Bela Tarr

Ligeia · 03-02-2010

Béla Tarr (born July 21, 1955, Pécs,

) is a Hungarian

,

, and former

.

Tarr was born in Pécs, but grew up in

Budapest

in a working class family. His mother took him to a casting by the Hungarian national television (MTV) at the age of 10 and he finally won the role of the protagonist's son in a TV-drama adaptation of

Leo_Tolstoy

's The Death of Ivan Ilyich" target="_blank">The Death of Ivan Ilyich

The_Death_of_Ivan_Ilyich
. Apart from a smaller role in Miklós Jancsó's film Szörnyek évadja (Season of Monsters, 1986), Tarr never tried acting again. Tarr has said that originally he wanted to be a philosopher, and he considered film making as something of a hobby. However, after making his 8mm short films, the Hungarian government would not allow Tarr to attend the university. So he was forced to make films instead.

Tarr began to realize his interests with film-making at the age of 16 by making amateur films and later working as a caretaker at a national House for Culture and Recreation. Most of his amateur works were documentaries, mostly about the life of workers or poor people in urban Hungary. His amateur work brought him to the attention of the Béla Balázs Studios (named in honor of the Hungarian cinema theorist, Béla Balázs), which helped fund Tarr's 1977 feature debut Családi tűzfészek (Family Nest) at the age of 22. Tarr shot the film without any budget with non-professional actors (participating in the film only by "friendship" and without any salary) and on original locations in six days. The film was faithful to the "Budapest School" or "documentarist" style popular at the time within Béla Balázs Studios, maintaining absolute social-realism on screen. Many critics thought they detected in the film an influence from the directorial work of

John_Cassavetes

, though Tarr denied having seen any of Cassavetes's films prior to shooting Családi tűzfészek. (The film was eventually released in

1979

).
After completing "Családi tűzfészek" Tarr began his studies in the Hungarian School of Theatrical and Cinematic Arts. The 1980 piece Szabadgyalog (The Outsider) and the following year's Panelkapcsolat (The Prefab People) continued in much the same vein with smaller changes in style. The latter was the first film by Tarr to feature professional actors in the leading roles. With a 1982 television adaptation of Macbeth" target="_blank">Macbeth

Macbeth
, his work began to change dramatically; composed of only two shots, the first shot of this film (before the main title) was five minutes long, with the second 57 minutes in length. Not only did Tarr's visual sensibility move from raw close-ups to more abstract mediums and long shots, but also his philosophical sensibility shifted from grim realism to a more metaphysical outlook similar to that of

Andrei_Tarkovsky

. Tarr himself considers

Rainer_Werner_Fassbinder

as his main influence and idol.
Tarr has joked that the Kodak 11 minute roll of film is a form of censorship.

Joel · 03-02-2010

Thanks for this. It's worth noting that Tarr's best-known work, the magnificent seven-hour opus Satantango (1994), is deeply and bitterly anti-religious. The exploiter who leads a community into the dance of death represents both capitalism and the return of Catholicism, as his language (he uses the word 'sin' obsessively) makes only too clear. So parallels with Tarkovsky work more at a technical level than a thematic level, while parallels with Fassbinder are probably more meaningful.

Robin Davies · 03-02-2010

Werckmeister Harmonies might be a good one for Ligotti fans to seek out first, as it has an eerie edge of fantasy to it. I was a bit disappointed with The Man From London at first, though it has grown on me after a second viewing on DVD. I find his best films extraordinarily haunting.

Soukesian · 03-02-2010

Second the recommendation on Werckmeister Harmonies, and the book "Melancholy of Resistance" is also worth seeking out. I mean to see Satantango one day, but have never had the opportunity.