Béla Tarr (born July 21, 1955) is a Hungarian film director.
Originally, he wanted to be a philosopher, but when he was denied entry to university (at least partly because of his political activities), he decided to pursue filmmaking. Most of his early films were documentaries or realist films that have been compared to the work of John Cassavetes (although Tarr says he had not seen Cassavetes's work at this point). Around halfway through his career, he developed the slow, long-take, metaphysical style that he is best known for.
In 2011, Tarr announced that he would be retiring from film directing in order to focus on creating his own film school called film.factory. He has shot several short films and implied that he might create more, but he has stated that he has no interest in continuing to create features.
Filmography:
- Family Nest
- The Outsider
- The Prefab People
- Macbeth
- Almanac of Fall
- Damnation
- Sátántangó
- Werckmeister Harmonies
- The Man From London
- The Turin Horse
Tropes:
- Black Comedy: Despite their dark subject matter, he has stated that all of his works, except for The Turin Horse, are comedies.
- Deliberately Monochrome: Most of his films are in black and white, although he didn't start making films until the seventies.
- Epic Tracking Shot/Leave the Camera Running/The Oner: In most films, the average shot lasts for several seconds. In a Béla Tarr film, the average shot lasts for several minutes. Reaches its apex in his adaptation of Macbeth, which only has two takes. The first is five minutes long. The second is 67 minutes long.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: Firmly on the cynical end of the scale, though he's denied being a pessimist.
- Spiritual Antithesis: Critic Johnathan Rosenbaum has called him a despiritualized Andrei Tarkovsky.
