The name “Bela Tarr” is almost synonymous with the idea of slow cinema. He has made several films that conform to the various characteristics referred to by Ira Jaffe in his book Slow Movies. From the minimal camera movements and editing, the recurring themes of stillness and death, to the affectless and overall downtrodden nature of the characters, his films can be viewed as slow cinema with relative ease. What is far less definable, however, is the end to which these cinematic techniques are utilized. Along with their frequent references to religion, the films of Bela Tarr use these slow cinema techniques in order to convey a profound sense of nihilism. In this context, the term “nihilism” serves multiple purposes. First, it is representative of the denial of religion and all of its principles. In a broader sense, nihilism is the belief that everything, even life itself, is meaningless. This particular characterization of the word is largely informed by the work of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who wrote extensively on the subject and frequently associated it with Christianity. As is overtly indicated by both Tarr’s films and his own firsthand accounts, Nietzsche has remained a significant and arguably constant influence over the filmmaker and his work. The relationship between slow cinema techniques, religion, and nihilism is explicitly present in several of Tarr’s films such as Satantango, Werckmeister Harmonies, and The Turin Horse.
Of all of Bela Tarr’s films, The Turin Horse can most easily and effectively be linked to both Friedrich Nietzsche and his writings on nihilism. This is largely due to the film’s basic premise, which is that the protagonists are the owners of the same horse that (allegedly) played a major role in Nietzsche’s descent into insanity. As the story goes, Nietzsche witnessed a horse being flogged on the streets of Turin and he subsequently ran to it and threw his arms around it in an effort to protect it. He fell to the ground, and was left insane for the final eleven years of his life. The Turin Horse begins with a block of text describing this event which, among other things, claims that after the encounter with the horse “His landlord takes him home, he lies motionless and silent for two days on a divan until he mutters the obligatory last words, and lives for another ten years, silent and demented, cared for by his mother and sisters. We do not know what happened to the horse.”
Such an introduction would seem to indicate a film focused on the untold story of this anonymous horse, but this is hardly the case. Ostensibly, the horse serves as little more than a way to introduce the audience into the world of the horse’s owners. However, a deep analysis of Nietzsche’s writings may imbue the creature with new meaning. Nietzsche frequently referred to Christianity as a sort of cage that imprisons man. He compares man himself to an animal, and sarcastically calls the Christian processes of taming and breeding this animal an “improvement”. As a result of this “improvement”, they are “weakened, they are made less harmful, and through the depressive effect of fear, through pain, through wounds, and through hunger they become sickly beasts” (Nietzsche, 502).
The criticism of religion, especially Christianity, is prevalent throughout Nietzsche’s writing, just as it is prevalent throughout Tarr’s films. It is reasonable to assume that Bela Tarr’s decidedly pessimistic views of religion, and even life itself, developed at least partially from the experience of growing up in Soviet controlled Hungary during the late 1950’s and 1960’s. Living under the rule of such men as Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, men who promised salvation but gave little more than oppression and pain, Tarr was more than familiar with the messianic figure. If that experience alone wasn’t enough to give him a pessimistic worldview, then his associations with “radically leftist movements ideologically not far from Maoism” (Kovacs, 7), and the resulting trouble these associations got him into with the Communist party, surely did. After leaders of the party viewed one of Tarr’s earliest films, a radical documentary that shed light on the less than idyllic living and working conditions of manual laborers located in Hungary, he was essentially blacklisted. Only in high school at the time, Tarr intended to continue his education, but as a result of his actions, he was “denied admission to every higher educational institution in the country” (Kovacs, 8).
While others under Soviet rule could turn to religion as a form of escapism from their oppressed lives, someone like Tarr, who had suffered so much at such a young age, would become bitter towards any form of authority. The very notion of a “light at the end of the tunnel” in the form of an unseen God who rules over a utopian afterlife, would appear to be little more than another in a series of false hopes and promises.
A pessimistic view of religion, and authority itself, plays a particularly important role in Tarr’s 1995 film, Satantango. The sounds of church bells are regularly heard throughout the film, characters recite prayers and bible verses, and there are even characters that resemble religious figures in both a physical and spiritual sense. The significant presence of religion in the film is not a positive one, but one that rejects the very concept, resulting in a nihilistic worldview. The character Irimias particularly signifies this rejection of religion.
In Rainer J. Hanshe’s essay “Circulus Vitiuosos: On Temporality and Nihilism in Satantango”, he refers to the character Irimias as a “false messiah”. This observation is an astute one, but it can nonetheless be taken even further. Although the nihilism in Tarr’s films is often broad in its reach, it occasionally takes more precise aim at Christianity. Such is the case with Irimias, a messiah figure who bares a striking physical resemblance to the Christian interpretation of Jesus Christ. He also acts similarly, hardly ever saying precisely what he means, instead choosing to express himself through cryptically long and philosophical sermons that emit a sense of superiority and divinity.
Irimias does not appear to the small Hungarian community that serves as the main focus of Satantango until after a potentially life-altering tragedy. These people are profoundly vulnerable, and it is in such trying times that “Messianic figures like Irimias will emerge and offer panaceas to the world” (Hanshe, 81). Of course, Irimias is not a real Messiah, and the townsfolk only believe he is because they view him as the only hope to escape from the banality and meaninglessness of their lives. Irimias is, as all religions and messiahs are from a nihilist’s perspective, a denial of the meaninglessness of life. That he is proven to be a false messiah, one who tricks the townsfolk into abandoning their homes and what little wealth they have, asserts the notion that religion is not only false, but dangerous. These townsfolk have been bred and tamed by Irimias. As a result, they are left as little more than sickly beasts.
The Messiah figure also looms over Werckmeister Harmonies in the form of the “Prince”. We never see or hear directly from this Prince in the film. Like the Christian God, he appears to be an omniscient being who may have transcended a physical form (if he exists at all). Despite his lack of a physical presence, the Prince is “rumoured to hold sway over grim, idle men gathered outside in the public square” (Jaffe, 151). Like God, this Prince speaks through a vessel. Janos eavesdrops on him, hearing him say that “The Prince alone sees the whole. And the whole is nothing, completely in ruins. What they build and what they will build, what they do and what they will do, is delusions and lies… In ruins all is complete”.
This statement, ostensibly spoken through the proxy of a messiah figure, clearly points to the meaningless void that is ‘life’. It is also an overt reference to the destructive nature of religion and the messiah figure. The latter half of Werckmeister Harmonies consists mostly of a lengthy riot incited by the Prince and performed by his followers. The violence and destructive nature of this situation somewhat affirms Nietzsche’s belief that the concept of God was “invented as a counter-concept to life—bringing together into one dreadful unity everything harmful, poisonous, slanderous, the whole mortal enmity against life!” (Nietzsche, 95).
On a narrative level, religion plays a far less explicit role in The Turin Horse than it does in either Satantango or Werckmeister Harmonies. It is worth mentioning, however, that the actor who plays the Prince’s proxy in Werckmeister Harmonies (Mihaly Kormos) also plays the unnamed neighbor in The Turin Horse. His characters serve a similar function in both films. Despite being onscreen for just a single relatively short scene, this man uses his time to embark on a rambling philosophical diatribe. One of the most significant sections of his dialogue comes when he speaks of the realization that “there is neither God nor gods… Neither good nor bad. Then they saw that… they themselves did not exist”. This quote, and the speech in its entirety, clearly points to the absence of a god, and the inclusion of “they themselves did not exist” hints at the overarching nihilistic themes in the film.
Despite this being the only substantive direct reference to religion in the film, the clear connection to Nietzsche and his writings regarding the relationship between man, beast, and Christianity are significant. The title of beast can be applied to both the horse and its owners. The horse has been tamed by its owners; “improved” so that it may become effective at pulling a carriage. By the start of the film, these “improvements” have made the horse into a weakened and sickly beast, one that lacks the strength to continue in its work. The horse’s owners (the father and his daughter) can be seen in a similar light. They are made weak through a combination of fear and pain that is made clear through their everyday routine, which consists of banal chores and is shown repeatedly over the course of the film.
Such monotonous chores and other tasks are frequently present in Slow Cinema. Tarr’s films, The Turin Horse in particular, are excellent examples of this. In slow films, scenes contain such banal tasks are comprised of very long takes, often several minutes in length, with few shots or camera movements. This technique can have a number of effects, but most notably, it serves as a way to further immerse viewers in the experience. By focusing so specifically and so unimpeded on everyday tasks, viewers can not only empathize with the subject, but they begin to feel the same sense of boredom as well. In some of Bela Tarr’s films such as The Turin Horse, the viewer shares this experience, but it conveys significantly more than mere empathy or boredom. Due to the lack of variety in these characters’ lives, and the subsequent lack of variety in the film’s cinematic qualities (in terms of structure, character behavior, and cinematography), time loses all meaning. If every day is to be the same as the last, as is the case in The Turin Horse, then life will essentially become static. Because of the lack of progress (in terms of both time and the characters’ lot in life), the only conceivable goal in repeatedly engaging in these tasks, such as cooking and fetching water from the well, is that the characters may do the same things the next day and every day thereafter. As a result, the viewer begins to feel a sense of meaninglessness, and the characters feel the same.
By the end of the film, this is made readily apparent, as an unfortunate sequence of events (their horse’s regression, the drought of their well, and the seemingly inescapable darkness of their home) has caused the father and daughter to lose what little hope they have left. The film ends with the characters breaking from their routine; despite the effort of the father to eat his potatoes, as he has done every day prior, “both individuals lack the requisite energy and desire” (Jaffe, 155) to continue. They have both come to realize that there is no meaning to their hardships, literally no light at the end of the tunnel. They are imprisoned in perpetual darkness, and nothing either of them says or does can change that.
Darkness plays a major role in many of Tarr’s films. Of particular interest is the juxtaposition of darkness and light, which is significantly informed through the regular use of black and white cinematography. Nearly all of Bela Tarr’s films have been shot in black-and-white, and the effects of this are numerous. The coupling of “black and white” will forever be associated with similar couplings such as “good and evil”, “heaven and hell”, or even “life and death”. Black and white, like all of these other examples, represent opposite ends of a spectrum. They are philosophical extremes, and they are absolutes. Bela Tarr regularly deals in absolutes; there is often no middle ground. Hence the overarching theme of nihilism in his work; either everything must have meaning, or nothing can. There are no shades of grey, blue, green, or purple. There is only black and white, and in Tarr’s work, there is far more black than there is white.
In the opening scene of Werckmeister Harmonies, Janos is giving a sort of philosophical lecture regarding the relationship between the earth and sun. He is in awe of “the boundlessness where constancy, quietude and peace, infinite emptiness, reign; infinite sonorous silence; everywhere … an impenetrable darkness”. As already discussed, such an impenetrable darkness exists in The Turin Horse as well, and within that darkness, there is nothing. In the final scene of the film, everything, save the father and daughter and the kitchen table, is completely black. This darkness appears both infinite and impenetrable. It is, as is often the case in Tarr’s films, made up of empty space.
The vast emptiness in Tarr’s films is often exemplified through his choice in filming locations. Both Satantango and The Turin Horse are filmed in the apparently sparse and secluded countryside. It is in this seclusion that Tarr’s characters make their homes; in this place where all wildlife is dead or dying, where staring into the distance reveals nothing but dirt in every direction. These characters are in a state of limbo. In a religious context, this is the middle ground between heaven and hell. Depending on the interpretation, limbo can represent Earth itself, or it can represent a whole other plane of existence. In Tarr’s films, limbo is both of these things, and yet it is neither. If heaven represents “good” and hell represents “evil”, then Limbo represents an absence of these moral qualities. Good and evil do not exist in Tarr’s films, and neither do heaven or hell. There is but one plane of existence in Tarr’s films, and that is the one occupied by his characters. They are forever imprisoned within this plane, one that is void of substantive time, space, or meaning. There is no escaping, because there is nowhere else to go.
This theme of imprisonment, or entrapment, is critical to Tarr’s films. In his book The Cinema of Bela Tarr: The Circle Closes, Andras Balint Kovacs writes that the “basic theme of all of Tarr’s films is entrapment. Each film shows a situation which the characters are incapable of getting out of, however hard they try. They remain hopeless captives in their miserable situation, whether or not they are responsible for their own suffering” (Kovacs, 99). This is an astute observation, and has held true for each of the films being discussed. The characters are all trapped in dark and empty spaces, especially in The Turin Horse, where the father and daughter are essentially limited to their small house and the desolate patch of land immediately surrounding it. In Satantango, the characters are trapped within their isolated town. From a more psychological and spiritual standpoint, these characters are trapped by a false faith and hope that is physically embodied by Irimias. Similarly, the characters in Werckmeister Harmonies are trapped by faith in their own false prophet, the Prince. This entrapment is, in nearly all cases, exemplified through the black and white cinematography, the morose characters, and through the portrayal of banal and repetitive tasks. These Slow Cinema qualities create a rather somber atmosphere, one that fits well with Tarr’s frequent references to Nietzsche and criticisms of religion. The results are films that, taken together, have an incredibly nihilistic worldview. The world in Tarr’s films is one in which all of the characters are trapped, having been reduced to little more than beasts as a result of their faith in false idols. They seek some greater meaning, a justification for their suffering. Instead, they find that life is meaningless. There is, quite literally, no light at the end of the tunnel. There is only an endless and empty landscape of impenetrable darkness. There is no beginning or end, and there is certainly no meaning to any of it.
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