In 1889, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche witnessed the whipping of a horse in Turin, Italy. He hurled his arms around the neck of the horse to protect it and collapsed soon after. In less than a month, he was diagnosed with a mental illness that would leave him speechless until his death eleven years later. While we know what happened to Nietzsche after the incident, nothing is known of what happened to the horse. This film is a fictionalized account of what happened…
To say this film is stark is an understatement, to say it is bleak is an understatement. It is spectacular though. An old man and his middle aged daughter live in a remote area in a simple house. They own a horse and a cart and both are essential to their livelihood. The old man has a bad arm. She helps him get dressed, she cooks for him, she helps him harness and feed the horse. It’s close to twenty minutes before the first bit of dialogue is spoken…and then it’s just a word or two. The movie is spread over six days and the condition of the horse gets worse and worse. It’s winter time and the wind is howling furiously. A neighbor drops by to borrow some brandy. A band of gypsies steals water from their well. Things move at a glacial pace. Life is hard out here.
Words can’t really do this justice because it’s unlike most anything else you’ve seen. In trying to describe it to someone, I said “It’s like Andrei Rublev with Hildur Guðnadóttir doing the soundtrack.” That won’t mean much to a lot of people, but rest assured, that’s powerful and the two people that got both references agreed it was a good starting point of description. It was Hungary’s submission to the Academy Awards for “Best Foreign Picture” in 2011, but it was (somehow) not nominated. This is the first film I’ve seen by Bela Tarr, but it certainly won’t be the last of his that I view. Interestingly enough though, he has proclaimed that The Turin Horse will be his last film.
Cinema of the World 