For many, the Hungarian Béla Tarr is one of the greatest film directors ever. Writing in the Guardian Peter Bradshaw described Tarr as the “vividly disquieting master of spiritual desolation.” His films consist of long takes, measured pace, minimal dialogues and austere, gloom-laden settings. So don’t expect any thrills.
Tarr was unrelenting in his efforts to portray life at the bottom, of people stuck in apparently hopeless situations. His first feature,Family Nest (1979), was set on a grim, claustrophobic housing estate. Damnation (1987) focusses on a singer in the seediest night club ever put on the screen, and the setting for Satan’s Tango (1994) is a dilapidated former collective farm where everything is in a state of advanced decay.
Werkmeister Harmonies (2000) is his strangest film. A small town receives a visit from a large dead whale, pulled in on a trailer. Unsurprisingly, this attracts the town’s populace but it also appears to trigger a wave of mass hysteria as crowds ransack the local hospital. The Man from London (2007) is based very loosely on the eponymous novel by George Simenon.
In The Turin Horse (2011), a couple, dependent on their work horse for survival, fall ever deeper into poverty.
In 2011 Tarr announced he would make no more films. He later established a film studio in Sarajevo, The Film Factory, where he helped produce a number of films by young would-be directors.
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