As a special event, never before seen in Wageningen, and in cooperation with the HongaRijn Festival, Movie W is screening the last film ever made by Béla Tarr, the grandmaster of Hungarian cinema. The Turin Horse takes us back to fundamentals. In six days God created and populated the universe; in six days Tarr destroys the world.
The scenario is simple: a distiller somewhere in a remote rural wilderness returns home in a gale. In the days that follow, his horse refuses to move. Ominously, the storm continues to rage and, as if that weren’t enough, passers-by announce the end of the world. Meanwhile, the man’s daughter looks after him and the horse, and the days pass.
In hypnotic scenes, long takes and a sedate tempo, Béla Tarr’s regular cameraman captures this decline. With none of the overblown special effects of apocalyptic blockbusters, rather with an intensity few art house films can match. The Turin Horse depicts the end of the world as only Béla Tarr can film it.
The Turin Horse is cinema in its purest form: the cold wind penetrates your bones, the hot potatoes burn your fingers, and you are swept away in a wonderfully original, sinister doomsday experience on the Hungarian plains. (KvR)