Cosmic, nihilistic, truth: Béla Tarr at Showroom Cinema
Will Heaven Fall Upon Us? a retrospective of the Hungarian director Béla Tarr, is a novel opportunity to see his languishing epics on the big screen. Five titles head to Showroom next month.
From 1988’s Damnation to 2011’s The Turin Horse, these films cover a stage in Tarr’s work where runtimes stretched in the search for realism. In a recent BFI interview, he states, “...my goal became more and more to show a kind of totality, something which shows our life in a simple way.”
A 432-minute run-time is one way to glimpse the totality of life. Sátántangó, Tarr’s apocalyptic opus from 1994, recounts a failed Hungarian farming commune, preyed upon by infighting, deceit and promised riches.
Characters leave frames and the camera lingers. The texture, of dried mud on work boots and soft cat fur, grows more tactile across long, uninterrupted shots. The 150 cuts over 7½ hours equates to 2 minutes per shot. You live and breathe each one. Sátántangó plays in full on Sunday 25 August.
Worn-down and manipulated masses appear across Tarr’s work. In Werckmeister Harmonies (2, 8 August), a whole town is hypnotized by a travelling circus (and its main attraction: a blue whale’s carcass). In The Turin Horse (16-18 August), a peasant farmer and his daughter’s lives depend on the whims of the weather and the flagging efforts of their workhorse.
But there is untold beauty to these films. With time as no object, every frame can be a painting, every scene meticulously crafted — down to the dents in the cooking pots. The Man From London receives a 35mm screening on Saturday 31 August. The neo-noir, in which a railway switchman steals a suitcase of money from a crime scene, offers deliciously dark shadows and silhouettes.
Damnation (9, 15 August), too, delights in beautifully composed visions of urban decay. The doomed romance between solipsistic Karrer and a jazz-club singer might also be his most accessible, at a breezy one hour and fifty-five minutes.
To pinch one more quote, Tarr recently said to the Guardian: “I only ask this – how did you feel when you came out of the movie theatre after watching my film? Did you feel stronger or weaker? That’s the main question. I want you to be stronger.”
Harsh, oppressive, beautiful, and all-encompassing, his work could be a guide for life.
Will Heaven Fall Upon Us? A Béla Tarr Retrospective, runs from 2-31 August: www.showroomworkstation.org.uk/belatarrcollection
