Synopsis
A monumental windstorm and an abused horse's refusal to work or eat signal the beginning of the end for a poor farmer and his daughter.
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Cast
- János DerzsiOhlsdorfer
- Erika BókOhlsdorfer's daughter
- Mihály KormosBernhard
- Lajos KovácsBernhard (voice)
- Mihály RádayNarrator (voice)
Recommendations
- 100
Slant Magazine
Béla Tarr is the cinema's greatest crafter of total environments and in The Turin Horse, working in his most restricted physical setting since 1984's Almanac of Fall, he (along with co-director Ágnes Hranitzky) dials up one of his most vividly immersive milieus. - 100
The A.V. Club
The Turin Horse has a burnished beauty that's awe-inspiring, like a clear window into a faraway world as it dangles, and then falls, off the precipice. - 100
The New York Times
The movie is too beautiful to be described as an ordeal, but it is sufficiently intense and unyielding that when it is over, you may feel, along with awe, a measure of relief. Which may sound like a reason to stay away, but is exactly the opposite. - 100
New York Post
A sumptuous masterpiece by one of the greatest moviemakers of all time. - 80
Variety
Though ripe for metaphorical interpretation, the slender setup, about the fate of a horse seen beaten in the streets, gives arthouse audiences little to cling to, and will provide institutional and fest programmers a test-of-wills head-scratcher for their calendars. - 80
Village Voice
An experience comparable to starting down the road with an empty sack then, over the course of the journey, having it weighed down steadily with rocks until you can't go on. But this backbreaking effect cannot be called an artistic failure. It is exactly what Tarr sets out to achieve. - 70
Salon
I left the theater oddly exhilarated - to see daylight again was so great! - and, odder still, eager to see it again (although perhaps not today). Tarr's films can be arduous, even wrenching, but they're not boring. Watching them is something like visiting the world's most fantastic art museum and taking an ice-cold shower, both at the same time. - 60
New York Daily News
This quiet drama is not for everyone. It may not even be for fans of Hungarian auteur Bela Tarr, whose spare, naturalistic films can be, well, trying. (The director has said that "Horse" will be his final film.)
