Hacker Cinema
The Turin Horse
A torinói ló
2011 · Film · 155 min
Directed by Béla Tarr
A look at the monotonous daily struggle of a father and daughter in a windswept, desolate landscape. Over six days, their routine of eating boiled potatoes and tending a failing horse crumbles, symbolizing a slow descent into darkness, emptiness, and the end of existence.
4 positive3 neutralfrom 7 commenters
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9 comments on Hacker News
Thanks! Here's the full list: 2001: A Space Odyssey, 8½, Aguirre the Wrath of God, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, All That Heaven Allows, Apocalypse Now, Ashes and Diamonds, A Woman Under the Influence, Barry Lyndon, Bicycle Thieves, Breathless, Casablanca, Céline and Julie Go Boating, Chinatown, Chinese Roulette, Citizen Kane, City Lights, City of Pirates, Contempt, Daisies, Damnation, Dishonored, Earth, Electra My Love, El Topo, Eraserhead, Eyes Wide Shut, Film Socialisme, Fitzcarraldo, Fuego en Castilla, Hiroshima Mon Amour, Holy Motors, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, In a Year with 13 Moons, India Song, Inland Empire, Irma Vep, Koyaanisqatsi, La Dolce Vita, La Jetée, Late Spring, L'Eau de la Seine, Le Voyage dans la Lune, Lolita, Los Olvidados, Lost Highway, Lucifer Rising, Man with a Movie Camera, Metropolis, Mirror, Mulholland Drive, Night Music, Ordet, Orpheus, Persona, Pickpocket, Playtime, Psycho, Rebecca, Rosemary's Baby, Rumble Fish, Scarface, Seven Samurai, Sherlock Jr., Singin' in the Rain, Stalker, Sunset Boulevard, Taste of Cherry, Taxi Driver, Testament of Orpheus, The 400 Blows, The Blood of a Poet, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Color of Pomegranates, The Green Ray, The Holy Mountain, The Isle, The Lady from Shanghai, The Night of the Hunter, The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Seventh Seal, The Spirit of the Beehive, The Tales of Hoffmann, The Tree of Life, The Turin Horse, Time of the Gypsies, Tokyo Story, Touch of Evil, Trans-Europ-Express, Ugetsu, Un Chien Andalou, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Vampyr, Videodrome, Wavelength, Werckmeister Harmonies, Wild Strawberries, Moonlight Sonata, Stellar, The Haunted House Biased toward European art cinema, experimental work, and directors who broke conventional narrative rules.
You shouldn't dismiss them - they are not only adaptations, their screenplays were written by Krasznahorkai and he collaborated with their production.
Turin Horse is an original work by Krasznahorkai without being an adaptation, too. (I've seen that one 7 or 8 times, 4 during its festival & cinema run.)
To dismiss them would be like to dismiss his works with Max Neumann (AnimalInside being one of his best!) because they combine writing with painting instead of being pure literature.
Try to see Tarr's movies on film. Except for the last couple that got Bluray releases there are only horrible quality DVDs available. But they come around on 35mm in cities like NY somewhat routinely.
When Turin Horse came out I saw it at the NYFF (with an hour long talk in a small room with the director) and then another 3 times in theaters afterward. I've been lucky to catch Satantango and Werckmeister on film.
Tarr also mentored a young Chinese director, Hu Bo. His two works are very good: An Elephant Sitting Still and Man in the Well. Tarr came out to TIFF to introduce and eulogize the latter with an impassioned speech.
edit: Forgot that Criterion finally released a new edition of Werckmeister recently.
They truly feel like a match made in heaven. Krasznahorkai's own writing is lovely and lyrical, and Tarr's interpretation of it projects the same ideas onto the films but also in a way that makes it stand distinct as a medium.
I could watch this scene from Werckmeister Harmonies every day for the rest of my life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d5X2t_s9g8
And The Turin Horse as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wPCkjN3n6s
Think of some magical Tarr adaptation of Seiobo There Below...
You can't mention Krasznahorkai without Béla Tarr. Tarr's main filmography is basically Krasznahorkai's main bibliography: Damnation (1988), Sátántangó (1994), Werckmeister Harmonies (2000), The Man from London (2007), The Turin Horse (2011). I honestly say the films from Tarr are arguably the best book-to-film adaptations ever, especially Sátántangó, he is the master of literary filmmaking where the spirit of text comes across the screen perfectly.
Satantango I’d seen after a couple hours sleep after a going away party. It’s great and definitely benefits from the detail of 35mm film. I saw Turin Horse three times in theaters (NYFF then its release) not to mention the 4-5 times on video, and while both are rewarding the theater is best if the audience is fine and it’s actually a good projection.
The great philosophical film The Turin Horse by Bela Tarr starts with the account of Nietzsche's mental breakdown in Turin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turin_Horse
As someone who has watched The Turin Horse on his home cinema about once a year since it came out (glad to see another Tarr fan here on HN), I have never had to pause and ruin the mood. I definitely understand what you mean when you say phones can be a distraction, but then why not just leave your phone in the kitchen or bedroom for the time you are watching the film?
The walls won’t reflect too much light if you take adequate measures so that they are not pure white and uncovered. For me, the challenge of setting up the home cinema was not the reflecting light of the walls, inasmuch as they could be covered with bookshelves. Rather, it was the acoustics when I have large windows in the room – I could cover them with Ikea’s fully opaque curtains so that light isn’t a problem, but the glass of the windowpanes still has a detrimental effect on the sound.
I had all of that in my last place (quite hackily assembled). Honestly though you'll still have issues with the walls reflecting to much light and stuff like that.
HOWEVER, the major downside in comparison to a cinema is that there's nothing stopping me from pulling out my phone, or keeping my notifications on, or pausing it to go do something else. The level of immersion in a difficult to watch film can be totally destroyed (e.g. good luck trying to sit through the Turin Horse in your living room, the mood of the film will be totally destroyed by a few pauses).