Béla Tarr is a world-renowned filmmaker from Hungary. While Tarr has been influenced by Miklós Jancsó
in terms of cinematic style, Jancsó's films were more human-centered than
Tarr's. In fact, many of Tarr's films can serve as examples in the field of
'Transcendental Cinema', and he has also been a key director in the area of
'Slow Cinema', where cinematic time has become a character in the de-dramatized
narratives for these films.
Tarr started his filmmaking career with a strong commitment to
realism. In order to achieve this, he favored the use of the non-professional
actors (much like Italian Neo-realism and the French New Wave), long takes and
the use of cinéma vérité techniques. The Outsider (1981), one of his earlier
works, in here Tarr has expressed an ‘anti-cinematic’ approach, as he felt the
mainstream cinema was telling the truth in terms of the portrayal of
characters. In the film, the protagonist, who composed music and yet was
anti-social, felt like a very realistic character.
Since the mid-1980s, Tarr’s style has not only become more
stylized, and far more philosophical. In terms of techniques, his long takes
become far more elaborated and lengthy, and mobile camera movement became a
motif in many of his later films. Certain motifs became components of his signature
style: from the frequent images of bodies obstructing the view, to the
prevalence of walking scenes, which were similar to Tarkovsky's films, the
personal cinema of Bela Tarr emerged.
Tarr’s later films touched a lot on the topic of
existentialism. He is like a cinematic Schopenhauer – focusing a bleak
depiction of reality, and engaging the cinephiles to the pessimistic side of
human existence and to contemplate on topics such as nihilism, alienation,
indifference, facticity and social order.
Tarr’s crowning achievement was likely to be ‘Sátántangó’ (1994),
translated as ‘Satan’s Tango’. The film consisted of an unconventional
structure, broken in 12 parts, and not necessarily chronologically arranged.
What was more wonderful was the film run well over 7 hours, with only about 150
shots, meaning that each shot was about 10 minutes, before a cut took place.
While Sátántangó had many occasions for the viewers to contemplate on
existential issues, one particular interesting theme was the question of deity
by Tarr. One of the key characters have a god-like presence to the other
characters in the story, which, at the story unfolded, he was more of a
swindler than some sort of visionary. The False Prophet theme seemed to appear
a lot in films, that reminded me of Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘There Will Be Blood’,
and some of Luis Bunuel’s films, too. Often, this reflected the atheistic views
by the filmmaker or the challenges to organized religion or even authority, in
which these Nietzschean themes seemed to fit nicely to a film about existentialism.
Nietzschean ideas are also featured in another of his film, ‘The Turin Horse’
(2011).
Another Tarr film worth pursuing is ‘Werckmeister Harmonies’
(2000). It is a film of desolation, brutality and the unethical actions made
possible by humanity. Shot in 39 long takes, and presented in an episodic and
poetic structure, the story of a composer and the other hopeless residents in a
town in the post-WWII era was intertwined with the arrival of a circus and a
decaying circus whale. The political stalemate was complemented with the darker territories of the
human psyche, and only the innocent ones, including the poor old whale,
suffered as a result. Tarr seemed to be posing the question – even if a newer
system appeared to save the day, will it change if the nature of humanity has
not?
At 2011, after finishing ‘The Turin Horse’, Tarr announced
that he would not make any more films, and concentrated on film education to
the young ones. Though it is a shame that we will not have any more films from
such an original master of modern art cinema, it is nice to see that he is
still contributing to film art. All these films are art house films, yet they
are worth it if you have the patience to appreciate and contemplate them.
by Ed Law
Film Analysis
