Review of The Turin Horse (2011) by Tor M — 16 Nov 2014

Béla Tarr is for me most know as the guy that made the ultra long "Sátántangó", a 7.5 hour long film.

This film starts of with some words involving German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and when he gets struck by serious mental illness. When the film starts we get naturalistic scenes, slow scenes, long scenes, windy scenes, static scenes. When there are movement it's beautiful but slow. When the images are still, they never really are, there are something moving. Steam, fire or something. The people involved utter no words. The horse is the best actor of the film, that's pretty cool.

Hounting music is key combined with the imagery. Astonishing cinematography and camerawork.

It's a film you can leave for 20 minutes and you won't miss out on much, almost nothing at all. That's how slow it is. It's also repitative. Actually, the film is so slow that shots freeze, sometimes after focusing, onto a wall or something for 30 seconds before we get some camera movement or some sort of cut. My mind is twitching and turning, especially near the end while the lightening and images are magical.

A film that's definitely looks at it's best in black and white, it creates the right cold atmosphere.

It's difficult to rate this haunting, but in a way a really, really boring film as well. Long, rare and definitely something different for a limited audience. This two and a half hour long film is divided into 30 takes and got it's feet into the art landscape, and it stays miles away from thrilling and entertaining features.

8.5 out of 10 potatoes.