Szinbad.

Zoltan Huszarik is a Hungarian filmmaker that I am not familiar with. He died in 1981 at the age of 50 from a suspected suicide and has been acclaimed as an auteur of the ‘European modern art film’ and if you viewed what is claimed to be his most influential movie, then I don’t think you would disagree. Szinbad (1971) is based on a series of 20^th century short stories written by Gyula Krudy and said to be based on the author’s own life. It tells the story of a traveller and womaniser who revisits the women in his life. Szinbad (Zoltan Latinovits) is a man that has led a life of self-indulgence and indecency. 

 

A traveller and womaniser

The film starts with a series of silent images. These images, the movies beautiful locations and the Hungarian dishes bedecked in oil are not so much shot by Sandor Sara’s camerawork as sucked up by it. Its surreal and abstract narrative moves from one woman to the next and from one season to another. It continues its romantic and somewhat morbid theme in rich vivid colours and along side its religious imaginary, sexual overtones and the director’s obsession with texture and objects, it’s a movie of infinite detail.

Some of the women in Szinbad's life. 

This is reputed to be ‘the’ stand out film of Hungarian cinema. The only other film I am familiar with is rather incomprehensible The Turin Horse (2011) but Huszarik’s surreal movie bares not comparison with Bela Tarrs dirgeful cinematic experience. Made at the time of socialist politics in Hungary it emphasised the Bourgeoisie’s great wealth and decadence.  An intriguing film that apart from some limited screenings in 1971/72 has remained largely unseen until its DVD release in 2011. Don’t miss an opportunity to see a rather unique movie.    

The Turin Horse.

The unwelcoming countryside portrayed in Tarr's latest film.

In Turin on 3rd January 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche steps out of the doorway of number six, Via Carlo Albert. Not far from him, the driver of a hansom cab is having trouble with a stubborn horse. Despite all his urging, the horse refuses to move, whereupon the driver loses his patience and takes his whip to it. Nietzsche comes up to the throng and puts an end to the brutal scene, throwing his arms around the horse’s neck, sobbing. His landlord takes him home, he lies motionless and silent for two days on a divan until he mutters the obligatory last words, and lives for another ten years, silent and demented, cared for by his mother and sisters. We do not know what happened to the horse.

The scaggy horse that allegedly  lead to Nietzsche breakdown. 

These are the introductory words at the beginning of Béla Tarr’s latest, and rumoured to be his last film. The Turin Horse (2011) begins it’s narrative directly after these events and tells the story of an elderly man, the hansom cab driver, who has lost the use of one arm, his daughter and a bedraggled horse. They live in some of the most inhospitable countryside you could ever imagine and seem to do little more than drink two glasses of alcohol for breakfast, eat boiled potatoes with their fingers for dinner, fetch water, clean their bowls, chop wood, feed the horse and sleep, saying very little in the process.

Looking at a lamp for twenty minutes is not the most exciting cinema!

This apocalyptic black and white study of poverty and hardship is the most soporific movie I have ever seen. Shot and filmed in Hungary it consists of 146 minutes of static long shots, which continue well after our characters have left the scene and sometimes when the screen is dark.  Said to be the director’s most assessable film I dread to think what the others must be like! Its not really a film to enjoy and to say it’s a bit of a marathon watch is certainly an understatement; in fact it’s more like a endurance test than a movie. Unless you’ve got the patience of a saint give Mr Tarr’s movie a miss.