bela Tarr's universe, a convincing parallel world with its own laws, its own logic. A universe out of joint. (...) The creature of self-pity mankind. When it reflects upon its disgraceful nature, it cannot but burst into laughter. It is the one, which after all can retreat into detachment, can distance itself from itself. The mocking one, annoying and entertaining itself with its continuous mourning.
When one goes all the way into one direction, one comes out at the opposite end. Maybe? Is where bleakness becomes funny, misery turns into hope, self-neglect becomes a passionate embrace?

Tarr's universe, always detached, always respectful. One vision one idea, uncompromised. A bleakly comic reflection on the human condition. Polemic in its pessimisms, it is nevertheless democratic, for it invites us, engages with us on many levels. It is a somehow wholesome experience. A journey, rather than a moral lesson. Facing the worst of what we can be, we may be able to regain pride and grace, and if it is just for the fact, that we diagnose."

(...)

Romney on the Contemplative trend

(This is a great article recommended by Celinejulie)

Are You Sitting Comfortably?
by Jonathan Romney, The Guardian (October 7, 2000).

Here are some highlights regarding CCC :

"The film in question was Satantango, made in 1994 by the Hungarian director Bela Tarr, and something of a legend among aficionados of painstakingly slow European art cinema. A film that long and that sombre is not likely to become an international art-house hit along the lines of Jean de Florette, or even to find a comfortable slot on the festival circuit. But Tarr's film has a reputation as something more than a lugubrious oddity of monstrous proportions - it is a powerful, visionary piece of cinema that creates its own stark world and keeps the viewer compellingly locked in for its duration.
(...) his most recent film Werckmeister Harmonies recently caused a stir at the Edinburgh Film Festival, where viewers received it as a genuine cinematic UFO. Filmed in Tarr's characteristic slow, analytically prowling shots, Werckmeister Harmonies is set in a desolate rural settlement where a violent communal madness is sparked by the arrival of a bizarre fairground attraction - the preserved body of a huge whale."

I've posted this snippet in the roundtable on CCC synopsis, as an exemple of a review that feels obliged to apologize to the reader/audience for the potential negative aspects of a contemplative film.

"Tarr is one of the film-makers named by Susan Sontag - in an article published in the Guardian in 1996 - as offering some hope for the continuation of cinema. Sontag was lamenting the death of cinephilia, the attitude that treats cinema as an exceptional art form, "quintessentially modern; distinctively accessible; poetic and mysterious and erotic and moral - all at the same time." In the 90s, Sontag argued, cinema had gone into "ignominious, irreversible decline", and great films would no longer be merely exceptions, but "heroic violations" of the norm."

Anybody has a version of the full Sontag article?
The "death of cinephilia" is another can of worms, but she mentions the problematic reference to the "mainstream norm", just like Rosenbaum and Durgnat argued in the roundtable mentionned last month on this blog (Non-narrative film criticism).

"This may not hold true in all parts of the world - film language seems constantly to reinvent itself in Iran, and in the work of Asian directors such as Taiwan's Tsai Ming-Liang and Korea's Hong Sang-Soo. But Tarr is one of a very few European directors determined to work outside mainstream forms, and who still believe in cinema's potential to transform the viewer. These film-makers are not out to convey obvious messages, and in these pragmatic days, they risk coming across like mystics. But the keynote of their work is not woolly transcendentalism, but intrepid and rigorous formal invention."

I'm happy to see he cites the same auteurs we are grouping here at Unspoken Cinema, under the banner of CCC. :)

The antecedents of such cinema are the likes of Andrei Tarkovsky, the almost forgotten Hungarian master Miklos Jansco, the German Expressionist cinema of the 20s, or the work of 70s German directors, especially Werner Herzog. This school of cinema refuses to spoon-feed us with ready-made experiences or easily recognisable beauty: the beauty in these films is easily mistaken for the ugly or drab. That would certainly account for the impatient, almost offended drubbing that British critics last week gave to Abendland, by the young German director Fred Kelemen - another of Sontag's favoured few, and a former student of Tarr's. "Bela and I share the same vision of cinema," Kelemen says. "We believe in time and not in speed - atmospheres and situations rather than stories."

... and the same precursors (see tentative genealogy here). So we're getting somewhere maybe. He emphasises like we do the opposition of this trend with "spoon-fed narrativity"!
"We believe in time and not in speed - atmospheres and situations rather than stories." This is exactly what we are talking about.
I've never heard of Fred Kelemen before though. Anyone here has seen his films?

Fred Kelemen (Frost, 1997) : "We are on a journey, very simply. We're born, we die and in between we have to make our way, and there's no way to stop. Even if you sit in your room and do nothing, time is passing and something is happening - which is a very big adventure."

Celinejulie cited this excerpt, and it echoes perfectly what Adrian Martin develops in his celebration of walking.

"Kelemen and Tarr may inhabit the absolute margins of European cinema but they are by no means alone. The science of long takes and landscape tableaux - as if the screen were a huge map to be unfolded - still flourishes in the work of Greek director Theo Angelopoulos, who has been refining his art of geographically spectacular slowness since the 70s. In Russia, Aleksandr Sokurov's pictorial finesse unequivocally follows Tarkovsky's mystical tradition: his muted, enigmatic miniature Mother and Son was a cult art-house success (although for my money, his follow-up Moloch, a chilly, anaesthetised political cartoon about Hitler's home life, is far more interesting).

Other pensive outsiders who fit the mould are the truly marginal Portuguese. For example, there is Pedro Costa, whose Lisbon junkie drama Ossos is one of the great overlooked films of the 90s. And surely the most waywardly unpredictable European auteur, bar none, is Joao Cesar Monteiro, who appears as his own roué-philosopher anti-hero in such demented, leisurely rambles as God's Comedy and The Hips of JW (about a mission to find John Wayne at the North Pole). It goes without saying that this cinema is very much prey to the vagaries of personal taste. It is possible to believe passionately in the virtues of slowness, alienation, the creation of a dream-like, hermetic reality - and still not be able to swallow the self-importance of a film like Bruno Dumont's L'Humanité, which would seem to fulfil all those criteria.

Kelemen admits that in the kind of cinema he practices, "it's always a question of openness, of state of mind, whether one enters into it or not - it can even depend on the day you see it." That is why many of these films are like messages in bottles, thrown into the ocean in the hope that the right viewer will see them in the right frame of mind. You could call it Castaway Cinema, and one of its most heroically strange castaways is globetrotting Lithuanian director Sharunas Bartas. Bartas's films include Few of Us, about a young woman's unexplained mission to Mongolia, and the baroque The House, in which a crowd of outcasts stage enigmatic indoor tableaux.

These poetic and exceptionally mysterious pieces are closer to art video than narrative cinema. His latest film Freedom, featured in the forthcoming London Film Festival, is again a wordless affair, of figures in a North African landscape and events replaced by images - crabs falling out of a bag, sand blowing across arid plains. One of the few British screenings of Bartas' work was provided by Turner Prize winner Steve McQueen, who pro grammed it in a recent season at the ICA. "It's almost like having a conversation with someone," McQueen says. "It's in real time, it takes a long time to finish a sentence, but you go through the whole process, and there's this result, the pay-off, and you think - yes!"

The work of these rare, rejected but vital castaway directors can't easily be defined in terms of where it comes from, how it is made, or even how slow it is. That would account for the challenge, and the unusual rewards, of this very subjective cinema, a cinema that practically psychoanalyses you - and if you're lucky, cures you of your Hollywood-induced traumas."

"Landscape tableaux", "a huge map to be unfolded", "art of geographically spectacular slowness", "pictorial finesse", "muted, enigmatic miniature", "enigmatic indoor tableaux", "wordless affair", "events replaced by images"... these are inspirational phrases for a (positivist) contemplative film criticism.
He even defines this trend by "the virtues of slowness, alienation, the creation of a dream-like, hermetic reality"!

And the name he proposes is "Castaway Cinema", what do you think?