Does the world end like this?

Anais 2022-04-23 07:05:44

Winter is here in Chicago, and after a few strong winds, the leaves are all gone, leaving bare branches. Under the gray sky, the wind was howling outside the window. Every day I sat in front of the writing desk and looked at the changes outside the window, and I couldn't help but think of "The Horse of Turin" again.

In the summer, I saw this slow film for the first time. At that time, I fast-forwarded some details, and I was grateful for my life after watching it. Because our world is colorful no matter what, God has not withdrawn his common grace. But now, in the early winter, the epidemic is spreading rapidly, and the presidential election is in turmoil. How similar our situation is to the situation in the film! Although the environment is not as bad as theirs, the epidemic has deeply isolated people from each other, and it is almost the same in the city as in the wilderness. I can hardly go out every day, and I can only repeat the simple routine of survival - sleep, get up, get dressed, eat, and then sit in a daze like a girl by the window. Although you can watch all kinds of news and videos online, and you can meet online, you will be tired after a while, and there is not much in-depth communication between people. Living in a monotonous environment for a long time, people will become silent, just like the father and daughter in the film.

Every day, the father and daughter only eat boiled potatoes, no oil, just a little salt, very simple. Without a knife and fork, the old man did not wash his hands after finishing his work, and just grabbed his hands to eat. Their clothes are dirty and old, and they have no place to bathe. The clothes are washed and can only be dried in the room. Contrary to the six days in Genesis in which God created a rich and diverse world, Bella Tarr shows us how the world ended little by little in six days. In the film, the originally poor life of the father and daughter gradually became worse in six days. All their efforts seemed to be in vain and failed. The drying up of the well made them lose their basic living conditions, so they had to pack up and leave. But we were disappointed to find that they had to come back not long after they struggled up the hill in the wind and sand. There was no hope in the environment they were in, and in the end the fuel ran out and the world went dark. There is no water, only raw potatoes are left. At this time, the most basic question of 'to be or not to be' is presented naked in front of our eyes. If it was you, would you still eat it? Between physical instinct and psychological despair, how will you choose? flesh or spirit, which will win? At the beginning of the film, the narration tells us the story of 'Nietzsche Weeping Horses'. Nietzsche emphasizes that people need to face the fact that God has died bravely, and use superhuman will to face this world full of tragedy and suffering. However, Beratar does not seem to fully agree with Nietzsche. Because we saw the final hesitation and rejection of the daughter, she did not use the 'superhuman will' to force herself to eat raw potatoes. In the book the Gypsy gave her, she read about the importance of 'confession'. The superhuman will did not give her real comfort in the desperate situation, let alone the possibility of redemption.

Bella Tal said the film was about "human survival." The beginning of his career was filled with anger towards society. But gradually, he understood that the problem itself was more complex, not just social, but ontological and cosmic. So his film style became more and more simple and pure. Rather than stories, he pays more attention to images, sounds and emotions themselves. Because there is nothing new under the sun, we are just repeating old stories. So, in "The Horse of Turin," he doesn't tell us a very dramatic story, but presents a person's life. In the trivial details presented by the long shot, we gradually entered a state of meditation, watching them repeat the process of dressing, fetching water, and eating, and began to think about the truth of life, and began to learn to wait for the unknown and endure this day-to-day life heavy.

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Extended Reading
  • Oma 2022-03-30 09:01:12

    Can live with this movie, you can live with life!

  • Alexander 2022-04-07 09:01:06

    I feel that my role here is as much as Nietzsche (who is about to/has/always be in chaos), as well as as a coachman, and sometimes as a horse driven into service in the cold wind. Everything is so desperate, the grey road leads to a funeral. There are so many metaphors that everything is understood unmistakably.

The Turin Horse quotes

  • Narrator: In Turin on the 3rd of January 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche steps out of the doorway of number six, Via Carlo Albert, perhaps to take a stroll, perhaps to go by the post office to collect his mail. Not far from him, the driver of a hansome cab is having trouble with a stubborn horse. Despite all his urging, the horse refuses to move, whereupon the driver - Giuseppe? Carlo? Ettore? - loses his patience and takes his whip to it. Nietzsche comes up to the throng and puts an end to the brutal scene caused by the driver, by this time foaming at the mouth with rage. For the solidly built and full-moustached gentleman suddenly jumps up to the cab and throws 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 "Mutter, ich bin dumm!" and lives for another ten years, silent and demented, under the care of his mother and sisters. We do not know what happened to the horse.

  • Bernhard: Everything's in ruins, everything's been degraded, but I could say that they've ruined and degraded everything, because this is not some kind of cataclysm coming about with so-called "innocent" human aid, on the contrary, it's about man's own judgment over his own self, which of course God has a big hand in, or, dare I say, takes part in, and whatever he takes part in is the most ghastly creation that you can imagine, because, you see, the world has been debased, so it doesn't matter what I say because everything has been debased that they've acquired and since they've acquired everything in a sneaky, underhanded fight, they've debased everything, because whatever they touch, and they touch everything, they've debased; this is the way it was until the final victory, until the triumphant end; acquire, debase, debase, acquire; or I can put it differently if you'd like, to touch, debase and thereby acquire, or touch, acquire and thereby debase; it's been going on like this for centuries, on, on and on; this and only this, sometimes on the sly, sometimes rudely, sometimes gently, sometimes brutally, but it has been going on and on; yet only in one way; like a rat attacks from ambush; because for this perfect victory it was also essential that the other side, that is, everything's that's excellent, great in some way and noble, should not engage in any kind of fight, there shouldn't be any kind of struggle, just the sudden disappearance of one side meaning the disappearing of the excellent, the great, the noble, so that by now the winners who have won by attacking from ambush rule the earth and there isn't a single tiny nook where one can hide something from them because everything they can lay their hands on is theirs, even things that they can't reach but they do reach are also theirs; the heavens are already theirs and theirs are all our dreams; theirs is the moment, nature, infinite silence; even immortality is theirs, you understand?; everything, everything is lost forever, and those many nobles, great and excellent just stood there, if I can put it that way; they stopped at this point and had to understand and had to accept that there is neither God nor gods, and the excellent, the great and the noble had to understand and accept this right from the beginning, but, of course, they were quite incapable of understanding it, they believed it and accepted it but they didn't understand it; they just stood there, bewildered but not resigned until something, that flash on the mind, finally enlightened them, and all at once they realized that there is neither God nor gods; all at once they saw that there is neither good nor bad; then they saw and understood that if this was so then they themselves did not exist either; you see, I reckon this may have been the moment when we can say that they were extinguished, they burnt out; extinguished and burnt out like the fire left to smolder in the meadow; one was the constant loser, the other was the constant victor; defeat, victory, defeat, victory; and one day, here in the neighborhood I had to realize and I did realize that I was mistaken, I was truly mistaken when I thought that there had never been and could never be any kind of change here on earth; because, believe me, I know now that this change has indeed taken place.