Béla Tarr Interview
by Martha Appelt / Photo by FEST
At the beginning of this summer I was very fortunate to have a great encounter. We met at a small, crowded bar where people were watching some important football game for some important European football cup. It was night time and the smell of sea was in the air. We went outside and sat at a quieter table away from the crowd. He lit up his cigarette and sipped his red wine. I watched him and now I have a mental picture of his profile in close-up. I wish I could draw it for you; it’s a nice picture set over a night sky, with hints of grey, a lot of skin-tone and a serpent of smoke. The perfect soundtrack for it would be the sound of rain, but there wasn’t any. The man in it is Béla Tarr.
What you will read next are excerpts of his master class he presented the next day, which I hosted for FEST- the International Film Festival in Espinho. I could only use a small part of it for this piece, but I invite you to listen to the whole master class and get a fist full of honesty, rebelliousness and inspiration.
What inspired you to start making films?
Honestly? I never wanted to be a filmmaker, I just became… I was 16 years old, I was very radical, very young, and I made my first film, and I wanted to change the world. I believed the camera was good and useful to change the world. When I made my first feature, I believed the same, I was 22. Slowly, I had to understand that I cannot change the world with film, but maybe during this time I was changing the film language, and if you say film is part of the world, lets say in this case that I was changing a little bit, a small part of the world. When I was young, the situation was the same as now, I saw fake films, fake stories, fake dramaturgy… everything was far away from life. Film is a communication between me and the world, this is how I see the world and how I react to the world. And of course, the film has to be close to life. All of my films are close to life. And it’s not just my perspective, because you can’t make films alone. When I say “I”, I talk about my crew.
And is this why you chose to work with non-actors?
Of course, this was a moral decision when I started my life as a filmmaker. Not to work with professional actors, to work with real people. You have to understand, I told you, I only saw fake movies. I wanted to show you real life, I wanted to shake you, I wanted to punch you, I wanted to kick you. I wanted to show you how this fucking reality is. And that is why I decided: no script, no professional actors, no correct dramaturgy, hand-held 16mm black and white. Ugly cuts just to show that it is full of energy, full of anger, because I wanted to show you how life is.
And that was my starting point, I had decided that these were the most important things for me. And somehow it was really good to do it like this. Of course it was a no-budget movie, we had only camera and sound, a car, and we put three lamps in the car. The crew was of only 5 people and of course we didn’t pay any actors. And we just wanted to work, work, and work.
People tend to talk about your work in a very formal way. They say you found your style with Damnation. But I see exactly the same anger you talk about, that’s what drives it, despite all the formal options you have. And you told me before that (formally) your films didn’t change that much.
No. Fortunately. Surely I changed because I became old. When you see my picture from when I was 23, I had a lot of hair. And I was much stronger… (laughs) What can I say? You have to understand, I’m the same person. This stupid idea that I started a new style, or a new life with Damnation, came from Jonathan Rosenbaum. He’s a good friend of mine but I do not agree with him. And I told him: “That’s such a stupid thing!” And Susan Sontag was fighting with him about this and she told him that it was such a stupid idea: “How can you believe that someone goes to bed on Sunday evening and wakes up Monday morning a new person? It’s impossible!” Of course! No, as I told you, step by step.
Of course, the main issue, and why I made films, is the same! The same, just to show you life, and just to understand how this life works. Because I can’t say I understand it very well. Even after spending my whole time trying to understand it. It’s not easy. Something would happen and it would change your opinion, or influence you, or touch you. When you’re making a film, you need inspiration all the time, or a reason. Because, ok, the first film it was simple, the second film, it was… I was thinking that it was a drama, but maybe… you never see this kind of epical forms in the cinema. And that’s why I was thinking to make a different dramaturgy, how could we make a kind of novel.
And then afterwards, I made another drama, and I was working with some professional actors. Then afterwards, it was MacBeth, which was when I was really working with this poor Shakespeare, and then … (I say poor because I was touching him and he could not do anything against me.) And then it was again, something more stylish. And then it came Damnation. But there are a lot of things that give you something. For example before Damnation I went to Japan. That was my first trip to the far East and an old professor took me to the museum. There was a picture with white and two black dots, and the old Japanese professor told me: “I’m sure, because you came from western culture, I’m sure that for you, the story is the two black dots.” Then I said “Yeah.” He said: “No, for us is, it’s the white.” And then I was really thinking a lot. What is story? And when you really think about it, why do we, in films, ignore, for example, the time?
Yeah, we’re cutting out.
BT: Because the logic of all films is: action, cut, action, cut. Let’s give information, cut. Information, cut. But what do we call information? Why do we believe that information is only the action? And why don’t we say that between the two things, there is time, space, and a lot of other things? But we are always reducing for linear storytelling. And that’s what was hurting me all the time. I still don’t know what this means, story. Because if you remember, from the old testament, the old stories are done. We cannot create new stories. But our life, how we do the same old story, because we do it differently, this is what it should maybe be much more important. Because, of course, each story finishes badly, because it finishes…
At the end.
At the end… And that’s why we do not understand what it means “Happy end.” Because I’ve never seen a happy funeral, but it could happen!
Another filmmaker who talks about rhythm is Sokurov, and one thing he says about cinema is that because the French found it, they turned it into a circus. If it had been “found” in Russia, the story would have been completely different. Now, the best films we have are actually slow films that allow us to digest the time, and they’re more cyclical in a way. How do you edit your films, in terms of rhythm?
When you’re doing long takes sometimes a take takes 10 minutes. Afterwards, you cannot do anything on the editing table. Because you just cut the first frame and the last frame and you put it together. And then it’s ready! The real editing is on set. Agnes (Béla Tarr’s wife and editor) was always on set. She watched everything on the monitor and she would shout at me, several times, when she thought something with the rhythm or something else was wrong.
When you see a long take there are also movements. I start with a close-up and I move the camera and the picture becomes wider, it is a cut but not the same kind of cut. And then afterwards I come back into another close-up and, you know, it’s waving. It’s different all the time. You do not see the same take for ten minutes. We are playing with the space. In the end, we have to cut but it’s in the camera. And the other thing is, the long take has a real special tension. Because everybody has to be on top of it, everybody has to be concentrating very much. The crew, and the actors, and everybody is in.
I was observing it once, it was a very good take and I loved it very much in the Turin Horse. I was just watching, 2 or 3 metres away from the scene, and I was watching how the whole “machine” was working and you know what I felt? Everybody was breathing at the same rhythm. Because it really looks like what it’s like in sex, you have to be together, otherwise…
It doesn’t work.
This is really why I like to do long takes. It’s a special tension.
It’s physiology.
It’s not only an artistic (decision). And of course, you feel this tension on screen.
