The Turin Horse (Saturday, February 11, 2012) (9)

Oy vey. Bella Tarr tackles the end of the world -- but for real this time, not just in you brain when you're watching his movies and you wish time and everything would just end to make everything OK again. The Turin Horse opens with a narrator telling a story about how Nietzsche was in Turin at some point and saw a cab driver beating his horse and how this drove the philosopher crazy. We then see a really amazing shot of a horse (possibly the same one, it's never clear) who is pulling a cart in a crazy end-of-days wind storm, being guided by an old man.

We then follow six days in the life of this man, as the world is apparently ending. He lives with a girl (possibly his daughter, it's never clear) in a humble shack in the middle of nowhere (reminiscent of the Dolle family house in René Clément's Forbidden Games). She mostly takes care of him and his things, helping him dress (he has a gimpy arm), fetching water from the well, cooking potatoes and keeping the fire in the hearth burning. Each day the man gets up and goes to take his horse out, though the animal doesn't want to move -- clearly it senses the end times, even if the man does not.

At some point a neighbor comes over bringing news of the destruction of the village and the coming apocalypse, followed by a band of Roma who come to steal some water (and maybe curse the well so it dries up, again, never clear). (Oh man, the Roma have it rough when even in the end of times they're still hated by everyone.)

This is a really beautiful looking movie, with gorgeous black and white photography by Fred Kelemen, and the starkness of everything is incredibly powerful. Still, it's really a long slog and doesn't really do all that much. So it's the end of the world, so what? Why should I care about this particular man and his small existence? Is there any meaning to anything shown on screen? It all comes up a bit empty for me.

I love stories about repetition and cycles. There's a lovely Jeanne Dielman element to the film about how the actions of the days (six here, instead of three there) repeat and you come to expect certain things at certain times, so when there's a slight change in the routine, it brings an overwhelming sense of unease. But I feel like there was a lot more meaning in Jeanne Dielman and that the structure of her day was as significant a part of what we see as any dialogue we might hear. Here, the repetition and structure of the day of the man and girl seem like window dressing over a bleak tale of death and woefulness.

I know this is red meat for fans of weird foreign art-house fare, but I just can't get behind it much. It's really nice to look at, but I don't think it engages the viewers in any meaningful experience or story.

Stars: 2 of 4