Kárhozat

Lather, stubble, skin – for minutes on end and layer by layer, Karrer doesn’t just reveal his motionless, emotionless face in a shaving scene that can almost be physically felt, but also the lens of the camera he’s looking into. Achieved via a mirror, this camera gaze makes tangible just how stuck in his life the taciturn loner really is, who forms part of the love triangle that develops between him, a singer in the local Titanik bar, where Karrer spends his evenings, and her husband. Tarr’s first collaboration with Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai creates cinematic spaces and landscapes into which the existential hardships of the protagonists appear to have been inscribed. (mg)