Spurious

So Tarr, the subject of a current NFT retrospective, arrived in this country cloaked in mystique. But he dismisses any scent of enigma around his work. "When we are making a movie," he says, "we only talk about concrete situations - where the camera is, what will be the first and the last shot. We never talk about art or God."

Bela Tarr, interviewed

I must ask what your next film is about.

You may ask it, but I won’t talk about it.

You never talk about it.

Yes, because it is impossible. At the end of Werckmeister Harmonies the old man goes up to the whale and look into its eyes. Is it possible to tell what he is feeling then? That is why it is good to make films.

Bela Tarr, interviewed

I'm fed up with this whole narrative thing because the movie - you know what? - without the narrative, the movie has a chance; you can show something. It's not necessary to tell. Do you remember the end take of the Werckmeister Harmonies? When the old man goes to the eye of the whale?

Yes

Nobody can ever tell you by words what is happening in this old man and in this sad eye of the whale. But I can show you and that's enough. I trust your eyes and I trust your heart and I trust your emotions. I really trust the audience.

Bela Tarr, interviewed

[Tarr speaks on many occasions of loving and trusting his audience. He speaks of them as friends, as Godard has done recently.]

- But there are cosmic themes in your films, and you've been quoted as saying that you're "trying to look at things from a cosmic dimension."

- You know how it happens, when we started we had a big social responsibility which I think still exists now. And back then I thought "Okay, we have some social problems in this political system - maybe we'll just deal with the social question." And afterwards when we made a second movie and a third we knew better that there are not only social problems. We have some ontological problems and now I think a whole pile of shit is coming from the cosmos. And there's the reason. You know how we open out step by step, film by film. It's very difficult to speak about the metaphysical and that. No. It's just always listening to life. And we are thinking about what is happening around us.

- What do you think this shit is that's coming from the cosmos?

- I just think about the quality of human life and when I say 'shit' I think I'm very close to it.

Bela Tarr, interviewed

Probably, I make films in order to tempt fate, to simultaneously be the most humiliated and, if only for a few moments, the freest person in the world. Because I despise stories, as they mislead people into believing that something has happened. In fact, nothing really happens as we flee from one condition to another. Because today there are only states of being - all stories have become obsolete and cliched, and have resolved themselves. All that remains is time. This is probably the only thing that's still genuine - time itself: the years, days hours, minutes and seconds. And film time has also ceased to exist, since the film itself has ceased to exist. Luckily there is no authentic form or current fashion. Some kind of massive introversion, a searching of our own souls can help ease the situation.

Or kill us.

We could die of not being able to make films, or we could die from making films.

But there's no escape.

Because films are our only means of authenticating our lives. Eventually nothing remains of us except our films - strips of celluloid on which our shadows wander in search of truth and humanity until the end of time.
I really don't know why I make films.

Perhaps to survive, because I'd still like to live, at least just a little longer....

Bela Tarr on why he makes films

An Idiot Boswell

Is this what your mighty oeuvre has shrunk too, says W., writing stupid posts about me? They're not even accurate, he says. You make me out to be too mean, too much of a nag. And you're too much of a whiner. I'm an idiot Boswell to an idiot Johnson, I tell him.

How's it come to this?, W. says. What wrong turn did he make? He was like Dante, he says, lost in a dark forest. And there I was, he says, the idiot in the forest. I was always lost, weren't you? I didn't even know I was lost, but I was lost. Or perhaps I was never lost. Perhaps I belonged in the forest, W muses. Perhaps I am I only that forest where W. is wandering, he says, he's not sure.

Whiny Noises

I'm dreaming of administration, I tell W. It's all I dream about, all I think about. It's permeated me completely. I'm made of administration. Of course, I'm very good at administration, I tell W. I'm perfectly fitted to it. It's frightening. Did I ever think I would become an administrator?, W. asks. Oh I knew I'd do anything! Anything! It's your desperation, says W., they can smell it on you. You're a desperate man, anyone can see that.

It's all to do with my periods of unemployment, W. says. I fear unemployment more than anything, he notes. In fact, don't I tell him constantly about my dreams of unemployment? I probably dream more about unemployment than about administration, W. decides. In the end, my dreams of administration are actually a kind of relief from my constant dreams of unemployment.

W. has no great fear of unemployment, he says. We both agree that I began from a lower position than he did. I expected much less. Survival was enough for me. A job - any job - that was halfway tolerable. You were made to be an administrator, W. says. You have the soul for it. The fear. It's what makes you a good administrator. My administrative proficiency frightens him, W. admits. It's a sign of complete desperation. In the end, it's what will always compromise my work, my reading and writing. You always have administration to fall back on, W. says. You never really experience your failure.

With neither a fear of unemployment nor a fearful skill as an administator, W. is alone with his failure, he says. It's terrible - there's no alibi, he can't blame it on anyone. Whose fault is it but his. W. laments his laziness, his indolence. He had every advantage and now - what has he accomplished? What has he done? I can have no understanding of his sense of failure, W. tells me. It's beyond my understanding. You're like the dog that licks the hand of his master. You'll be licking their hand even as they beat you and making little whiny noises. You're good at that, aren't you - making whiny noises.

Misanthropy

You would think that with my simplicity I would also have a simple love for humankind, says W., but that's not nearly the case. I'm full of hatred, aren't I? This as we walk around the cloister at W.'s place of work, colleagues warmly greeting W. and W. warmly greeting his colleagues.

I skulk around my place of work, W. observes, I'll do anything to avoid human contact. He remembers how I told him of the vastly circuitous routes I take through my building so as to not to say hello to anyone. I don't know why greetings are so difficult for you, says W. 

W. doesn't believe its misanthropy, just as he has never believed I am a melancholic. It's simply a kind of low level awkwardness, he says just as my melancholy is no more than a few bad moods.

More friendly greetings from his colleagues. W.'s place of work is a much happier place than mine, we observe, despite everything. It doesn't know despair. Everyone helps and supports one another, except for management, and everyone is against management.

That's not the case where you work, is it?, says W. There's no help and no support, only brooding hatred and resentment. It's no wonder I think I'm misanthropic, says W. He would be, under the circumstances. And it's no wonder I think I'm melancholic, I mean look at my life. Something has gone very badly wrong with me, that much is clear, says W.

Stammering and Stuttering

W. is impressed by my stammer. You stammer and stutter, says W., and you swallow half your words. What's wrong with you? Every time I see him, he says, it gets a little worse. The simplest words are beginning to defeat me, W. says. Maybe it's mini-strokes, W. speculates. That would account for it. You had one just there, didn't you? 

Perhaps, W. muses, my stammering and stuttering is a sign of shame. W. says he never really thought I was capable of it, shame, but perhaps it is there nonetheless. Something inside you knows you talk rubbish, W. says. Something knows the unending bilge that comes out of your mouth.

W. dreams of serious conversation. Not that it would have serious topics, you understand, he says - that it would be concerned for example with the great topics of the day. Speech itself would be serious, he says with great vehemence. That's what he's found with the real thinkers he's known. Everything they say is serious, they're incapable of being unserious.

Even I become serious when a real thinker is about., W.'s observed. We remember that afternoon in Greenwich when W. was lost in conversation with one such thinker. I was leaning in, trying to listen; I had a sense of the seriousness of the conversation, W. could see it, he was impressed, for once I wasn't going to ruin it by talking about blowholes or something.

Conversation!, exclaims W., that's what friendship's all about, I think even you have a sense of that. It's why you stammer, says W. it's why you swallow half of your words.

Overpraise

Overpraise is the key, W. says. We should only speak of each other to others in the loftiest terms, he's always been insistent on this. These are dark times, after all. No one's safe. Look what happened to him recently! These are the last days, W.says. No one could think otherwise. It's all shit, it's all going to shit. It always will have already been shit, I say, laughing, as I take a photo of him underneath a sign saying 'end times'.

Overpraise is all we have, says W., that and sticking together. We have to be a pact, a phalanx who are prepared to die for another. I'd die for you, says W., quite serious. What about me - would you die for me? That's what friendship demands, says W. Of course, I would never say I would die for him, says W. He knows me. I'm incapable of that kind of sincerity. Or love. I'm incapable of love, W.'s always been insistent on that.

In a moment, I would break the phalanx and be off somewhere else. I'd betray him in a moment, W. says. Whereas he's always been very careful to overpraise me to others, he says. You have to. There are enemies everywhere, he says. I have enemies and so does he. And then there's the whole system, says W., which creates enemies instead of friends and enemies of friends. Betrayal is his greatest fear, says W.

Clucky Pride

With other people about, W. is a surprisingly motherly presence. He's protective and nuturing, and proud of his charge. Does he think of me as his protege?, I ask W. Am I his ward, as Robin is to Batman? Sometimes, W. exhibits what can only be called a clucky pride. 

Does he see himself as my mother? W.'s not sure. He feels the need to nag me, he says. He is a nagger. Why don't you read?, he likes to ask with grat insistence. Why don't you write? Go on, write another book, make it a trilogy.

W. is learning Greek for his next book. It's on religion, he says. He was going to do a book on time, but he decided against that. Religion, he says, and for that he needs Greek. And maths. If he's going to write about Cohen and God, he'll have to understand the infinitesimal calculus. What's it all about?, W. wonders. He'd asked his dad to teach him several years ago, but it was no use. He bought a book called Numbers, but only got through the first chapter, What is a Number?

Greek! Mathematics! W.'s not like me, who will just dash off a book regardless. Still, he says, the second book wasn't bad. 'Wasn't bad', that's his phrase. Religion, though, that's what W.'s thinking about. What am I thinking about?, he asks me. Your clucky pride, I say.