What will happen to our lungs without Béla Tarr? They will shrivel into a deadened core like a plastic-velour air mattress that has been leaking unbecomingly for the last fifteen minutes; we need our Béla more than ever and it turns out that he may stop making films. With Turin Horse he has given us a glimpse into the unanalyzable, undecomposable structure of human will and the ways in which it slowly disappears until there is nothing left, not a handful of furiously crushed potatoes, no more wind-battered flickering light in a keyhole, not even a pair of delicate heeled shoes that remain important and mystical enough never to be worn outside of the house. The curiosity we feel as we encounter the meaning of the daily tasks endured by the two main characters, a father and his daughter, is real. It is the curiosity of a child that we feel; a form of discovery. They dress themselves and each other, socks are pulled on, boots are pulled off, water is transferred from the well to the house, basins are shifted around, and they stare out into the world through the window. There is comfort in knowing that as the father gets dressed he will violently shake his left arm into the sleeve of his shirt, that he drinks two consecutive shots of pálinka from that severe little bottle, that he will always defrock and devour his potato in that psychotically impatient manner, as though it were no different than the wood he chops with systematic fervor. There is relief in seeing the gypsies act like gypsies and the alcoholic neighbor addressing us with a torrent of desperate philosophy about the permanent degradation that comes from touching then acquiring, all that is noble disappearing until only one side in the unseen war is left. 'Come off it. That's rubbish.' But the well dries up, the horse stops eating, the darkness comes and cannot be soothed by the embers, the pálinka is had straight from the bottle, and the father weakly fondles the skin of the potato until there is no reason even to do that. There is no one working in cinema today who matches Béla Tarr.