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âA Cosmic Wirtschaftâ: Mood, Materiality and âMetacommunicationâ in the Cinema of BĂ©la Tarr [Ăgnes Hranitzky, MĂhaly VĂg, and Laszlo Krasznahorkai] (1987-2011).
This dissertation is a thematic response to the films of Bela Tarrâs âsecond-periodâ, from Damnation to The Turin Horse; and to claims made in the directorâs discourse concerning the departure of his cinema from âstoryâ and toward âmetacommunication.â 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 âmood,â 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 âsubjectâ and âobjectâ - will orient our engagement with the âcosmic perspectiveâ of these films and the âpoetic experienceâ it implies. This displacement takes place with regard to a âfree-indirect subjectivity,â an autonomous camera-consciousness that draws together subjects and environment into an experiential âstate of beingâ, or âbeing-withâ. Paradoxically, this inclination away from âstoryâ becomes more profound with the entry of the writer Krasznahorkai into the circle of Tarrâs collaborators. The writerâs work represents a pretext and philosophical background to these films, which will be explicated with particular reference to Benjamin and Heidegger. Meanwhile, Tarrâs medium essentialist view rejects interpretation, situating his antipathy to âstoryâ with reference to âmetaphysical thingsâ â theory and ideology, symbol and allegory â and suggesting that our âdignityâ 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 Agambenâs discourse on gesture, ethics, and âmessianicâ time