Page 214 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 214
from walter benjamin to the end of cinema
statements in films now display a wide range of plurality and variety of dif-
ferent levels of exposing social issues that get uncovered or emphasised. It
should be understood that Balkan cinema keeps the attitude and in polit-
ical terms does not succumb to any apology for the world after the tran-
sition. Therefore, the aesthetics of such cinema cannot be so transparent-
ly formulated as it could have been in times when it made use of visual and
verbal metaphors and “hidden” messages to point to existential problems
or to expose a spectrum of repression within political and cultural systems
of the Balkans. Small cinematographies of the Balkans now, nevertheless,
enter the world cinema as rather “readable” to global audiences and espe-
cially to those, who attend many film festivals. It would require a lot of sys-
tematic research to underpin such generalization with facts and analysis.
The political signifiers within the structure of film narratives are gen-
erally shifted so that they project a perspective of a pluralistic democrat-
ic future, but in some instances, as mostly narrative arts always have been
doing, present insights and warnings concerning social and political re-
alities. The recent film, directed by Béla Tarr, a well-known and accom-
plished Hungarian author. A Torinói ló (The Turin Horse – 2011) proves my
point exactly because of its elementary cinematic approach to the film nar-
ration and its topic. The uncompromising aesthetics of long takes and slow
rhythm sequences compose a film, which could be apprehended as a phil-
osophical essay or even less: as an alignment of reflexive visual aphorisms.
Of course, the film makes no secret of its indebtedness to philosophy since
the voice-over initiates the movie by telling the anecdote about Nietzsche
and his attempt to help a horse submitted to an ill-treatment by his own-
er; the voice then directs the audience’s attention to the horse and its fate.
This introduction gives way to a repetitive visual contemplation pointing
towards the ultimate problems of ontology and human existence by follow-
ing the gloomy miserable routine of father and daughter, exposed to a com-
mon life with their old horse in an unceasingly windy steppe. This black
and white film, it could be said, echoes recent contemplations by authors
from Deleuze to Donna Harraway concerning the decentring of subjectivi-
ty in view of recognising environmental positioning of living creatures, in-
cluding animals and humans on different registers of knowledge and sci-
ence. As much as any political signifier seems absent from this meditative
film, it is exactly this absence, which marks the problem of a transforma-
tion of the Balkans in accordance with its best reflexive traditions in the an-
tiquity. Therefore, a possibility alone for such a film to be created in one of
212
statements in films now display a wide range of plurality and variety of dif-
ferent levels of exposing social issues that get uncovered or emphasised. It
should be understood that Balkan cinema keeps the attitude and in polit-
ical terms does not succumb to any apology for the world after the tran-
sition. Therefore, the aesthetics of such cinema cannot be so transparent-
ly formulated as it could have been in times when it made use of visual and
verbal metaphors and “hidden” messages to point to existential problems
or to expose a spectrum of repression within political and cultural systems
of the Balkans. Small cinematographies of the Balkans now, nevertheless,
enter the world cinema as rather “readable” to global audiences and espe-
cially to those, who attend many film festivals. It would require a lot of sys-
tematic research to underpin such generalization with facts and analysis.
The political signifiers within the structure of film narratives are gen-
erally shifted so that they project a perspective of a pluralistic democrat-
ic future, but in some instances, as mostly narrative arts always have been
doing, present insights and warnings concerning social and political re-
alities. The recent film, directed by Béla Tarr, a well-known and accom-
plished Hungarian author. A Torinói ló (The Turin Horse – 2011) proves my
point exactly because of its elementary cinematic approach to the film nar-
ration and its topic. The uncompromising aesthetics of long takes and slow
rhythm sequences compose a film, which could be apprehended as a phil-
osophical essay or even less: as an alignment of reflexive visual aphorisms.
Of course, the film makes no secret of its indebtedness to philosophy since
the voice-over initiates the movie by telling the anecdote about Nietzsche
and his attempt to help a horse submitted to an ill-treatment by his own-
er; the voice then directs the audience’s attention to the horse and its fate.
This introduction gives way to a repetitive visual contemplation pointing
towards the ultimate problems of ontology and human existence by follow-
ing the gloomy miserable routine of father and daughter, exposed to a com-
mon life with their old horse in an unceasingly windy steppe. This black
and white film, it could be said, echoes recent contemplations by authors
from Deleuze to Donna Harraway concerning the decentring of subjectivi-
ty in view of recognising environmental positioning of living creatures, in-
cluding animals and humans on different registers of knowledge and sci-
ence. As much as any political signifier seems absent from this meditative
film, it is exactly this absence, which marks the problem of a transforma-
tion of the Balkans in accordance with its best reflexive traditions in the an-
tiquity. Therefore, a possibility alone for such a film to be created in one of
212
