Bela Tarr
Perdizione

Last night, at the Palazzo Delle Esposizioni on Via Nazionale in Rome, there was a film screening. They do it twice a month, every other Tuesday. The series is called: “A qualcuno piace classico” (Some Like It Classic). I am definitely one of those 'some'.

Entry is free, but to get in, you need to book on the Palazzo's website the day before, starting at 8:30 AM. I know about this, but on Monday morning I only remember at 11-ish. I log in, go to book, and read: SOLD OUT.

Not all is lost. From experience, I know that, on average, 10 to 20 viewers cancel or simply don't show up. And so, 5 minutes before it starts, they let in all those queued outside who couldn't book.

So I showed up 40 minutes early to get priority, but the guy tells me they received quite a few cancellations, and I can go in right away. Better, because this way I can pick my seat.

I'm curious, I have expectations. A film buff friend of mine, more knowledgeable than me, says that Bela Tarr is the greatest... @Talkin’ Meat, the only one here who reviewed this director on Deb, says so too. I tagged him, but he's been gone for years, let's see if he gets the notification...

Perdition marks a turning point in Tarr’s career as it deeply alters his directorial style. He moves from the frequent use of handheld cameras to the sequence shot.

Bela Tarr's sequence shots, though recent in cinematic history (Perdition is from 1987), represent a novelty and a model in the realm of the seventh art.

Sequence shots and fixed frames. Almost nonexistent editing. Sometimes the camera is stationary and doesn’t follow the action. The actor walks in the rain (it's always raining in this film) and fades into the horizon; the camera “watches” from a wall, hidden behind a gutter, as if spying. Or, conversely, Tarr shifts from fixed framing to a sequence shot, abandoning the action scene and moving slowly and linearly to scrutinize the surroundings, albeit “irrelevant to the maneuver.” Again, he resorts to the circular, enveloping sequence shot, always very slow and at the same speed, almost unveiling, lingering a tad longer than needed. The camera thus strolls placidly and inexorably along the boulevard of the set, then it stops. I felt like I was on a silent trolleybus taking me slowly around the city, making its stops, reaching the terminus. You get off and take another one heading to a different destination.

Perdition tells the story of Karrer, a middle-aged man. He is a loner, living off mostly criminal tricks. He habitually frequents the Titanik, a rundown nightclub with a singer. A beautiful woman, middle-aged as well, worn out by cigarettes, alcohol, and her damned life. She is in the company of another loafer. Our guy is in love with this femme fatale, who leads every man she meets to “perdition.” Karrer knows this but doesn’t care. Then there is the nightclub manager, a corpulent and good-natured man who makes extra money through shady dealings (a package needs to be delivered).

As in the film I previously reviewed - Shoot the Piano Player - this time too, the plot does not represent the core of the film but is little more than a pretext to showcase and outline a humanity gone astray, more resigned than desperate. Stagnant in its inevitable condition, tired, dragging itself listless and submissive in an inescapable routine. And how does it tell us all this? By having the actors speak and narrate their miseries? No way… it tells us simply by framing them, passing over them with this inexorable slowness, exactly like the X-ray machine that produces the plates. It digs deep. And sometimes, the actors, the patrons of the Titanik, are immobile, frozen in their condition. They are no longer human figures; they are figures, postcards, paintings. Motionless, lost. In this sense, memorable is the sequence of people squeezed together standing, mute, afflicted, trapped with a vacant and vaguely “guilty” look that is literally scanned by the eyes of Tarr. Or the delirious sequence of a young person outside the Titanik, in the rain, tap-dancing (an “apocryphal” citation of Singin’ in the Rain with Gene Kelly). Where Kelly danced joyfully and loved, our guy stands in place, dances poorly, stomps his feet with military cadence on the water, he is a zombie.

It's a minimalist, existentialist, nihilist cinema. I would dare say pessimistic, heavy, in some way “negative” and in certain aspects “unbearable”. But then, summing up, I realize, once again, that when certain artists strip bare and peel the wretched human condition, they don't do it with a cynical, pitiless gaze or a denunciation. On the contrary, theirs is a passionate and desperate cry of pain, as if to say What have we become? Where are we going? What’s the point?

For decades I've been watching the mine carts go up and down the cableway.

I watch them, and every time I feel like I'm going mad, but then I never do.

Each of us comes into the world to say something but ends up in the grave having said nothing at all.

Without love, life has no meaning.

It will end badly.