Mihály Víg, the Hungarian composer, actor and screenwriter who has served as Béla Tarr’s closest artistic associate for greater than 4 many years, held court docket on the twenty eighth Shanghai International Film Festival, talking at a masterclass following a screening of “The Turin Horse.”
Víg’s bond with Tarr started in 1984 when the director, already an rising determine in Hungarian cinema, tracked him down after recognizing him in a buddy’s live performance footage. Their first assembly was temporary: Tarr invited Víg to attain “Almanac of Fall,” and the collaboration was sealed over a glass of champagne. Víg had no prior expertise composing for movie, and the undertaking – which relied closely on documentary aesthetics and improvised efficiency – made for a steep studying curve.
Because the partnership advanced throughout works together with “Sátántangó,” “Werckmeister Harmonies,” “Damnation” and “The Turin Horse,” an unconventional workflow solidified. Víg completes each musical composition earlier than principal images begins, working from the screenplay fairly than the completed minimize. His place to begin is the general emotional impression the script leaves on him. “I listen deep within myself, waiting for inspiration and quietude to descend,” he mentioned, drawing on a line from a behind-the-scenes documentary about “The Turin Horse.”
That course of works, Víg defined, as a result of he, Tarr and screenwriter László Krasznahorkai share a basic artistic conviction: that folks habitually keep away from confronting the true nature of existence. The three males’s alignment on that philosophical premise implies that Víg’s scores not often require prolonged revision rounds. Tarr, he mentioned, trusts the composer’s instincts solely – although Víg sometimes delivers a number of iterations from which the director picks the model that greatest serves the movie.
Sound, for Víg, encompasses way over scored music. He pointed to the relentless rain in “Sátántangó” and the howling wind in “The Turin Horse” as integral sonic components. “If we quiet our minds and truly listen, we can call them beautiful music,” he mentioned.
Víg’s relationship with Tarr’s movies extends to efficiency. He delivered considered one of his most notable display screen turns because the con man in “Sátántangó,” a task he might solely settle for after memorizing greater than thirty pages of script and committing to an uninterrupted dialogue sequence of round a dozen minutes. The expertise, he mentioned, gave him a direct understanding of how the director approaches casting – not by matching actors to written characters, however by discovering people who embody these characters at their core. Tarr mixes skilled and newbie performers, but calls for the identical unrehearsed naturalism from every.
Requested concerning the widespread exterior notion that Tarr is a “tyrant” on set, Víg provided a starkly completely different image. He recalled the director as invariably mild-tempered all through shoots, by no means elevating his voice, addressing any grievances with employees privately fairly than publicly. Taking pictures Tarr’s signature lengthy takes felt akin to working in theatre: as soon as the digicam rolled, the director fell silent, ready till the complete shot wrapped earlier than providing suggestions. He granted actors huge latitude to interpret their roles, putting full belief in everybody he forged.
On the long-take aesthetic that defines Tarr’s work, Víg traced its lineage to Hungarian director Miklós Jancsó, a private mentor to Tarr. Within the director’s view, fragmented enhancing breaks emotional continuity; an unbroken take mirrors the uninterrupted circulate of lived expertise.
Reflecting on the awful minimalism of “The Turin Horse” – a movie of sparse dialogue and repeated home rituals – Víg pushed again in opposition to readings of the movie as merely nihilistic. He drew a distinction between the “lightness” in Milan Kundera’s writing and the “heaviness” in Tarr’s photographs, arguing they don’t seem to be easy opposites: even unrelenting tragedy, he mentioned, incorporates threads of comedy. “It is akin to catharsis,” he mentioned. “By the end, everything feels cleansed. Audiences peer into the heart of things, and the whole world suddenly becomes lucid. Life is undeniably harsh, yet it also holds profound beauty.”
Among the many behind-the-scenes particulars Víg shared: Krasznahorkai as soon as left a screenplay argument with Tarr mid-dispute, solely to return two days later with a sixty-page brief story that grew to become the muse for “The Turin Horse.” The manufacturing staff additionally spent appreciable time trying to find a horse with a sufficiently sorrowful gaze, and after filming wrapped, ensured the animal was positioned in a house the place it might dwell out its remaining years comfortably.
Requested which of his scores he holds most expensive, Víg put aside the extensively admired “Werckmeister Harmonies” soundtrack and named “Damnation” and “The Turin Horse” as private favourites. Amongst Tarr’s options, “Sátántangó” stands above the remainder in his estimation. He had playful recommendation for these daunted by its seven-hour runtime: push by means of the primary hour, he mentioned, and the remainder takes care of itself.
Closing the masterclass, Víg provided a phrase he attributed to Tarr’s guiding philosophy: “Life is a gift, and it would be discourteous to turn that gift away.”
