Berlinale premiere

Saw the Turin Horse at the Berlinale yesterday.

Its a really hard movie to review. I am a big fan of his other movies but its fair to say this one is extreme even by Tarr's standards.

The film is split into a prologue and 5 days. The 5 days painstakingly detail the daily routine of a father and daughter with beautiful long takes in which the daughter collects water, dresses her father and prepares the paltry meal of a boiled potato which is peeled and devoured with fingers by her father. The routine ultimately ends with the father and daughter trying to rouse the horse of the title to head out for the day.
The horses detiorating health mirrors the general entropy of the characters life and over the course of five near identical days more and more things start to fall apart as things follow a seemingly inevitable doomed course.

The repition is only interrupted twice. Once by a visitor who buys alcohol and rants about the decline of god and the modern world. The second a group of gypsies who have a role in the fate of the father and daughter.

Its safe to say at two and a half hours with very little dialogue, and what amounts to the same scenes repeated 5 times, this is a tough watch even for fans of earlier work. A lot of people (over 1/3) sitting around me left at some point during the running time and others screamed with frustration as days 4 and 5 were introduced upon the screen.

Despite this the film is undoubtedly a significant work for Tarr, who once again shows his unflinching vision. It may be fair to say its a masterwork of art cinema, but not necessarily one you would volunteer to sit through again. Despite this it will stay with me a lot longer than many of the other films currently showing in and out of competition here.

Oh, and in response to those who ask whether this his last film.... when the film ended Tarr, the cinematographer, composer and cast got up on stage (seemingly for a Q&A). Instead Tarr merely uttered this words:

"Its over. You can go home."