I loved the first 15-20 minutes showing their bleak existence through natural lighting and those harsh winds. But it didn't let up for the full 250 minutes. I can appreciate the themes and message behind it, but that alone doesn't make a rewarding film experience. Repetitive, draining, and unrewarding. Hard to sit through.

A tragic story told simply through beautiful (and of course, long) scenes of utter bleakness and stagnating hope and humanity. It's a big intake and totally exhausting to watch, but also highly alluring in the blackest sense and overloads the senses with patient cinematography and repetitive, empty noise. This film is utterly like no other.

Father and daughter live their repetitive, joyless lives day after day, unwilling or unable to express any affection whatsoever for one another or for their solitary horse, the proceedings interrupted only by further evidence that their world is utterly miserable. Bleak even for Tarr, but still an impressive piece of art.

sinematoografi

It takes you in from the beginning: the haunting music and the imagery. The slow pace, the endless wind and the constant darkness. The worst thing, Tarr says, is that you cannot escape. And indeed, you cannot. I was sitting there, watching the last shots and the echoes of Tarr's promise to never touch the camera came racing through my mind. This is IT. This is a wonderful meditation on the heaviness and hopelesness of being. Beautiful. Haunting. Dark.

Cinema dies with Béla Tarr. [Full Review]

I genuinely disliked this film, however it was a perfect final film for Bela Tarr. The content completely disappeared and there was only pure form. A complete descend into nihilism. A perfect end to a directing career. But I don't know if the film works by itself. Also, I realized in NYFF that Tarr had became a cult figure, a figure who has fanatic fans all over the world. I'm so happy for this but it is highly surprising as well.

"Béla Tarr is the cinema's greatest crafter of total environments and in The Turin Horse, working in his most restricted physical setting since 1984's Almanac of Fall, he dials up one of his most vividly immersive milieus." - Andrew Schenker

02 nisan 2011, 30. ist film festivali, yonetmenin katilimiyla & an anti-genesis pure cinema experience about unbearable "heaviness" of being in a world where God does not exist. / / / tanri'nin olmadigi bir dunyada, varolmanin dayanilmaz 'agirligi' hakkinda anti-genesis bir 'pure cinema' deneyimi/denemesi.

The slow pacing, the deliberate repetition, the haunting score and beautiful, crisp cinematography makes it a mesmerising experience about two people's harsh struggle against sure death.

End of everything...

What a beautiful, hypnotic and bleak film. It would make a great installation piece in an art gallery, looping endlessly in a darkened room. The sound design is phenomenal.

Not Tarr's best, but certainly the purest distillation of his ethos. If you find his films hollow and tedious, this will strengthen your opinion more than ever; if you're a fan, as I am, you still might find this a challenge. It's even more desolate than the apocalyptic Werckmeister Harmonies. Despite this, there's a strange comfort to be had in this desolate routine; when, midway through the film, a band of gypsies intrudes on their farm, it feels surprisingly threatening.

Tedious and shallow.

If you loved any of Tarr's previous four films, you will probably love this one, although it is his bleakest. The cinematography is, as one would expect, jaw-droppingly rich. The film is loaded with stark, gorgeous, unforgettable visions. A funereal dirge shares the soundtrack with the incessant howling wind. Tarr's films have a tactile effect, and here you can truly feel the bitter cold of the landscape and the house that surely does little to protect its occupants from the elements.

Tarr has always been concerned with the uprooting of the weak by the strong, and so it is only fitting that his final film addresses nihilism in a more direct manner than his previous works. The cinematography is, of course, phenomenal. The world appears plagued by a howling nothingness, manifested by a wind that ravishes both the land and its inhabits. Unfortunately, Tarr's plodding style makes for a tedious and unrewarding watch, mostly because of how shallow and blunt his vision actually is.

If u have seen a Tarr film, you know what to expect: slow, long takes, heavy themes. As I watched this, it didn't instantly grab me like Werckmeister Harmonies did, but afterwards I felt similar... like now it will weigh heavily on me. This is what Tarr is good at. Even if u don't instantly recognize it; the cinematography, dialogue, constant darkness, the poetry of the visuals and the pacing, the music... it has already taken a hold of you and it's not going to let go.

Recalls Au Hasard Balthazar, but mostly regurgitates The Naked Island without any of the magic. The faux-nihilistic religious sermon at the film's heart, the visual and musical pathos and generally the sledgehammer subtlety, filled me with renewed appreciation for Shindo's mastery, the perfection of his speechless script and the beauty of his music. Tarr's film doesn't convey sisyphean existence so much as it subjects the viewer to excruciating tedium.

I can relate to those who will find the slow pacing ridiculous, if Tarr's movie can indeed by called paced at all. It's a movie that I would highly recommend for the patient, especially if you appreciate beautiful cinematography. That and the repetitative score put me in a trance-like, meditative state. As for the themes, I would say that they have been explored better in other films. I'm not even sure I would even classify this as a film, actually. Rather, it is an accomplished piece of art.