Sure it's supposed to be boring and make you wanna kill yourself whilst watching it but i dont care. a movie doesnt become automatically good if it did what it wanted to do

This film is so dark. As we watch this farmer and his daughter trying to stay alive by eating what appear to be potatoes or some sort of tubers, making enough from using an old horse to haul for others, one gets tired. This is a bit apocalyptic in that there seems to be nothing to strive for other than to get through another day. There is a danger around them but we don't know what most of the world is doing. One thing we notice right away is that there are no smiles--no joy of any kind. These are humans and like many animals; they could be found dead one day and it would be a fact of life and the rest of the world would go on. And to add a kicker, that horse is getting older and older.

I am surprised I did finish this film, there were many times when I wanted it to end. For me, this film had no point whatsoever, I read positive reviews after watching it because I couldn't believe how high it was rated. Now, I understand even though I didn't enjoy it in the least. There wasn't a single action during 2 and a half hour ! And when something did happen ( for example, a group of gypsies or something like that ) , it was right away forgotten and they were back at eating potatoes, dressing up, fetching water, not talking. It was painfully dull, it was worse that routine !! Maybe that was the all point, portraying what a dull insignificant life most people have and if so, why would you like that ? Why would you like to be reminded of your own insignificance ? Why watching some girl cleaning up stables, dressing up her father, doing boring stuff is fascinating to watch ? Persons which have liked this film are lucky, because they didn't waste two and a half hour watching this.

I finally watched The Turin Horse recently. I had been meaning to get around to it for a long time. After seeing Damnation, which just didn't really click with me, I think I may have have subconsciously lowered The Turin Horse's priority level in my viewing schedule. However, the movie really worked for me. The last couple nights I couldn't sleep because I couldn't stop thinking about it. I never seemed to ever drift fully into sleep. I would kind of doze off, still thinking about it, only to quickly be aroused by my own thoughts and immediately struggle to try to fall back asleep. The film was in many ways similar to Jeanne Dielman. It shows the overwhelming claustrophobia of a daily routine. How just making it through the basic chores necessary to live can be almost unbearable. It could become impossible to accomplish anything more, let alone find a way to assign some sort of meaning to our lives. But beyond that, it also had a significant underlying theme about class systems and a certain ease of life which allows us to become intellectuals. Nietzsche had the luxury of being destroyed by his own philosophy. He had the luxury of feeling sympathy for the beaten horse. However, when that very horse is your livelihood and the ability to make it through life is barely possible and completely reliant upon that animal's compliance, the abstract philosophies sort of fade away. Sometimes the harsh realities of the world nullify philosophy. Even if it was coming from the "right" place. There is a Louis C.K. joke in which he talks about the fact that he doesn't believe in hitting his children, even though his mother used to hit him. He notes that the difference is that he is wealthy and his mother wasn't. She couldn't afford the luxury of the moral high ground. She was tired and needed the most immediately effective option available. The same concept applies to the farmer's situation with the horse. In neither C.K.'s joke nor in Béla Tarr's film is this a justification. It is simply revealing that life is more complicated than our philosophies allow for. The final aspect of the film which mystifies me are the meta-cinematic elements. The film is a bleak, pessimistic, and starkly final film. It is in many ways an antithesis to the slight beacons of hope offered in his earlier films. It is a film about giving up. Which is exactly what Tarr has done. He's given up making films. The horse quits working, eating, and living. The girl eventually gives up living. Even the earth appears to have given up. Life is over. The sun refuses to shine, lamps refuse to light, water wells refuse to give water. Tarr refuses to make more movies. There is nothing left to say. Philosophy is dead. Cinema is over. They've been snuffed out by what Tarr calls "the heaviness of human existence." All that remains is existing in a void of meaninglessness. However, even that seems nearly finished.