“Metacommunication” in the Cinema of Béla Tarr [Ágnes Hranitzky, Míhaly

“A Cosmic Wirtschaft”: Mood, Materiality and “Metacommunication” in the Cinema of Béla Tarr [Ágnes Hranitzky, Míhaly Víg, and Laszlo Krasznahorkai] (1987-2011). Nicky Badcoe Hannan A thesis submitted in fulfillment of Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Sydney 2018. This is to certify that to the best of my knowledge, the content of this thesis is my own work. This thesis has not been submitted for any degree or other purposes. I certify that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work and that all the assistance received in preparing this thesis and sources have been acknowledged. Nicky Hannan This thesis contains tracts of material that was published as “Karhozat” in Pollen Magazine: 002 Creaturely Life (2016). This includes the discussion of Damnation in Chapter 1 (“Stimmung, or Attunement,” ”Framing Disposition” and “The Long Now”) and Chapter 4 (“Cinema, Gesture and a Messianic Rhythm”). ii Table of Contents: Acknowledgements vi Abstract vii List of Illustrations viii Introduction Introduction to Béla Tarr 1 A Slow Cinema 3 Praxis and Production 7 Reading Tarr 9 A Cinema of Poetic Presence 14 Structure 18 Chapter 1 “A Peculiar Remaining, Enduring”: Stimmung and the Message of Milieu. 21 Stimmung, or Attunement 24 Framing Disposition 38 The Long Now 57 Dwelling on Time 70 iii Chapter 2 A Cosmic Poiesis: Natural-History, Melancholy and The Language of Reality 86 A Cinema of Poetry 92 Pseudo-realism and Poiesis 101 Melancholy Economy 112 Eternal Transience 123 Mitsein, or Being-with 135 Chapter 3 Uncanny Harmonies: Realism, Truth and the Presence of World 150 “True” Realism 155 The Production of Presence 163 Observation, and the Poetic Quality of the Real 172 Personal Presence 186 Realising Worldhood 200 iv Chapter 4. “Movements Speak”: Rhythm and Gesture at the End of Time 215 Flow and Bind: Rhythm as Disposition 220 Music, Movement and Measure 231 “The Apocalypse has already commenced”: The Turin Horse 247 Cinema, Gesture and a Messianic Rhythm 265 Conclusion 280 Bibliography 291 Filmography 304 v Acknowledgements My sincerest gratitude to Dr. Bruce Isaacs, without whose encouragement, boundless enthusiasm and good grace this thesis would never have reached completion, let alone commencement. Second only to Bruce’s contribution is that of my brother, dear friend, and unofficial associate supervisor, Conor, who advised me against a PhD and yet was a constant support throughout. I could not have done it without you, bruz – neither this, nor the rest of it. I can say the same for my dearest Emil, who has done more for me than she even knows – I’d have been irretrievably lost by now were it not for her. My sister Josie has also always done all she can, in a way that’s only natural to her – for which I’m always grateful. She must get it from my parents, Patrick and Carey, whose close support and friendship I cherish (as well as that of their partners, Lyn and Michael). John Duncan and Harry Glass, my brothers for always – lesters, lads. Laurens von Oswald, Ruby Barber and Paco Barber-von Oswald nourished my heart and mind during the writing of my first chapter, and are among the best friends I could hope for. Minerva Inwald, Ollie Gordon, Keva S. York and Ivan Cerecina for both standing and sitting by me through the duration. A special thanks also to Lachlan Gell, Arthur Glass, and The Casuals F.C. Last of all, the Department of Art History and Film Studies at the University of Sydney, particularly Dr. Richard Smith for his encouragement and Dr. Laleen Jayamanne – who has had made a bigger impression upon my thinking than I had recognised at the time she was teaching me, for which I would like to extend thanks. vi Abstract This dissertation is a thematic response to the films of Bela Tarr’s “second-period”, from Damnation to The Turin Horse; and to claims made in the director’s discourse concerning the departure of his cinema from “story” and toward “metacommunication.” By this, Tarr refers to a motion away from the exigency of conventional narrative economy and toward an expressive realisation of the materiality of time, atmosphere and milieu. With reference to the philosophical discourse on Stimmung, or “mood,” I will argue that the disposition toward these paranarrative elements constitutes a medium of experience that conditions an attunement to the affective presence of the world. The appeal of Stimmung - which displaces the difference between “subject” and “object” - will orient our engagement with the “cosmic perspective” of these films and the “poetic experience” it implies. This displacement takes place with regard to a “free- indirect subjectivity,” an autonomous camera-consciousness that draws together subjects and environment into an experiential “state of being”, or “being-with”. Paradoxically, this inclination away from “story” becomes more profound with the entry of the writer Krasznahorkai into the circle of Tarr’s collaborators. The writer’s work represents a pretext and philosophical background to these films, which will be explicated with particular reference to Benjamin and Heidegger. Meanwhile, Tarr’s medium essentialist view rejects interpretation, situating his antipathy to “story” with reference to “metaphysical things” – theory and ideology, symbol and allegory – and suggesting that our “dignity” has been progressively diminished by the being-in- language of historical man. Accordingly, corruption by language is a thematic element of these films, in which the breakdown of meaning and its communicability takes on the apocalyptic dimensions of a cosmic disharmony. This will be read through Agamben’s discourse on gesture, ethics, and “messianic” time. vii List of Illustrations Figure Page 1.1 - 1.9 Entrance - Damnation pp.41-43 2 Karrer’s rain-soaked espionage - Damnation p.49 3.1 - 3.8 Establishing shot - The Man from London pp.52-54 4 Karrer muses on “story” - Damnation p. 68 5 The Singer - Damnation p. 70 6.1-6.2 A revelation – Satantango pp.122-125 7.1-7.8 Bells of heaven – Satantango pp.128-130 8.1-8.10 Free indirect being-with – Satantango pp.141-144 9.1-9.9 Eszter’s treatise– Werckmeister Harmonies pp.177-179 10 Janos and the Leviathan – Werckmeister Harmonies p.186 11.1-11.3 A wordless passage – Werckmeister Harmonies p.195 12.1-12.3 The silent horde – Werckmeister Harmonies p.196 13.1-13.3 Destruction and discovery – Werckmeister Harmonies p.209 14.1-14.5 “What must be seen” – Werckmeister Harmonies pp.210-211 15.1-15.9 Cosmic choreography – Werckmeister Harmonies pp.241-243 16.1-16.12 “What happened to the horse…” – The Turin Horse pp.249-253 17.1-17.4 Entrance to dwelling – The Turin Horse pp.257-258 18.1-18.3 Rhythm of life – The Turin Horse p.271 19 “We have to eat…” – The Turin Horse p.272 20.1-20.3 “He just goes into nature…” – Damnation p.282 viii Introduction to Béla Tarr This thesis critically examines the mode of experience that is invoked by the cinema of the Hungarian auteur Béla Tarr, and the way that this cinematic experience is represented by the director in commentary and interviews. More specifically, it centres on a thematic reading of the affective atmosphere and temporality of the five films made from Damnation (1987) to The Turin Horse (2011). This is a period that has been referred to as the director’s “mature films,”1 or simply “the Tarr style.”2 The attainment of this style follows Tarr’s development from documentary realism, via a peculiar chamber drama, to a signature aesthetic that has attained a special reverence among cinephiles, if not a place in the pantheon of great art cinema directors, as Jonathon Rosenbaum claimed as early as 1996.3 The film widely considered to be the magnum opus of this oeuvre, Satantango (1994), infamously runs for over 7 hours, and is emblematic of the central significance of Tarr’s representation of lived-time, which is evinced through a proliferation of cinematic “dead time.” It is for this reason that the corpus of films under consideration is commonly characterised as part of the movement of “Slow” or “Contemplative” Cinema. However, this is a context in which Tarr’s singular style is idiosyncratic, even where the director is among the more influential names associated with this “cinema of 1 Jacques Rancière, Béla Tarr, The Time After, trans. Erik Beranek (Minneapolis: Univocal, 2013), p.24. 2 András Bálint Kovács, The Cinema of Béla Tarr: The Circle Closes (London & New York: Wallflower Press, 2013), p.1. 3 Jonathan Rosenbaum, “A Place in the Pantheon: Films by Béla Tarr” from the Chicago Reader (May 9, 1996), www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/1995/05/a-place-in-the-pantheon/ (Accessed January 30, 2018). 1 slowness.”4 The formal strategies that characterise Slow Cinema are legibly descended from the realist tradition in post-war modernism, sharing in an emphasis on the capacity of the cinema to preserve phenomenal continuity and observe social reality. But Tarr’s films present a milieu that is made systematically uncanny and estranged in a way that departs from the ostensive “transparency” of realism (for which he expresses disdain).5 András Bálint Kovács identifies this milieu as “a universal image about the world,”6 while Jacques Rancière regards it as a mediation of the historical and the mythological.7 I will retain Tarr’s terminology in order to identify what he calls the “cosmic” condition of this environment, but position it in relation to the influence of the writer László Krasznahorkai. Tarr downplays this influence with reference to a medium essentialist view of film;8 a view that, contradictorily, appears to gesture toward the basic tenets of realism.

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