Bela Tarr, Damnation (Hungary, 1988)
Was this world a colorful life or was it in black and white? It was an important question and what was more important than it was its answer. If the person was happy he/she will see it beautiful with all different colors. If the person was sad and do not have hope in this life anymore, he/she will see it in a black and white version. That was what happens in the movie Damnation by Bela Tarr.
Tarr did a great job in explaining what was going in the characters souls. The scenes and shots were not enough to send the message, but everything around us was a message too. The movie was about a man who loved a married woman. She was the only hope in his life. It was a movie of emptiness and loneliness. Tarr did not only want us to know the feelings of his characters, but furthermore, he wanted us to live with them the way they view this life.
The whole movie was going I slow actions. Everything moves slowly. Time goes slowly when we were away from the people we love and care about. Life was worthless and board with no interest or hopes if we were separated from our love ones. Even though the movie was done in 2005, Tarr picked black and white colors for his movie to show the feelings of his characters. It was almost all the time rainy and dark. They were so depressed and unhappy in their life. Tarr was great in putting us very close to the character to the moment that we did get depressed, but interesting at the same time.
The story was a love story between two people who their destiny drove them in different directions just like those buckets. They were only going to where they had to, without any choice to change their path. Even though people tend to think that it was up to them to control their life and to pick what ever they want, but it was not the truth, and that was very clear in Damnation.
We know the story of the movie, but we did not even know the names of the characters. It seemed to Tarr, that the names were not important, what was more important to him was the story. It could be the story of anyone of us. We saw the man trying to convince her to forgive him, and he was promising her he would change and do anything for her. It was like a hint that they were one day together but could not keep being with each other. At the beginning of the movie, I thought that she was depressed because she felt guilty loving another person, or she was sad that she was married to a person who she does not love. But at the end of the movie, I could not see what she went to a third man cheating her husband and her lover. Which led him to loose everything and every hope he had, he was barking at the dog giving up from this world.
