{"id":10117,"date":"2015-08-19T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-08-20T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=10117"},"modified":"2015-08-10T13:32:59","modified_gmt":"2015-08-10T18:32:59","slug":"bela-tarr-roundup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/10117","title":{"rendered":"B\u00e9la Tarr Roundup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tarr Bela, I Used To Be a Filmmaker<\/em> (2013, Jean-Marc Lamoure)<\/strong><\/p>\n

A making-of-The Turin Horse<\/a><\/em>. Crazy the amount of work, the lighting and helicopters and camera rehearsals and actor-torturing that went into this. Tarr’s movies tend to look primitive and masterfully complicated at once (see: opening shot of the horse and cart) and it seems like a behind-the-scenes documentary could demystify it to death, but I’d already seen set-building stills and couldn’t help myself from wanting to know more. Even when they show the scene construction then immediately play the scene, it’s still just as powerful.<\/p>\n

Also watched part of The Turin Horse<\/em> again with Jonathan Rosenbaum’s audio commentary. Can’t recall if this is a direct quote or not, but he calls it possibly the only Bela Tarr film that’s not a comedy. Writer Laszlo Krasznahorkai has a terrific paragraph on their collaboration quoted in the commentary about 42 minutes in, which I played back a bunch of times, also written here<\/a>. “Making films isn’t a matter of fairness.”<\/p>\n

–
\nDamnation<\/em> (2013, Janice Lee)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“This is no weather for men to live in.”<\/p>\n

Been looking forward to this book for a long time, but it turns out it wasn’t for me. Maybe the endless anticipation and delay didn’t help – after all, I read Susan Howe’s Chris Marker book<\/a> the same day I first heard about it, and the surprise of its existence added to the enjoyment, but this one had already gone from pleasure to chore by the time I began. The ebook was sent to me by the publisher before it came out (thank you! apologies for this “review” and the two-year delay). I prepped by watching the Bela Tarr film<\/a>, then discovered that I hate reading books on my laptop, so kept pushing it aside after trying to start a few times.<\/p>\n

Opens as a biblical Pontypool<\/a><\/em>–Flame Alphabet<\/em> apocalypse, and heads into variations on Tarr\/Krasznahorkai worlds: guys compared to dogs, sleeping with neighbors’ wives, watching the endless rain. Ruined towns, howling wind, blank pages like the blackouts between scenes. Some more specific characters, like a drunken Satantango<\/em> doctor, a disturbed girl in the barn with a scared cat, a lingering accordion player. Speaking of Pontypool<\/em> (the book, not the movie), there are too many points of view, and much language repetition that felt like it was building a poetic flow which I couldn’t follow at all.<\/p>\n

–
\nHotel Magnezit<\/em> (1978, Bela Tarr)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Belligerent Uncle Tibi is getting kicked out of hostel, has money problems with his roommates. This was B\u00e9la Tarr’s graduation film, and is my first exposure to his earlier verite-style.<\/p>\n

From the uncredited film description: “First he offends and attacks all of his roommates, then he starts to cry and tells them that he was a pilot in WWII and he’s left his soul there. An interesting portrait of human reactions and changing emotions.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tarr Bela, I Used To Be a Filmmaker (2013, Jean-Marc Lamoure) A making-of-The Turin Horse. Crazy the amount of work, the lighting and helicopters and camera rehearsals and actor-torturing that went into this. Tarr’s movies tend to look primitive and masterfully complicated at once (see: opening shot of the horse and cart) and it seems […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[128,1985,91,21],"class_list":["post-10117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-bela-tarr","tag-book","tag-filmmaking","tag-shorts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10117"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10135,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10117\/revisions\/10135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}