Thanks to all who came out yesterday evening and celebrated the release of Béla Tarr, The Time After. Here is one of our favorite passages from the book: "Ever since Damnation the animal inhabits Béla Tarr’s universe as the figure in which the human experiences its limit: dogs drinking from puddles, which Karrer barked with in the end; cows liquidated by the community, horses escaped from abattoirs, and a cat martyred by Estike in Satantango; the monstrous whale of Werckmeister Harmonies; all the way up to the fox wrapped around Henriette’s neck. No puddle, here, where a dog might drink, no cat to give milk to as a treat to oneself, no circus passing through, only a visionary who announces the disappearance of everything noble, and a group of gypsies attracted by the well water. Besides these, all that remains is the horse, in whom several roles are condensed: it is the tool for work, the means of survival for old Ohlsdorfer and his daughter. It is also the beaten horse, the animal martyred by humans that Nietzsche embraced in the streets of Turin before entering the night of madness. But it is also the symbol of the existence of the disabled coachman and his daughter, kin to the Nietzschean camel, the being made to be loaded with all possible burdens. Three times are articulated, then, around the relations linking the three actors of the drama. There is the time of decline that drives the horse toward a death, which, like that of Brown, will remain hidden behind planks, though we will have followed its slow approach – in the horse’s weary head and the daughter’s gestures – up to the magnificent final trio, in which the father removes the horse’s halter before the daughter closes the stable door to a haunting pedal in C minor. We also see this end time progress inexorably for the two inhabitants of the house with the dry well and the lamp that no longer wants to be lit." J. Rancière
Posted on: Fri, 26 Jul 2013 14:43:35 +0000
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