Bela Tarr

Some Thoughts and Observations.

-The episodic structure of the film lends itself to getting split up. If you wanted to, you could probably watch an episode or two at a time like a tv show.

-Is it just me, or does this film feel like a long mercy fuck between Bresson and Kieslowski?

-It does not feel that long while you watch it. I've seen 90 minute Godard films that felt longer.

-The big dance scene is the newest member of my favorite scenes evah list. And a few others are bubbling under.

-I didn't count heads at the start, but there were probably 50 or so viewers at the first screening. About 30 minutes in, I could hear at least one person snoring. About 90 minutes in (during the first ep about the doctor) there were noticible walkouts. About three hours in, during the cat wrestling scene, there were even more. At the end of the night, I counted 25 heads. The next evening brought at least 24 (some people came in late) and about 21 made it through to the end, though no one stayed for the end credits.

i was really excited to see it this weekend at the MFAH, but i couldnt pass on the NFL playoffs :(

It was showing at the Film Center when I was visiting Portland but the wife was having none of it. NOW it's screening in Berkeley...on her birthday! Curse you, movie gods!

I'm in the burbs near Sugar Land.

http://thephoenix.com/article_ektid31216.aspx

http://www.hlo.hu/object.06e4f656-18ec-4114-91ff-f17cde548173.ivy

See also: the one in Damnation that involves about 100 drunk people

http://bam.org/film/series.aspx?id=118

I guess showing Werckmeister on Oscar night is maximal counterprogramming.

re an ILE post of Eric's ... the consensus on The Man from London tips negative, but is hardly unqualified.

http://daily.greencine.com/archives/003803.html

Bela Tarr [Started by jay blanchard (jay blanchard), last updated Thursday, September 6, 2007 1:54 PM] 1 new answer

Anyone know when this is out on DVD ? Can't find any info on it.

how about letting it have a theatrical run first?

So old skool you are!

I've only seen his stuff in theaters, cuz I've read you can barely see anything on the DVDs that have come out.

need to check this guy out. favorite director of finnish film critic girl i have impossible crush on.

she doesn't prefer Aki Kaurismaki?

Eek! My Kaurismaki ignorance lost me major points, too :(

(She didn't know who Hsiao-Hsien was, though..)

I can't remember where, but I seem to remember hearing that Artificial Eye had picked up The Man from London. Anyhow - I'd be shocked if it shows up on DVD before the end of 2008.

Speaking of Kaurismaki, Artificial Eye is supposedly releasing ten of his films to DVD in the next month or so - the set of Shadows in Paradise, Ariel & the Match Factory Girl should be available on the 24th!

http://www.artificial-eye.com/dvd/ART350dvd/main.html

this is one of the few directors who probably does need to be seen on a big screen.

kaurismaki is some joke played by the finns.

shd I see Man from London? tonight?

JRo on Satantango:

http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/?p=14983

I'm glad to see that the book's getting a translation too. Krasznahorkai is great.

Reports from the Berlinale on The Turin Horse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vdRTQo39YE

Satantango on Super Bowl Sunday @ LincCtr from 2-11 pm, bitchez

see u dere

lol counterprogramming

they're doing it Saturday too if you're versatile.

the novel Satantango has finally been translated into English and will be available in 2 weeks.

http://www.amazon.com/Satantango-L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3-Krasznahorkai/dp/0811217345

I saw The Turin Horse yesterday in an empty theatre. I am still undecided about how I finally feel about it - at times, I found it incredibly pretentious and dirgey, even for Bela Tarr, which I guess is the point. But the more I think about it, the more I appreciate it, particularly the way it makes some of his other films seem like pretty light fare in comparison. It may be that we have less need for films like this now, but at least phenomenologically, it probably is the most effective of the recent clutch of endtimes art films. I wonder what it is like to work on a Bela Tarr set?

The big dance scene is the newest member of my favorite scenes evah list.
― The Dusty Baker Selection (Charles McCain), Tuesday, January 9, 2007 4:02 PM (5 years ago)

I'm two-thirds of the way through Satantango, so I just lightly skimmed this thread looking for some mention of that scene. Unbelievably good--not the actual tango part, the 10 minutes of insanity before that. I was trying to think of some way to describe the music and couldn't. If you'd asked me yesterday "What movie scene best captures what it's like to be drunk," I probably would have answered the "Rubber Biscuit" scene in Mean Streets. But Satantango beats it.

I wonder why Turin Horse felt less eventful than Jeanne Dielman, when they had a great deal (albeit superficially) in common, but with Dad, the equine, and gypsies added here.

It did win me over after the first 20 minutes of near self-parody, and some of the framing was exqisite, reminding me of Dreyer, Tarkovsky, Ford (counterintuitively, tho I think the b&w helps too), and the silent masters. Dad-actor had a great silent-era face.

Going to get around to watching it in the next week. Been tough to get myself in the mood for it though.

Found this from Sicinski:

Inside the hovel, Tarr stages the lives of the father and daughter as a kind of dour, Kafkaesque structural film, Jeanne Dielman without the tension.

http://academichack.net/TIFF2011.htm#screening

Got The Turin Horse out from the library. (I actually signed it out last year and returned it unwatched.) I didn't find it as weirdly interesting as Satantango or Werckmeister Harmonies, but it looked great, even at home, and it's the kind of thing where I want to go into school tomorrow and play the last scene for my students. Just so they can confront something that's beyond anything they can even begin to get their minds around, and in the hope that a couple of them will vaguely remember it years later. (Sort of like when my grade 8 teacher showed us an NFB film of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery." I never forgot that.) The look on the old guy's face when his daughter would dress him was something. I was at a screening of Barry Lyndon yesterday, and the one line near the end describes that look very well: "utterly baffled and beaten," with a little extra baffled throw in, and even a strange sort of defiance. Their dinnertime ritual might be the most miserable thing I've ever seen in a film.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-po_XsQUAb0s/UDqR3Y3ixXI/AAAAAAAACK0/m5wV-vYOTwA/s1600/vlcsnap-2012-08-26-16h14m28s118.png

lmao I think I got the very last one of these

https://shoparbelosfilms.com/products/satantango-blu-ray-with-limited-edition-slipcase

whoa! is the "intermission filmstrip bookmark" like a snip of the intermission frames from the actual film?

My guess is: no, just a reproduction

I wonder what it is like to work on a Bela Tarr set?

All Great DPs Become Alcoholics

RIP.

https://www.euronews.com/culture/2026/01/06/hungarian-director-and-titan-of-contemplative-cinema-bela-tarr-dies-aged-70

Oh shit

Some nods of respect/RIPs over on the obituary thread, too. Werckmeister Harmonies is so good.

This will be my cue to actually watch Werckmeister to the end. I treid it a very long time ago but somehow never finished it, despite it being beautiful. RIP.

oh, bela...

watched Man From London again yesterday and Turin House this morning. hasn't realised the daughter in both is the young girl with the cat in satantango. and that's it, those are the only three things she's ever done.

https://m.imdb.com/name/nm0126969/?

Erika Bók

Love Damnation and The Turin Horse but had never seen Werckmeister Harmonies until last night (got halfway through) and I kept having to take pause breaks so I could say “holy fucking shit this movie is amazing” and reorient my position on the sofa

Yeah, I rewatched it the day he died, and it might be the best movie of all time. I love the shot of the tractor driving the crate with the whale through the small street, the way the light slowly arrives, and then this enormous mass of metal fills of the screen.

I'm reading the book at the moment, and it's kinda fun how different it feels. There's nothing 'slow' about the torrent of words and sentences that Krasznahorkai writes. It feels like it's getting at the same thing in a very different way, though.

Hey! The Harvard Film Archive will be showing four of the Tarr / Krasznahorkai collaborations next month.

I haven't seen any of them before, and I'm most intrigued by the looong one.

Filmlinc doing a thing on him soon

Finished reading Melancholy of Resistance a few weeks ago. It's quite fun to see how Tarr has adapted it, a lot of the things that seem to make absolutely no sense in the film - the scene with the children, the room with the washing machines - is more explained in the book, but Tarr cuts out the connecting issue. I love it when films do that.