The Turin Horse

Plot

"In Turin on 3rd January, 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche steps out of the doorway of number six, Via Carlo Alberto. Not far from him, the driver of a hansom cab is having trouble with a stubborn horse. Despite all his urging, the horse refuses to move, whereupon the driver loses his patience and takes his whip to it. Nietzsche comes up to the throng and puts an end to the brutal scene, throwing his arms around the horse’s neck, sobbing. His landlord takes him home, he lies motionless and silent for two days on a divan until he mutters the obligatory last words, 'Mutter, ich bin dumm!' ['Mother, I am stupid!' in German] and lives for another ten years, silent and demented, cared for by his mother and sisters. We do not know what happened to the horse."

These are Béla Tarr’s introductory words at the beginning of his film, which picks up the narrative immediately after these events, and is a meticulous description of the life of the driver of the hansom cab, his daughter and the horse. The film depicts how the driver, his daughter, and the horse live in an unknown area, seemingly isolated from other people. The pair's daily routine is established as the film progresses, using white text on a black screen as a transition for each day. The two encounter problems and are shown trying to leave, though the camera does not follow them as they go, but are shown coming back for unknown reasons. The pair are shown trying to complete their daily routine, but are unable to, and clearly distraught. Eventually even the lights go out in the house and the screen fades to black, leaving the fate of the two undetermined.

Cast

Themes

Director Béla Tarr says that the film is about the "heaviness of human existence". The focus is not on mortality, but rather the daily life: "We just wanted to see how difficult and terrible it is when every day you have to go to the well and bring the water, in summer, in winter... All the time. The daily repetition of the same routine makes it possible to show that something is wrong with their world. It's very simple and pure." Tarr has also described The Turin Horse as the last step in a development throughout his career: "In my first film I started from my social sensibility and I just wanted to change the world. Then I had to understand that problems are more complicated. Now I can just say it’s quite heavy and I don’t know what is coming, but I can see something that is very close – the end."

According to Tarr, the book the daughter receives is an "anti-Bible". The text was an original work by the film's writer, László Krasznahorkai, and contains references to Nietzsche. Tarr described the visitor in the film as "a sort of Nietzschean shadow". As Tarr elaborated, the man differs from Nietzsche in that he is not claiming that God is dead, but rather puts blame on both humans and God: "The key point is that the humanity, all of us, including me, are responsible for destruction of the world. But there is also a force above human at work – the gale blowing throughout the film – that is also destroying the world. So both humanity and a higher force are destroying the world."

Production

The idea for the film had its origin in the mid 1980s, when Tarr heard Krasznahorkai retell the story of Nietzsche's breakdown, and ended it by asking what happened to the horse. Tarr and Krasznahorkai then wrote a short synopsis for such a story in 1990, but put it away in favour of making Sátántangó. Krasznahorkai eventually wrote The Turin Horse in prose text after the production of the duo's previous film, the troublesome The Man from London. The Turin Horse never had a conventional screenplay, and Krasznahorkai's prose was what the filmmakers used to find financial partners.

The Turin Horse was produced by Tarr's Hungarian company T. T. Filmműhely, in collaboration with Switzerland's Vega Film Production, Germany's Zero Fiction Film and France's MPM Film. It also had American involvement through the Minneapolis-based company Werc Werk Works. The project received 240,000 euro from Eurimages and 100,000 euro from Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg.

Filming was located to a valley in Hungary. The house, well and stable were all built specifically for the film, and were not artificial sets but proper structures of stone and wood. The supposed 35-day shoot was set to take place during the months of November and December 2008. However because of adverse weather conditions, principal photography was not finished until 2010.

Release

Tarr announced at the premiere of The Man from London that he was retiring from filmmaking and that his upcoming project would be his last. The Turin Horse was originally planned to be finished in April 2009 and ready to be screened at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. After several delays, it was finally announced as a competition title at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival, where it premiered on 15 February 2011.

The Turin Horse was originally set to be released in Hungary on 10 March 2011 through the distributor Mokep. However, in an interview with the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel on 20 February, Tarr accused the Hungarian government of obstructing artists and intellectuals, in what he referred to as a "culture war" led by the cabinet of Viktor Orbán. As a consequence to these comments, Mokep cancelled its release of the film. It eventually premiered in Hungary on 31 March 2011 instead. It was distributed in five prints through a collaboration between Cirko Film and Másképp Alapítvány.

Home media

The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray through The Cinema Guild on 17 July 2012.

Critical response

The Turin Horse received critical acclaim. At Metacritic, the film received an average score of 80/100, based on 14 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews". The film currently holds an 88% "Certified Fresh" rating on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes based on 48 reviews, with an average score of 8.1/10. The critical consensus stated, "Uncompromisingly bold and hauntingly beautiful, Bela Tarr's bleak parable tells a simple story with weighty conviction."

Mark Jenkins of NPR described the film as "... an absolute vision, masterly and enveloping in a way that less personal, more conventional movies are not." A. O. Scott of The New York Times lavished the film with praise, concluding, "The rigors of life can grind you down. The rigor of art can have the opposite effect, and The Turin Horse is an example — an exceedingly rare one in contemporary cinema — of how a work that seems built on the denial of pleasure can, through formal discipline, passionate integrity and terrifying seriousness, produce an experience of exaltation. The movie is too beautiful to be described as an ordeal, but it is sufficiently intense and unyielding that when it is over, you may feel, along with awe, a measure of relief. Which may sound like a reason to stay away, but is exactly the opposite."

Ray Bennett of The Hollywood Reporter wrote from the Berlinale: "Fans of Tarr’s somber and sedate films will know what they are in for and will no doubt find the time well spent. Others might soon grow weary of measured pace of the characters as they dress in their ragged clothes, eat boiled potatoes with their fingers, fetch water, clean their bowls, chop wood and feed the horse." Bennett complimented the cinematography, but added: "That does not, however, make up for the almost complete lack of information about the two characters, and so it is easy to become indifferent to their fate, whatever it is." Variety's Peter Debruge also noted how the narrative provided "little to cling to", but wrote: "Like Hiroshi Teshigahara's life-changingly profound The Woman in the Dunes ... by way of Bresson, Tarr's tale seems to depict the meaning of life in a microcosm, though its intentions are far more oblique. ... As the premise itself concerns the many stories not being told (Nietzsche is nowhere to be found, for instance), it's impossible to keep the mind from drifting to all the other narratives unfolding beyond the film's sparse horizon."

Accolades

The film won the Jury Grand Prix Silver Bear and the Competition FIPRESCI Prize at the Berlin Film Festival. It was selected as the Hungarian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 84th Academy Awards, but it did not make the final shortlist. Tiny Mix Tapes named it the best film of 2012.

In BBC's 2016 poll of the greatest films since 2000, The Turin Horse ranked 63rd.