Reviews

Béla Tarr, the Time After by Jacques Rancière

samarov's review against another edition

reviewed in Chicago Book Review

Someone famous once said that talking about music is like dancing about architecture, meaning that, describing one art form by means of another is ultimately futile. Yet, over and over again, writers attempt to do just that very thing. There are many reasons why one might want to write about someone else's creative work: it may be a way of explaining it to oneself; a way to explain it to others; a way to advance or buttress one's own ideas on the back of theirs; or, for countless other reasons. We all want to understand what we've experienced and writers feel the added burden of putting it into words.

This is the task Jacques Ranciere has set himself with his Bela Tarr, The Time After. Ranciere is a philosopher concerned with the plight of the proletariat so it makes some sense that he'd take on Tarr's films since they concern themselves with the era just before and just after the fall of Communism in the Eastern Bloc. Because he's a philospher, Lanciere floats some theories about the inner meanings of Tarr's scenes and even certain shots or camera movements. Some of these are more convincing than others but since these films have so much space and silence in them they practically invite interpretation and misinterpretation.

Tarr populates his work with people that often don't know themselves and leaves us in rooms and landscapes with them for minutes and sometimes for hours at a time. Lanciere tries mightily to explain these inchoate beings and even succeeds  at times: “He does not want to look at the rain, he says, like dogs who await the puddles in order to drink from them.” (pg.31). Other times he gets stuck on concepts like huit clos (commonly translated as no exit, referencing Sartre's work) uses them over and over to a degree that they lose much of their meaning. These films are quiet, hulking things that mostly evade grasp.

At times one is left to wonder whether some of the awkward phrasing is the author's or his translator's. The phrase “mediocre web” which is used to talk about how a certain swindler unsuccessfully attempts to entrap his fellow villagers in one of his schemes might make sense as a concept but stretches one's patience as a description. In the end though, we have to admire Lanciere's efforts to capture the uncapturable. There are moments when Tarr's images spur him to share his own wisdom: “This is why it is pointless to believe that the world will become reasonable if we keep harping on the crimes of the last liars, but also grotesque to insist that from now on we are living in a world without illusion.”(pg. 63)

This slim yet dense little book would make no sense to those who haven't seen any of Tarr's films, but for those who have and are reaching for some way to make sense of what they've seen, Lanciere certainly offers a few useful clues.

kostopoulos2000's review against another edition

4.0

Rancière’s analyses fall a little short in certain areas and fail to comprehend the full complexity of Tarr’s films, not because Rancière is a poor writer or thinker— no, this is a brilliant meditation on one of the most enthralling filmmakers of the 20th century— but because Tarr’s cinema is so multilayered that it’s quite literally insane and impossible to expect it to be wholly distilled in < 90 pages. Kinda meanders a little in the end but a very fruitful essay

athenamatisse's review against another edition

3.0

Some fascinating concepts. Mostly well written. Worth reading if you are interest in Béla Tarr.