Recall how Peter Cook reimagined Good St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. “Dearest Ephesians, God’s around. Kindly do yourself a favor and stop relishing life. Sincerely, St Paul.” If he had watched this film, he would have modified it to, “Stop finding pleasure in life, because Bela Tarr is around.” With such the unfathomable seriousness, the cringe comedy, and the terrible gloom is everything we are fed by this exceptional Hungarian director.
Damnation is a black-and-white document of political and existential pessimism that was made in 1988, which is a part of Tarr’s first movies to gain the UK distribution. During the late Soviet period when everything was filled with disillusion and decay, these movies were filmed during a pouring rain: terrible industriales form of downpour that got everywhere and stained everything. People won’t be singing in the rain, they will throw their lives into the gloomy abyss.
The initial image captured by Tarr depicts an aerial tram system used for transporting large industrial crates which are slowly moving across the skyline of Central Europe. The enormous buckets being carried can contain coal, sludge, or even some sort of waste that is not filtered properly which in time will pollute the environment even more than it already is or induce various types of cancers for people. In the way Mike Hodges’ Get Carter did, there is a chance a dead body is also contained in one of the buckets which is then going to be thrown far away.
Tarr zooms in with his camera on the aerial tram and does so for a long time depicting remarkable emotion throughout the entire scene. One interesting character is Karrer portrayed by Miklos B Szekely. Karrier is a lost soul in pain and we are first introduced to him in the second half of the abovementioned quote.
Karrer is indeed the focus within the bearers of what would, in other situations, be a plot hoovering on the erotic and immensely pleasurable. He is tragically struck by Cupid’s arrow for the woman who sings at a nightclub. She is married, and he is somewhat terrorized by her jealous husband. He spends his time lingering outside her dismal flat block, pleading to be let in and even manages to gain entrance at one point. More than that, he is in on a relatively profitable smuggling deal. An item that has to be picked up and sent over, which he feels may be capable of getting that husband off his back. But any sort of drama one stirs from enabling or attempting conflict, or even some concealed eroticism present in all this, is all overlooked in favor of a dim and broad appraisal of how vain everything is. It is as if Tarr is stepping back towards the infamously laughing local actions. As if he has rather disconnected from them entirely and parted with the attempt to see the forest rather than the trees above it all. And what an effort it is! Motionless visages, despondent knees-ups at the local pub, crumbling tailings heaps – somehow more desperately mournful, when the music is frantic and full of energy for example, Oh, a earnest rock number, or a jerking gold waltz. Within the black and white photography crumbling reality is transformed into something that imitates beauty and bestows a godlike shine upon disdain and their lined faces as if they are glowing with sad decay and defeat.
Tarr also points out that more than simply the gloom of the scenery, there are elements of spiritual disintegration within it. Karrer admits that nothing horrifies him more than children, and that includes their furry faces and bright eyes, since they are the very reason why humanity will continue to participate in this charade only to condemn everyone to a lifetime of horror. Further, he shares that he indeed drove his wife to suicide, by constantly reassuring her how he never loved her, purely out of the Beckettian reason ‘if it makes any sense to speak at all’. Those moments are also evenly balanced with incredibly strange comedic embellishments: Karrer, who is being harassed by a dog, gets onto all fours and begins to growl in an effort to frighten it off.
Why do we need it, though? Isn’t there enough of this at home, as John Osborne remarked in a different setting? It may sound miserable, but its theology could be somewhat amusing, and there is indeed a peculiar and sinister charm to Damnation. It produces a light, dreamlike enlargement that resembles, as Putting it like this, the skein’s end of a garment’s yarn disagrees with this, but the middle does not. Theater is not for the faint hearted, which I must assert. Rather, it is a captivating work of art for the cinema. Indeed, a more sober manager will collect ones necktie and shoelaces before allowing visitors into the theatre.
To watch more movies like I Am Hardwell (2013) visit 123movies.
Also watch for more movies like:
