page_title: Béla Tarr
section_title: Influence
hierarchical_section_title: Béla Tarr / Influence
caption_attribution_description: English: Béla Tarr presenting Man in the Well at TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
context_page_description: Béla Tarr is a Hungarian filmmaker. His body of work consists mainly of art films with philosophical themes and long takes.
  Debuting with the film Family Nest, Tarr began his directorial career with a brief period of what he refers to as "social cinema", aimed at telling mundane stories about ordinary people, often in the style of cinema vérité. Over the next decade, the cinematic style and thematic elements of his films changed. Tarr has been interpreted as having a pessimistic view of humanity; the characters in his works are often cynical, and have tumultuous relationships with one another in ways critics have found to be darkly comic. Almanac of Fall follows the inhabitants of a run-down apartment as they struggle to live together while sharing their hostilities. The drama Damnation was lauded for its languid and controlled camera movement, which Tarr would become known for internationally. Sátántangó and Werckmeister Harmonies continued his bleak and desolate representations of reality, while incorporating apocalyptic overtones; the former sometimes appears in scholarly polls of the greatest films ever made, and the latter received wide acclaim from critics.
context_section_description: Gus Van Sant often cites Tarr as a huge influence on his later work, beginning with Gerry when Van Sant began using very long uninterrupted takes.
caption: Tarr presenting a film by Hu Bo in 2018
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