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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Cinemension: Film's Extra Dimension

Bazin on Umberto D.

Excerpt from "What is Cinema ? " in defence of De Sica's Umberto D (1952) :

"L'impossibilité où nous sommes d'en analyser les caractéristiques formelles ne procède-t-elle pas de ce qu'il représente l'expression la plus pure du néo-réalisme, de ce que Voleur de bicyclette en est comme le point zéro de référence, le centre idéal autour duquel gravitent sur leur orbite particulière les œuvres des autres grands metteurs en scène. Ce serait cette pureté même qui le rendrait indéfinissable puisqu'elle a pour propos paradoxal non point de faire spectacle qui semble réel, mais inversement d'instituer la réalité en spectacle : un homme marche dans la rue et le spectateur s'étonne de la beauté d'un homme qui marche. Jusqu'à plus ample informé, jusqu'à ce que soit réalisé le rêve de Zavattini de filmer sans montage quatre-vingt-dix-minutes de la vie d'un homme, Voleur de Bicyclette [Bicycle Thieves, 1948] est sans conteste l'expression extrême du néoréalisme.
De ce que cette mise en scène a précisement pour objet de se nier elle-même, d'être parfaitement transparente à la réalité qu'elle révèle, il serait pourtant naïf de conclure à son inexistence. Il est inutile de dire que peu de films ont été plus minutieusement concertés, plus médités, plus soigneusement élaborés, mais tout le travail de de Sica y tend à donner l'illusion du hasard, à faire que la nécessité dramatique ait le caractère de la contingence. Mieux, il est parvenu à faire de la contingence la matière du drame. Rien ne se produit dans le Voleur de Bicyclette qui n'eût pu ne pas se produire : l'ouvrier pourrait par chance, au milieu du film, retrouver son vélo, on rallumerait la salle et de Sica viendrait s'excuser de nous avoir dérangés, mais après tout nous serions bien contents quand même pour l'ouvrier. C'est le merveilleux paradoxe esthétique de ce film qu'il ait la rigueur de la tragédie et que rien n'y arrive pourtant que par hasard. Mais c'est justement de la synthèse dialectique des valeurs contraires de l'ordre artistique et du désordre amorphe de la réalité qu'il tire son originalité. Il n'est pas une image qui ne soit chargé de sens, qui n'enfonce dans l'esprit la pointe aigüe d'une vérité morale inoubliable, pas une non plus qui ne trahisse pour ce faire l'ambigüité ontologique de la réalité. Pas un geste, pas un incident, pas un objet n'y sont déterminés à priori par l'idéologie du metteur en scène. S'ils s'ordonnent avec une clarté irréfutable sur le spectre de la tragédie sociale, c'est comme les grains de limaille sur le spectre de l'aimant : séparément. Mais le résultat de cet art où rien n'est nécessaire, n'a perdu le caractère fortuit du hasard, c'est justement d'être doublement convaincant et démonstratif. (...)
On voit combien ce néo-réalisme est loin de la conception formelle qui consiste à habiller une histoire avec de la réalité. Quant à la technique proprement dite, Voleur de Bicyclette est, comme beaucoup d'autres films, tourné dans la rue avec des acteurs non professionnels, mais son vrai mérite est tout autre : c'est de ne pas trahir l'essence des choses, de les laisser d'abord exister pour elles-mêmes librement, de les aimer dans leur singularité particulière. (...)
Zavattini m'a dit : " Je suis comme un peintre devant une prairie et qui se demande par quel brin d'herbe il doit commencer. " De Sica est le metteur en scène idéal de cette profession de foi. Il y a l'art de peindre la prairie comme des rectangles de couleur. Et aussi celui des auteurs dramatiques qui divisent le temps de la vie en épisodes qui, au regard de l'instant vécu, sont ce qu'est le brin d'herbe à la prairie. Pour peindre chaque brin d'herbe, il faut être le douanier Rousseau. Dans le cinéma, il faut avoir pour la création l'amour d'un de Sica.

Note sur " Umberto D ".

Jusqu'au jour où je vis Umberto D, je considérais Voleur de Bicyclette comme l'extrême limite du néo-réalisme en ce qui concerne la conception du récit. Aujourd'hui il me semble que Voleur de Bicyclette est encore loin de l'idéal du sujet zavatinien. Non que je considère Umberto D comme "supérieur". L'inégalable supériorité de Voleur de bicyclette demeure la réconciliation paradoxale de valeurs radicalement contradictoires: la liberté du fait et la rigueur du récit. Mais à cette réconciliation les auteurs n'ont atteint qu'au sacrifice de la continuité même de la réalité. Dans Umberto D on entrevoit à plusieurs reprises ce que serait un cinéma véritablement réaliste quant au temps. Un cinéma de la "durée".
Il faut préciser que ces expériences de "temps continu" ne sont pas absolument originales au cinéma. Dans La corde par exemple, Alfred Hitchcock a réalisé un film de quatre-vingt-dix minutes sans interruptions. Mais il s'agissait justement d'une "action", comme au théâtre. Le vrai problème ne se pose pas par rapport à la continuité de la pellicule impressionnée, mais à la structure temporelle de l'événement.
Si La Corde [Rope, 1948] a pu être tournée sans changement de plans, sans arrêt des prises de vues, et offrir pourtant un spectacle dramatique, c'est que les événements étaient déjà ordonnés dans l'œuvre théâtrale selon un temps artificiel : le temps du théâtre (comme il y a celui de la musique ou de la danse).
Dans deux scènes au moins d'Umberto D, les problèmes du sujet et du scénario se posent tout à fait différemment. Il s'agit là de rendre spectaculaire et dramatique le temps même de la vie, la durée naturelle d'un être auquel n'arrive rien de particulier. Je pense notamment au coucher d'Umberto D, qui rentre dans sa chambre et croit avoir la fièvre, et surtout, au réveil de la petite bonne. Ces deux séquences constituent sans doute la "performance" limite d'un certain cinéma, sur le plan de ce que l'on pourrait appeler "le sujet invisible", je veux dire, totalement dissout dans le fait qu'il a suscité, tandis que lorsqu'un film est tiré d'une "histoire", celle-ci reste distincte comme le squelette sans les muscles; on peut toujours "raconter le film".
La fonction du sujet n'est pas ici moins essentielle, mais sa nature est d'être totalement réabsorbée par le scénario. Si l'on veut, le sujet existe avant, il n'existe plus après. Après, il n'y a plus que le fait qu'il a lui-même prévu. Si je prétends raconter le film à quelqu'un qui ne l'a pas vu, ce que fait par exemple Umberto D dans sa chambre ou Maria, la petite bonne, à la cuisine, que me reste-t-il à dire ? Une poussière impalpable de gestes sans significations, où mon interlocuteur ne pourra prendre la moindre idée de l'émotion qui saisit le spectateur. Le sujet est ici sacrifié à l'avance, comme la cire perdue dans la fonte du bronze.
Sur le plan du scénario, ce type de sujet correspond réciproquement à un scénario entièrement fondé sur le comportement de l'acteur. Puisque le temps véritable du récit n'est pas celui du drame, mais la durée concrète du personnage, cette objectivité ne peut se traduire en mise en scène (scénario et action) qu'à travers une subjectivité absolue. Je veux dire que le film s'identifie absolument avec ce que fait l'acteur, et seulement avec ceci. Le monde extérieur se trouve réduit au rôle d'accessoire de cette action pure et qui se suffit à elle-même, comme ces algues qui, privées d'air, produisent l'oxygène dont elle ont besoin. L'acteur qui représente une certaine action, qui "interprète un rôle", se dirige toujours en partie lui-même, parce qu'il se réfère plus ou moins à un système de conventions dramatiques généralement admises et apprises dans les conservatoires. Ces conventions mêmes ne lui sont plus ici d'aucune aide ; il est entièrement entre les mains du metteur en scène dans cette totale imitation de la vie. (...)"

(in De Sica metteur en scène, 1952; in What is Cinema? Vol.2, Trad. Gray)
Automatic translation by Google here. If anyone has the official Gray translation, please add it here.

Where is cinema heading to?

Short videos on this question answered by Jia Zhang-ke, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Lisandro Alonso and Albert Serra.

Jia Zhang-ke (Chinese + French subs) 58" [centrepompidou]

Jia Zhang-ke : "I'm very confident in the future of cinema and I'm confident about new media, like internet or cell phones, that allow the audience to watch movies. But I'm also certain that the movie houses will last long. It's extremely important that the audience could gather in a common place to watch a filmic work. The size of the screen begs for respect, both for the work and the audience. This mutual respect will continue. And this is how I envision the future of cinema. Merci"

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Hou Hsiao-hsien (chinese + French subs) 1'25" [centrepompidou]

HHH: "Well it's not like writting... where we only need a pen and a paper. To work with cinema it's different. Question is : what is the difference between images and words? It's totally different. How are we going to work with images? We know that, from Lumière brothers up to now, cinema only exists for some 100 years. Now there are digital cameras, it will change everything, create new different forms. The point we are at now, we can't say where is cinema heading to. And especially, there is Internet now. It's very difficult to define the future of cinema.

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Lisandro Alonso (Spanish, English + French subs) 48" [centrepompidou]

Lisandro Alonso : "I don't know. It's difficult to say something serious... because it seems cinema is a little dead. But... I don't know, we have to go back to Lumière brothers. And then we'll see."

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Albert Serra, Cannes 2008 (French) 5' [centrepompidou]

Albert Serra : "It's difficult to say because cinema is losing its popular aspect. Because people became more stupid, right? since the 80ies, 90ies... and filmmakers are more erudit, we're talking about real filmmakers, right, trying to find a new original path. All this means more and more sophistication, more abstract, more impenetrable, regarding images. But the audience, with TV that has become this god of today, always into classical narration. I believe that cinema of the future will precisely be in the museum. It's the museum that will give money to make films, in the festivals. Maybe in 2018 at the Director's Fortnight they will give money to 5 filmmakers to make their film. Already today there are festivals like Rotterdam that give money to makes films. Because the usual ways to find money are difficult. TV today is impossible. I never had a TV set at home since I have 18 years old. It's a cancer. Someone who watches TV deserves to die right away. And it's me who will do it, naturally, if it's necessary. To find funds for cinema... I don't know if it's the same in France, but TV used to acquire art films before, today they don't buy anything... There is only the state subsidies... but there is less and less aids for art films. The era when The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Beach Boys, great artists, made music for a large popular success, when Godard could make a totally crazy movie with a big popular success... this era is over for ever.
What will cinema become? I don't know, it will simply lose its popular dimension. Because the people has become more stupid, cinema has evolved a little. Now with Modern Cinema there is no classical narration, we can see the images. Today for Modern Cinema it's like writing a poem. When you read a novel, you look for ideas, stories, all that. But when you read a poem, you don't have an absolute for each verse to have its own obvious signification. They could relate to an image or a suggestion... but there is always in your head this idea, and each verse don't need to have a full perfect meaning, where everything is evident. It's more like suggestions and images. In this approach of cinema, people move away from the popular side, more to the poetic side, like a poem. It will become more and more difficult to keep this tradition of cinema as we know it since its birth. Images pure and beautiful, but for everyone. It's a shame. It makes me sad. I try to keep this popular side with my non-actors, certain details, but it's a pity, I think it will disappear..."

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.


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