"Horse of Turin" is a new film by Hungarian director Bela Tarr, and is said to be his final film. At the Berlin Film Festival in 2011, it was widely praised. This film is just like his previous films, black and white images, long shots, slow rhythm, monotonous music, depressing atmosphere... Amidst extremely simplified dialogues and simplified stories, a philosophical meditation is carried out. However, compared to its predecessors, this film focuses much less on reality and more on thinking about the fundamental meaning of life. This is especially true when compared to "Satan's Tango", which established Bella Tarr's place in the films. Tarr's critique of reality can be seen in "Satan's Tango", and his critique of the outdated system is quite sharp. Although "Satan's Tango" also has the director's thinking about human nature, this kind of human nature is based on reality, human nature in specific situations, not human nature in the philosophical sense. Therefore, despite the director's efforts to pull away from the story, the plot of the film is still quite attractive.
Different from "Satan's Tango", the story of "The Horse of Turin" has been downplayed by the director to the point of nothing, and the characters in the play are quite simple, only the father and daughter, plus the one Nietzsche held at most. The old horse, in addition to the occasional gypsies and neighbors who borrowed wine. The father and daughter's home is lonely in a wilderness. Except for a lonely dead tree, it is a bare land. The wind is blowing mercilessly and endlessly, and everything is in desolation. This barren land gives the audience the strongest feeling that this is a land abandoned by God.
At the beginning of the film, Bella Tarr used his usual method to tell the origin of the film in a voiceover, Nietzsche's already familiar story. Instead of telling Nietzsche, however, Tarr traced the end of the horse. In fact, the ending of the horse is also the ending of Nietzsche. Bella Tarl once said, "Nietzsche is equal to the horse and ourselves to this film." Nietzsche died in despair after being insane for ten years, and Ma stopped eating and drinking for six days after being embraced by Nietzsche. The final outcome should also be death, just like the father and daughter in the film. As the coachman drove his horse from Turin back to his home, Tarr used a long shot showing the coachman's tired and distressed face, accompanied by the kind of somber music that has appeared in many of his films , let us feel a kind of difficulty for survival. This seemingly calm face has been weathered by the world. His anger towards the horse has long disappeared. I am afraid that he wants to go home early and go to the city tomorrow to pick up more goods and carry one more person. At this time, the coachman still had hope in life.
In the Bible, God created the world in seven days, opened up the sky and the earth from nothingness, and brought light from the chaos. In "The Horse of Turin", Bella Tarr described in detail the days after the coachman returned home from Turin. For a total of six days, he marked each day with subtitles. It is obvious that he was using this story. Contrast with Genesis in the Bible. God in the Bible is creating, but in this land without God, Tarr records destruction. It took seven days for Tarr to destroy the world, although he only recorded six days seriously. In fact, the destruction started from the day the coachman returned home, but there was still hope for the coachman on that day. It was the day when God still existed, and it was the transition day from creation to destruction.
The life of the coachman father and daughter shown by Bella Tarr in the movie is actually just a monotonous repetition, a sadness of struggling to survive under the pressure of life. The house with four walls was barely able to withstand the cold wind howling outside the door; the only way for the father and daughter to make a living was the poor old horse. Every day, the daughter dresses and undresses for the disabled father, and the father and daughter keep rigging and unloading the horse; at dawn, the daughter wakes up to fetch water from the well, and they continue to work until night falls; the father eats two meals a day. The women eat each other, and they always eat boiled potatoes. The only enjoyment and entertainment is probably the father and daughter drinking a glass of soju in the morning. Hard and heavy, monotonous and boring, day after day, this is how father and daughter spend their lives. This kind of life is actually not our life. Maybe we have less hardships in life and more fun in life, but aren't we all living like this in essence? When Nietzsche cried for the miserable life of the horse, he was actually crying for his own destiny. In a broader sense, he also cried for the coachman, the sad life of the coachman's father and daughter, and more importantly, for the common human beings. cry of fate.
Nietzsche's cry was catastrophic. He let himself go into madness, and also let the old horse enter a period of resistance, and at the same time began the process of destroying the lives of the coachman and his daughter. The next morning after returning from Turin, the horse refused to be enslaved by the coachman and went into a state of not eating or drinking. This made the life of the father and daughter even worse. Horses are the source of their lives and their survival. In this way, they can only be trapped in this desolate place, desperately waiting for the beginning of destruction, waiting for the arrival of death. Although they had planned to leave this place, the boundless wilderness and howling wind forced them back. In this age when God is dead, where is there any hope of survival? The group of gypsies who came to their house to grab water from the well was an omen. They were also looking for an ideal realm, and this remote home with well water actually made them extremely excited. It can be seen that other places are full of gods. Abandoned land.
During the six days they were trapped, the food dwindled and the horses became more and more waning. In the end, the well water also dried up, the kerosene lamp could no longer be lit, and the breath of death became stronger and stronger, permeating this earthen house. Even the gust of wind will not stop the destruction from coming. The daughter, who has been working hard, is just like the old horse, facing the boiled potatoes, and stopped eating. This is the sixth day, which is actually the seventh day when the destruction begins. In just a short shot, it falls into the boundless darkness. Of course, death will come as expected, and the life that has no interest in life should also end. This is the consequence of Nietzsche's sympathy. In his sympathy for the old horse, the horse lost the meaning of existence, and he himself became mad because of the pain. At the same time, it also threatened the survival of the coachman, father and daughter. The whole world is also sympathetic. towards destruction. God created the world out of nothing, but Nietzsche let God die first, and then began his deconstruction on the seventh day of God's creation. He used destruction to connect creation, and the cycle of life and death constitutes a Nietzschean cycle of eternal calamity. Life is full of pain, life is catastrophe, like Sisyphus, there is never hope, only despair and death.
Of course, "The Horse of Turin" does not reflect Nietzsche's ideas, but Bella Tarr's view of the world and life, although he uses Nietzsche's stories, and most of his thinking comes from Nietzsche. The above quote from Bella Tarr confirms that the suffering written in his film is actually Nietzsche's suffering, and it is our own suffering. What he wants to explain in the film is the unbearable weight in our human life, and this is what we must experience, even in pain, even in despair. Only death can end all this.
"At the moment of death, we no longer struggle with whether what we do is meaningful or not. We, the old soul, the world no longer exists." This is what Tarr thinks, and it is also the meaning of the film.
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