Turin Horse (Ai Torinòi lò)

The last work of Béla Tarr, inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche, who, in the streets of Turin in his last days of sanity, hugged a horse being whipped by a coachman. The film, in its own way, tells something about this tenderness and this misfortune. About the human animals that we are. About the darkness that surrounds us.

In Turin on 3rd January 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche steps out of the doorway of number six, Via Carlo Alberto. Not far from him, the driver of a hansom cab is having trouble with a stubborn horse. Despite all his urging, the horse refuses to move, whereupon the driver loses his patience and takes his whip to it. Nietzsche comes up to the throng and puts an end to the brutal scene, throwing his arms around the horse’s neck, sobbing. His landlord takes him home, he lies motionless and silent for two days on a divan until he mutters the obligatory last words, and lives for another ten years, silent and demented, cared for by his mother and sisters. We do not know what happened to the horse.