Bela tarr

Béla Tarr was born on July 21, 1955 in Pécs, Hungary. From a working-class family, he grew up in Budapest. His love for cinema would be helped by his youthful work in a cultural center, and by filming shorts in Super 8 as an amateur. But his entry into the world of cinema was not as a director, but as an actor, and it occurred at a very early age, ten years old, when his mother took him to a casting test for a television version of The Death of Ivan Ilyich , the work of Leon Tostoy. Indeed, little Béla achieved the role of the protagonist’s son. But the truth is that his acting career did not go much further, and he would only appear before the camera again in a film by his compatriot Miklós Jancsó : Szörnyek évadja , from 1987.

Apparently the authoritarian regime of Hungary determined Tarr’s professional occupation. In his youth he wanted to study philosophy at the university. But observing Béla’s shorts, the authorities considered that they had a dangerous intellectual potential in front of them, which is why they denied him admission to the faculty. So that the cinema would pass without him looking for him in the foreground. The filming that he initially made, documentaries of the working class that reflect his social concern, caught the attention of the Béla Bálazs studios, whose help would be decisive for the realization in 1977 of his first feature film, Family Nest.. She was 22 years old when she made this film, shot in six days with non-professional actors, and which dealt with the problem of access to housing, with the subsequent family crises. Tarr already points out here some of his stylistic constants, such as photographing his stories in black and white, his narrative slowness and careful planning. But he maintains the documentary tone of his early work, something that he would gradually abandon to acquire a more stylized way of shooting. The film would give him the opportunity to receive an academic training at the Hungarian School of Cinematographic and Theater Arts.

Szabadgyalog (1981), the story of a musician, and Panelkapcsolat (1982), the difficulties of a family, are neat films, although they do not represent a great aesthetic advance for Tarr, who remains attached to the documentary style and the influences of socialist realism. However, in the second title he already has professional actors. And that same year he will make a version of the Shakespearean “MacBeht” for television: with a duration of 55 minutes, Tarr shot it in only two shots. Again in a realistic direction, Öszi almanach (1985) describes the life and confrontations of people who share a large apartment.

Although there are no major changes in the disenchanted and existentialist approach of The Condemnation (1987), the film does present some novelties. On the one hand, Tarr stops signing his solo scripts, he begins his collaboration with the writer László Krasznahorkai , of whom he says “he has transmitted his way of thinking to me on a global scale.” In addition, the enigmatic and mysterious sequence shots acquire all their splendor, which together with the music of its usual composer, Mihály Vig , add density to the sad look that Tarr directs at the human condition. Because, evidently, The Condemnation speaks of the condemnation to live without incentives and illusion, which accompanies each man to a greater or lesser extent.

Several years of work will take the adaptation of the complex novel by Krasznahorkai Sátántangó (1994), which has an excessive duration of more than seven hours. The film talks about the problems of a small rural community, which is preparing to collect some debts to start a better life elsewhere; however one of them -curiously incarnated by Mihály Vig-, proposes that everyone share the money to improve things right there. The film would win the Caligari award at the Berlin Festival. When told about the minute-long shots of his highly choreographed films, Tarr explains that “the length of a scene reflects the importance of a layer that I want to emphasize.”

Tarr would not attract attention again until 2000, when he presented Werckmeister’s Harmonies , a film also based on a work by Krasznahorkai. Once again, there is talk of the fears that haunt the human being, which prevent the wishes of balance and harmony from being fulfilled. A cryptic symbology -that huge stuffed whale-, accompanies the protagonist, witness to the excesses of a disoriented mob, and the misunderstanding of his uncle, who in the face of the existential case cannot do anything, can only take care of his own inner order. the. In the pessimistic film, Ágnes Hranitzky , Tarr’s wife, appears for the first time as co-director, although she had edited all of her films since Szabadgyalog . In 2008 the director turns to a French literary source: George Simenon.The Man From London may never have seen the light of day, after producer Humbert Balsan committed suicide in 2005. But Tarr was able, with the inevitable delay, to secure financing. In this film he appears more stylized than ever, close to expressionism in his mime to the paroxysm of aesthetic form. He describes the adventures of a protagonist who cannot resist the temptation to keep for himself a briefcase full of money, found by chance. And he dominates again the melancholic look and vital paralysis, the incapacity for action of the characters, who allow themselves to be dragged by the force of events, and who with resignation must settle for their fate.

Tarr is currently preparing The House in Turin with Krasznahorkai , and it seems that he plans to retire from the cinema with this film.