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Damnation

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I love Bela Tarr's work. It is reminiscent of Andrei Tarkovsky, even though it's Tarr's own. He does not copy Tarkovsky, but simply has much in common with him. This ranks among Tarr's best films. It takes place in a depressed mining town, where a man is attempting to get away from the town with the wife of a friend who he's having an affair with. The plot really isn't what matters so much in Tarr films. It's not what he says, but how he says it. It's in black and white, and it's very leisurely paced. The takes are long and meditative. It has a melancholy feel to it, much like his magnum opus Satantango, and his later masterpiece, Werckmeister Harmonies. Another great film from the mind and soul of Bela Tarr. When you see a Tarr film, you see the whole world in it. Every film of his has that aura of greatness, or close to it, similar to that of Kubrick, Tarkovsky, Bresson, Bergman, Dreyer, Herzog, Lean, etc., etc.. Not many directors can make that claim today (though many do). Only Lars von Trier and Alexander Sokurov fall into the aura of greatness territory with Tarr. Tarr's the real thing...

Damnation (1987) not only marks the Hungarian director Bela Tarr's departure from realist dramas but also his entry into the ranks of the best European directors. Although nowhere near as fascinating conceptually as Tarr's later works (Sátántango, Werckmeister Harmonies), Damnation (especially the cinematography) is spectacular in its minimalism and reference to other films (Tarkovsky's masterful Stalker appears to be one of Tarr's prime visual influences). Tarr revels in slow panning shots that frequently pause to observe water flowing down walls and unusual textures. The takes unfold slowly and methodically. The contents of and actions in room pass from sight only to reappear in mirrors and reflections. The pace is glacial.

The plot is equally minimal. Somewhere in a half-abandoned, dreary, crumbling town Karrer, an alcoholic man, attempts to rekindle his relationship with a married night-club singer. Most of the time he meanders from bar to bar. A smuggling job is given to the the husband of singer and Karrer has three days. And a series of betrayals occur after a endless drunken dancing party at Titanik Bar... Karrer breaks down completely and turns in everyone to the police.

Damnation rises above films with similar plots by the uncanny feelings that the beautiful black and white cinematography and local evoke. The town feels almost entirely cut off from the world -- the only connection is an elevated convener belt that clanks and clatters over the hills towards the horizon. In this microcosm of the world the universal themes of alienation, loneliness, and despair unfold. Words are infrequent and momentous when spoken. We wait and wander aimlessly with the characters.

Damnation is not for everyone. Those who can tolerate the a glacial pace and a minimal plot will be rewarded with a beautiful, haunting, experience. However, Damnation pales in comparison to Tarr's later film, Werckmeister Harmonies where similar themes, are utilized to create a truly moving and visceral experience. As a viewer, I was left uninterested in the characters and the simplistic plot was somewhat detrimental. This early project is still worthwhile to behold.

Bela Tarr, is, well, his films are, shall we say "unique". I suppose that's a kind way of putting it.

Tarr is the kind of filmmaker whom you either love or hate. I've heard people call him pretenious and boring while others praise him as a master storyteller. A director of uncompromising vision. I think it says a lot that his films are able to provoke such strong feelings on either side. He's obviously reaching out to people.

Bela Tarr's films are usually compared to Andrei Tarkovsky for their long uncut camera shots. Their slow, methodical pace. But we could also compare him to Theo Angelopoulos or Michelangelo Antonioni. But these aren't sufficent comparisons in my opinion. I'd rather put Tarr in a class with directors such as John Cassavetes or Maurice Pialat. Tarr's films are not really as abstract in a sense as Tarkovsky or Antonioni. Tarr's films are about people. He works outside the Hungarian film industry. He shoots films in black&white. He doesn't show pretty countryside images. It's like Italian neo-realism in a way. Tarr is using his surroundings. He movies seem to be made on the most basic level.

"Damnation (Karhozat)" was made in 1988 and brought universal acclaim to this director. It is an atmospheric piece about a man, Karrer (Miklos Szekely) who longs for a married woman (Vali Kerekes) a singer at an unbelieveable depressing nightclub.

She tells Karrer she wants to stay with her husband and child, but Karrer cannot accept this.

There isn't much else going on here. The film's storyline didn't impress me as much as the cinematography and the film's pacing. I didn't even realize how fast the time was going by as I watched the movie.

The cinematography is actually rather simple yet memorable. It effectively gets across the film's theme of desperation. Tarr's camera doesn't make any grand gestures. He starts with an image and then pans the camera either to the right or left. Usually depending upon which direction it moved in the last scene. You never start a scene with the camera moving in the same direction twice. It's just a film rule.

Another thing one has to notice about the film is the absense of sound. We mostly hear rain. Tarr through his sound pattern is also getting across the idea of bleakness. Everything is empty. Tarr places characters in the background while the camera stays far away as we see these characters as small pieces in a larger landscape. It presents a distance between us (the viewer) and the characters within their environment.

But, how many people will really care about any of the points I've made? Tarr is not a mainstream director. His work is for filmbuffs, art house fans, and perhaps, Hungarians. His work is not as "conventional" as Istvan Szabo. Tarr is showing us a different Hungary.

Are their flaws with this film? Of course. Plenty as a matter of fact. The ending is disappointing. I felt it offered no real conclusion. Many scenes seemed rather pointless. Other scenes go on way too long. But "Damnation" managed to win me over. You have to embrace the film's flaws and all. The cinematography and the atmosphere really won me over. Where others may see a slow, boring film, I say Tarr's decisions with the camera and pacing perfectly fit the main character's mood and mindset. It's a challenge, but, people should make an effort to see this film.

Bottom-line: Atmospheric art house film from one of the most uncompromising filmmakers today! Bela Tarr's work takes some getting use to, but, his work has a way of getting under your skin if you give them a chance.

This film is mesmerizing - it is art with a capital 'A,' so commented Susan Sontag, the late writer, philosopher, and critic. This is an existential film - filled with an overwhelming sense of dread and nothingness.
The director, Bela Tarr, has captured on film one of the most poetic sequences in all of cinema - the TANIKA BAR sequence: the camera slowly pans the exterior of the Tanika Bar from the POV of the main character, a widower, in love with the married singer inside the bar. The camera once more slowly and lovingly frames the customers seated inside the bar - they are almost statutes - reminiscent of the characters in the classic French film, LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD.
The singer's voice is so soft it is almost inaudible, her lament of melancholy and loss too painful to hear; her voice floats and hovers over the crowd like a fine mist. It is one of the saddest songs I've ever heard - following is a sampling of the lyrics which, I feel, convey the spirit of the film:

It's finished...
And, there won't be another...
It won't be good...
Ever again...

It's been over long ago...
It's good to know I won't be here long...
It won't be good again...
Ever again...

Bela Tarr became the most well known Hungarian director of films with the 1987 release of Damnation (Kárhozat). And, it's no wonder. While not an inarguably great film, it is certainly close, and a good case for its greatness can be made. More cogently, the film showed Tarr as a filmmaker who is singular, despite some manifest parallels to the work of Andrei Tarkovsky and Theo Angelopoulos. This 117 minute long black and white film, shown in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio is similar, in structure, to Tarkovsky's Stalker, and in pacing to Angelopoulos's films, although its visual imagery is straight out of the Italian Neo-Realism of the 1940s and 1950s.

The film opens with a long slow pullback from a hot of a tramway of mining buckets moving back and forth, suspended over a bleak landscape, part of a small mining town. The sounds of the mechanized drudgery set the tone for the film, and as the camera pulls back from the buckets we see that we are inside an apartment, looking out the window at them. The camera then pulls even further back and around the silhouetted of a man's head. The slow reveal moves from almost a documentary-like feel to one of utter expressionism, as it finally ends, and we see a man shaving with a razor. This break, several minutes into the film, ends a shot that is almost a mirror image of the final shot of Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger. Antonioni, of course, is another filmmaker that Tarr is often compared to, and without a doubt, there are also similarities. Like the Italian cinematic master, Tarr's shot is, at once, the essence of simplicity, but also complexity and duplicity, for, while we start out with what seems an objective documentary shot of an industrial landscape, suspended in mid-air, it soon morphs into what seems to be a subjective shot of a character looking hopelessly out of a definite place. But, then, as the camera pulls back behind the putative eyeline of the silhouetted figure, the shot again becomes objective and omniscient, then switches to a more conventional shot of the main character, whom we learn is called Karrer (Miklós Székely), shaving. Then, we see, as the camera, again pans behind him, how his reflected image disappears behins the imposition of the darkness Karrer's body casts, until his face is swallowed by his body's darkness.

The film is, despite its black and white, dark and sodden landscapes, amazingly beautiful. Rarely has the geography of the human mien been captured so wrenchingly, whether in the faces of the main characters, or in shots that seem to be social commentaries that underscore and play out against the main narrative, and featuring people who are never seen again. There is almost a clinical aspect to the way that Tarr pores over not only the human aspect but also the ruins of a small town. Yet, never is it technically clinical. The slow motion of camera movements away from the seeming center of the story is something that few filmmakers do. Yet Tarr does so, not only with ease, but a purposiveness that hints at the fact that the putative focus of that is just that, putative, and of no more genuine interest than a small portion of a derelicted building he turns his camera on.

Damnation is a film that achieves greatness in many moments, but sometimes does not know when its points have all been made. The slight excesses of lingerance are the only down sides to a film that is a terrific document of the human creature; one that still has relevance to its viewers, as well as its viewed.

Damnation (Bela Tarr, 1988)

Damnation is one of those movies that you're supposed to see. Unfortunately, like Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day or the movies of Theo Angelopoulos or the early works of Takashi Miike, that is often easier said than done, since Bela Tarr has gotten a reputation as a very, very heavy director whose work is antagonistic to the current American filmgoing mindset (Jonathan Rosenbaum, in an article on Tarr, sums it up thus: "If you're wondering why you haven't heard much about Tarr, it may be because the nature and seriousness of his work would get in the way of the marketplace flow the mainstream media are geared to promote." The whole article, by the by, is well worth your time; those of you reading this in a place other than Amazon can go to [censored for Amazon consumption] to get the whole article, while those on Amazon, where outside links are verboten, will have to google Tarr and Rosenbaum and then look for the Chicago Reader link). In fact, having now seen Damnation, I am relatively convinced that a movie theater chain's (Regal?) promo that parodied heavy, "arty" European films was based entirely on it (you may remember it-- a couple going to see a movie called Look at My Potato). And I am not too proud to admit that I am about as educated on what the movie is actually about now as I was before I saw it. I do know that the rather facile IMDB plot summary, which boils down to "boy meets girl, boy is obsessed by girl", doesn't even begin to get into the real depths of this plot. What I do know is that Damnation is about as visually stunning a film as I have seen in a long time. I can say this, having recently said it about such films as El Laberinto del Fauno, because Damnation is on a whole other level of "visually stunning"; whereas del Toro's masterwork is gorgeous because he imagined an elaborate world that took a great deal of work to bring to the screen, Tarr took the world around him and molded it, through a camera lens, into something... other. While the obvious influences on Tarr are Kieslowski and Tarkovsky, Damnation reminds me of nothing so much as Mike Hodges' Get Carter.

Despite my complete ignorance about what went on in this film, I will attempt a symposis: boy (Miklos Szekely) meets girl (Vali Kerekes). Boy becomes obsessed with girl. Girl is married, which is hindrance for boy. Boy is approached by crime boss and asked if he'll do some smuggling. Boy is unwilling-- it doesn't pay enough-- but sees an opportunity to get girl alone, and so refers crime boss to girl's husband.

You don't see Damnation for the plot, though, as interesting as it potentially is; the plot is just a thin veneer over Tarr's portrait of a diseased, possibly dying, town. What is gripping here is the way Tarr shows us, in long, slow takes, the life of the space in which he's filming (and the town itself is as much a character as any human). When the plot wanders off into obscurity (and I rush to add there may be some sort of resolution here that I just didn't get), you're beyond caring, because these images are so beautiful, and yet so completely weird, that everything else fades into the background.

I grant you, Damnation is not a film for everyone. It requires patience, as well as the understanding that this is not your average movie. And, as I seem to have come to understand, it also requires multiple viewings. (I'll probably watch it again this weekend and see if I can mine any more plot details out of it.) But it is an exceptionally powerful piece of filmmaking, if you approach it in the right way, and I urge you to at least give it a try. ****