Movie of the Week: DAMNATION (Béla Tarr, 1988)

Rest well, maestro

It now seems fateful that just last Sunday I was at the Egyptian Theater to see Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror (1975) on the big screen for the first time. Fateful, because Tarkovsky was the filmmaker to whom the great Béla Tarr — who passed away yesterday at the relatively young age of 70 — was most often compared, something I personally find lazy and reductive. Yes, it’s true that they were both pioneers and eventual titans of what is now chicly labeled “slow cinema.” But aside from a penchant for long takes and a generally Eastern European sensibility, there’s not a lot that convincingly links their styles and worldviews. Tarkovsky was more explorative with genre and more open to evolving; Tarr thoroughly set himself in his ways once he found his groove making bleak, wet, monochromatic fables set in unnamed Hungarian villages, taking place somewhere between the beginning of the twentieth century and the end of History itself. Although Damnation — the first of a loose trilogy that climaxed with the seven-hour Sátántangó (1994) and ended with Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) — is not as arresting as those later masterworks, it’s nonetheless representative of the classic Tarr Combo: love, rain, booze, music, and enough mud to build a hut with. Another difference is that Damnation is not based on a László Krasznahorkai novel, but is rather an original story co-written with the recently minted Nobel laureate. The result is a barebones, noirish yarn that feels less dense with character and incident, yet still comes good as a totally ravishing vision. Karrer (Székely B. Miklós) is a lonely drifter deeply in love with The Singer (Vali Kerekes). The trouble is she’s married to the bankrupt Sebestyén (György Cserhalmi), whom Karrer gets involved in a shady plot that could help the husband with his debts. None of this really matters, and you don’t need me to tell you that it doesn’t end well. What does matter is that for exactly 120 minutes you’re immersed in a world that looks and sounds like no other. A particular highlight is the six-minute take that snakes through the Titanik Bar as The Singer croons one of composer Mihály Víg’s original songs; it was here that I realized, with a shiver, how much the movie was reminding me of David Lynch. The modern greats are all starting to drop like flies.

Streaming on Kanopy; available for rent on Apple, Amazon, and other major platforms.