This is a film of the elements.

Between the constant wind, the need for water, the dirt and mud, and the light of small, flickering flames, this film is the sum total of reality. In the midst of all of these is the aether, the fifth element that controls movement and light. In this case, the aether is the camera, which moves fluidly about our sparse subjects and observes, yet also commands their fates in a metatextual way. The aether is Tarr's storytelling.

The wind is the uncontrollable power that sweeps away everything. It is the horse's refusal to work and the inevitability of the end. It is constant, grating, and brutal, and it drives those who attempt to move…

First Day: Food and shelter
Second Day: Touching, acquiring and therefore debasing
Third Day: God watches all over you
Fourth Day: Scarcity
Fifth Day: Darkness and silence
Sixth Day: Mortality

Predominant elements throughout the days: A storm raging outside and moving everything that can be found in the air and on the ground, like trying to reach a destination, shadows, cotidianity occupying three alienated souls (two humans, one animal), a strong wind heard while outside, ghastly and scary wind sounds from the inside, repentance, mysteries unspoken, emotional detachment, water and potatoes.

Bonus feature: Presented in the Second Day: A destructive critique to civilization throughout the centuries against authority and other godly figures attempting to establish their false omnipresence above everybody…

Listen.

The wind blows.

We watch a moving world. We do not move ourselves.
We are Pygmalion in reverse. Our daily routine is the chisel, turning us to stone.
We wait. We ignore. We transform.
Time stops.

The wind blows.
It sucks our breath, it drowns our words.
Actions speak louder. Actions can match the wind.
Nature versus routine. An eternal battle to wear away our stone facade.
Both with the same goal, reward, curse. Stone or dust.
Winner signaled by brief panic, then stone or dust.
Time stops.

The wind blows.

Listen.

***

I'd like to place a reservation on my rating for The Turin Horse for now. Béla Tarr is a director I've long been wanting to experience,…

More an experience than a film, Béla Tarr's The Turin Horse is one of the bleakest and most depressing pieces of art I have ever encountered. And at the same time it is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

Tarr's film builds on a thought, a musing (taken from the film's synopsis): 1889. German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche witnessed the whipping of a horse while traveling in Turin, Italy. He tossed his arms around the horse's neck to protect it then collapsed to the ground. In less than one month, Nietzsche would be diagnosed with a serious mental illness that would make him bed-ridden and speechless for the next eleven years until his death. But whatever did…