review for The Turin Horse on AllMovie  The Turin Horse (2011)
by Mark Deming review  Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr announced
prior to the premiere of A Torinoi Lo (aka The Turin Horse) that
it would be his last movie, and that he was retiring from
directing after completing this project. One would be tempted to
read a certain amount into the picture after reading this
statement, imagining that perhaps The Turin Horse is intended to
be a final summation of what Tarr has had to say in his chosen
medium over three and a half decades. But while stylistically
The Turin Horse is a refinement of Tarr's trademark visual and
narrative approach, thematically the true note of finality in
the film doesn't concern art, but humanity. The Turin Horse is a
tale of life that is grim, repetitive, and stripped of joy; it's
a story in which people move forward because there's nowhere
else to go, but the diminishing returns of each day become
obvious to the audience as well as the characters, even as these
people lack any option