The Turin Horse: Grade A

A

The Turin Horse (2011)
János Derzsi, Erika Bók; Directors Béla Tarr, Ágnes Hranitzky, (Hungarian; subtitled).

I only discovered Bela Tarr in 2006 when I saw his 1988 movie, Damnation (reviewed in this blog 11/27/06). Turin Horse was his last film. Like Damnation, this one is long (2.5 hrs), extremely slow, shot in beautiful black-and-white, and ultimately about the desperation of life under totalitarian (communist) rule in Hungary. It is utterly mesmerizing, depressing, and beautiful, but only recommended for viewers who are committed to film as an art form.

A poor, elderly, and disabled country farmer in Italy, about 1900, makes a meager living carting goods, his horse an old, gray, sickly mare. He lives with his daughter in a fieldstone house in a cold, windy, treeless land where a howling gale rages for most of the movie. It’s always winter, cold, and bleak in a Bela Tarr movie, because that’s how life was under communism. The storm is the harsh and relentless politics blowing through the land, the dust making the simplest movement a challenge. The man and his daughter eat boiled potatoes, fetch water from the well, stoke the wood stove, gaze numbly out the dirty window, and sleep. She spends a lot of time dressing and undressing her father, who has a bad arm. They both spend a lot of time harnessing up and unharnessing the horse. This goes on and on, repeatedly.

Scenes are re-enacted in excruciating detail, every day. After about three cycles, I inwardly screamed, “Please, God, no! Not another boiled potato!” But yes, it was another boiled potato, and we again watched it being prepared, served, and eaten, in almost real-time. The same for all the other daily chores. Over and over with tiny, tiny variations, sometimes only in the camera movements or angles.

But this is exactly the point. The audience literally feels, viscerally, the hopelessness, the meaninglessness, the mind-numbing repetitiveness of that life. We understand experientially, in a way no narrative description could ever convey. That’s what makes the film an unforgettable artistic triumph. Yes, it takes a difficult 2.5 hours of nothingness to “get it,” but that’s a lot less than a lifetime.

A few things do happen, though. The horse gets too sick to work, and finally, the well goes dry. So they are doomed. They gaze numbly out the window into the winter storm. The final scene, of the two characters sitting at the table (over potatoes not boiled – no water), is pure visual poetry. They look somehow Christlike at that point.

The blurb for the film says that this old horse was the exact one that Nietzsche famously encountered in Turin in 1899. But that is a red herring that should be ignored. If the ads told you what the movie was really about (existential nothingness), you wouldn’t go.

The cinematography is extremely interesting and beautiful, the music hypnotic – deep bass and cello, repetitive, droning, beautiful, and soporific, in keeping with the tone. The visual images burn into your brain as you stare into the face of a human condition reduced to a mechanical numbness that strangely still retains its dignity. The portrayal is not completely realistic (e.g., who chops the firewood and cuts the hay for the horse; who maintains that stone house, etc.? Surely not the woman alone, and surely not the one-armed man). So there is a theatrical element to the storytelling, but the realism of the life somehow comes through that artifice brighter than actuality.

Ashes and Diamonds: Grade C

C
Ashes and Diamonds (1958)
Zbigniew Cybulski, Ewa Krzyzewska; Writer-Director Andrzej Wajda. (Polish, subtitled).

This highly acclaimed classic film is the last in director Wajda’s World War II trilogy. It was recently released on DVD. The black and white images were murky, although maybe that’s how it was supposed to be, suggesting the emotional darkness of that time. The Germans have just surrendered, but two leaders of the resistance know that the struggle is only beginning again, as the Russians have displaced the Germans. The protagonists are ordered to assassinate a communist political boss in their town, but the volatile young man (Cybulski) falls in love, and that makes him hesitate. He wonders if the killing will go on forever.

I was extremely impressed with Wajda’s film, Katyn, shown at the Seattle International Film Festival recently. It too was a mournful look at the long-suffering Polish people as the communists replaced the Nazis. Wajda is world-famous, I liked Katyn, and Ashes and Diamonds is acclaimed, so how could I go wrong? Yet somehow, Ashes did not grip me. The acting seemed histrionic, the story plodding, sets and scenery dark and muddy. I did feel like I was in 1940’s Poland, and could sense the psychological despair of the people. But after a strong opening, there is a very long hour to get to the melodramatic ending, during which innumerable cigarettes are smoked and vodkas drunk. Various responses to the depressing hopelessness of the Polish situation are presented, from the desperate celebratory denial of some, to the clueless oblivion of others, to the clench-jawed resolve of the resistance. I can see why it was acclaimed in 1958, but it has not aged well in the intervening 50 years.

The Spy Who Came In From The Cold: Grade A

A
The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (2008)
Richard Burton, Claire Bloom, Oskar Werner; Director Martin Ritt.

This “Criterion” release of the 1965 Le Carre film adaptation is a feast for the eyes. The film is perfectly restored, and black and white has never looked so good. It is stunningly beautiful and perfectly suited to the film noir genre and to the cold war 1960’s. Burton is very good in this role, but I think he was overrated. His acting seems flat and manufactured to me, although some of that is the character portrayed, and some of it legacy of the stage. Claire Bloom does a good job but Oskar Werner’s performance is riveting. For fans of Le Carre, this is a perfect adaptation. It captures the tension, the emotions, and the moral ambiguities of the novel and of that period of history. British spy Leamus (Burton) is supposed to act like a defector to give the East Germans some misinformation in Amsterdam. But they whisk him off to East Berlin and he learns that the British have abandoned him, so he now really is the traitor he was pretending to be. I love the way Le Carre can turn the world inside out like that.

There is a second disk in this edition showing a long, recent interview with Le Carre in which he discusses the making of the film, working with Burton and Ritt; all fascinating stuff, especially where it highlights the different points of view of a writer and a filmmaker. Then there is longish feature which is Le Carre’s autobiography told through film adaptations of his novels, focusing of course on the autobiographical, A Perfect Spy. It seems he has been self-aware all his life (the hindsight of age encourages that view), and exquisitely attuned to subtleties of the human condition. Then there is an extensive 1967 interview with Burton, who is fascinating and disturbing. And much more. Even if you have seen the original movie more than once, this Criterion edition is well worth renting.

Military Intelligence and You: Grade D

D
Military Intelligence and You (2006)
Patrick Muldoon, Elizabeth Ann Bennet. Writer-Director Dale Kutzera.

Old World War II military training films and war footage are blended with live actors to create a black-and-white film of a WWII story about saving an Allied bomber squadron from German air attack (or something like that), complete with a romance at headquarters between the two principal actors. The story is a satire of old WWII movies, and of military training films, and a commentary on the futility of war in general, and of the Iraq war in particular. On top of all that, there is a voice-over that comes in from time to time, converting the whole project from a satirical war story to a military training film. Whew! The narrator’s comments are often funny, in the style of Mystery Science Theater. The war story itself is humorous too, with brazen stereotypes and soap opera exaggeration. Finally, the old training film snippets are somewhat amusing (they even include one with Ronald Reagan). But after a half hour, the same style, jokes, gestures and clips are just repeated. The writer was caught in an endless loop. A lost opportunity, this could have been a scorching social criticism. Too bad, but the first half hour is worth a look.

13 Tzameti: Grade B

B

13 Tzameti (2005)

George Babluani; Writer-Director: Géla Babluani. French, subtitled.

Babluani is a young roofer working on an old mansion when an envelope with a ticket and instructions accidentally comes into his hands. Since the owner of the house died and he will not be paid for his work, he decides to use the ticket and follow the instructions, based on a conversation he overheard about possibly big financial rewards. The film is in beautiful black and white, well composed and photographed, reminiscent of French existential films of the 60’s. The “deal” he walks into is an illegal gambling operation very similar to the situation of Christopher Walken's in The Deerhunter. That outcome was was disappointing after such a nice tense buildup. There are so many more interesting story possibilities for a young man walking blindly into an illegal deal. Anyway, the life and death gambling proceeds in the obvious way with predictable outcome, although a few surprises await the young man on the way home. There is a faint existential theme: “A man only lives once and dies once. Why not do it this way?” But the situation was formulaic and abstract, robbing such words of their meaning. The acting is good and the photography very pleasing, but the tension of the central set piece was too contrived to be engaging.

The Good German: Grade D

D

The Good German (2006)

George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Toby Maguire. Director Steven Soderbergh

Photography is the star of this black-and-white movie set in 1945 Berlin and Potsdam. Clooney is a reporter who “accidentally” encounters his German mistress from years ago (Blanchett). She does a skulking lady of mystery, acting well, but with no character to act around. Her husband, a proxy for Werner von Braun, is dead and now she hangs out with a young American GI (Maguire), hoping to find her way out of Germany. She puts off Clooney’s interest, if it interest is not too strong a word. They show no hint of former or current passion. It’s a clunker of a relationship. Maguire is horribly miscast, his manufactured and anachronistic effervescence grating on the nerves. The role needed a sly and sophisticated wheeler-dealer like James Garner in The Great Escape, or even a dark Peter Lorre type, and someone closer in age to Blanchett’s character. Clooney brings nothing but stone-faced mug shots to the role. The evil Russian is the only standout actor. The plot is not well-told and generates no tension. The only thing keeping your eyes on the screen is the photography, high-contrast, side-lit and bottom-lit stuff as from an old Bogart movie, well-shot and well-composed. The ending is a lame allusion to Casablanca. But even the photography loses its way at times, with bright light coming from the center of someone’s desk so their face can be lit from below. Still, the movie is worth watching with the sound off, just to appreciate the pictures.