The Turin Horse
Writer/director Béla Tarr teams with screenwriter Lazlo Krasznahorkai to explore what may have happened to the horse that philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche defended during the onset of an intense mental breakdown in this earnest drama. When the horse that helped an elderly farmer earn his livelihood suddenly refuses to work, the farmer and his daughter face starvation and poverty.
Director: Béla Tarr
Starring: Janos Derzsi, Erika Bok, Mihály Kormos, Ricsi
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.
A sumptuous masterpiece by one of the greatest moviemakers of all time.
The Turin Horse is in a very gray black and white. It looks the same way it feels: bleak, pure, forbidding, transfixing. Watching it, frankly, can be a bit of an ordeal. There's hardly anything in The Turin Horse you would describe as entertaining, but there is a very great deal that's beautiful and absorbing.
The Turin Horse is an absolute vision, masterly and enveloping in a way that less personal, more conventional movies are not. The film doesn't seduce; it commands.
Starkly beautiful and exceedingly demanding, The Turin Horse, which Hungarian master Béla Tarr has said will be his last film, is both easy and impossible to define.
Competition
Berlin International Film Festival (2011)
Fred Kelemen
Brothers Manaki International Film Festival (2011)
Best Cinematographer
European Film Awards (2011)
Best Film Not in the English Language
Online Film Critics Society Awards (2013)
Best Foreign Language Film
Palm Springs International Film Festival (2012)
No lists