Bela Tarr's Damnation

Damnation (1988) which was recently revived at The Walter Reade Theater, as a part of a retrospective of the Hungarian director's films, has lots of rain and dogs and dancing. There's a married torch singer (Vali Kerekes), who has sex with two other men, one of whom, Karrer, (Miklós B. Székely) declares that he will debase himself in order to have her. Their sex is extraordinary in the history of cinema. Her legs are spread and she cradles her lover. The rocking allows her to orgasm, but the iconography is that of the Madonna and Child. The film, like all of the director's work is filmed in black and white which creates a chiascoro effect. The movie is a succession of paintings.  One is a Magyar "Night Watch" with the camera panning across the faces of townsfolk, posing uneasily. And the film has its resident seer, a Casandra with biblical innuendos, who resides in a cabaret named Titanik. It sports a broken neon sign and topless beauties. Everything is unremittingly depressing and filmgoers who are discomforted by the representation of happiness will feel at home. Damnation is also a masterpiece. In the final scene, Karrer gets on his hands and knees to threaten a barking dog. Speaking of painters, neither Bosch nor Brueghel could have thought this one up. The film screenplay was co-written by László Krasznahorkai, Tarr's frequent collaborator and the Nobel Prize winning author of Herscht 07769.

read "Current Affairs" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star