Béla Tarr’s furious pursuit of cinematic perfection made him my perfect and impossible teacher | Bela Tarr

TThe last time I saw Béla Tarr was a few years ago at the Nexus conference in Amsterdam. We were invited to talk about the state of the world and the arts. We both believed that light and darkness existed in the world, even if our perception of them differed. Bella was already weak in body, but the spirit was still fierce, rebellious, and angry. We sat down to talk. It seemed fairly clear that this would be our final and most sincere conversation. As the former apprentice, I was able to see the Master one last time with all his anger, sadness, love and hate.

I first met Bella in 2004 when he was making the film The Man from London. I wanted to learn filmmaking and applied to become a film assistant. He gave me my first real job: as an assistant, I had to find a boy for one of the main parts. I spent months in the casting process, for the part that was eventually cut from the shooting script. But for Bella, no effort put into a particular film was lost – it was integrated into the energy field of the organization. The final result had to be the product of difficult processes. The harder the job, the better quality one can expect. He wanted to depict life and its constant dance. The choreography was a revelation for me: 10-minute continuous shots that unite place, characters and time. All in black and white.

I gradually realized that this was the best way to learn filmmaking, much better than any film school: find a teacher and learn the secrets of a particular art form, in the same way that painters or craftsmen have learned their craft for centuries. In Bela’s case, the work had to involve a close-knit group of trusted collaborators, a special attention to craftsmanship (a level difficult to reach nowadays, sacrificed on the altar of speed and efficiency), a deep connection to everything human, especially those forgotten by an increasingly superficial society, and a deep love of physical film rather than anything computer-based, because all his films were rooted in the physical world. However, they were all longing to reach a metaphysical level consistent with my natural inclinations.

Looking back, The Man from London was a project of madness – a Hungarian film, based on a French-language book by Belgian writer Georges Simenon, shot with international actors and Hungarian semi-amateurs, all speaking on set in their mother tongue, in a complex European co-production that included filming in the Corsican city of Bastia, dressed as a port in Normandy – all in the 1930s. The project also included the construction of the centerpiece, a metal monster observation tower overlooking the bay. The whole thing seemed like a Fitzcarraldo-like project with enormous ambition, but the enormous talent, flexibility, and inspiring presence of Bela, his partner and editor Agnes Hranicki, production designer Laszlo Rajk, screenwriter (current Nobel Prize winner) Laszlo Krasznahorkai, and all the other crew members also made me believe that this was the center of the world.

Filming was fraught with constant difficulties and challenges, mainly due to the structural discrepancy between the funds available and the scope of the film. In his relentless pursuit of perfection, Bela moved between cinematographers while searching for new financial resources. That’s when I realized the difference between settling and settling settlement. The filmmaker has to navigate this spectrum. Sometimes, sacrifices have to be made. Other times, artistic integrity requires the director’s consistency. It wasn’t easy, even for Bella, to find the right way forward. French producer Humbert Balsan committed suicide during the months of uncertainty surrounding the film. It was a tragic example of how Bella’s art is closely linked to the real world. Life is cinema and cinema is life – with a little help from people like him.

One day, when filming stopped, I found a book containing the film’s scripts in a library in Bastia. Sonderkommandos From Auschwitz. Then it took me 10 years of maturity to find a template to tell the story of what would become my first feature film, “Son of Saul.” One cannot leave Béla Tarr’s world easily – this must be a fierce gesture. When I left, it was a huge loss for me, but I also took with me a rebellious attitude, one that always questions the traditions of cinema and the rules and academic positions of filmmakers.

In the winter of 2004, Bela was commissioned to shoot a short film with Robbie Müller, the great cinematographer, in Budapest about Hungary’s entry into the European Union. Call it the introduction. With two assistants, I was tasked with finding overnight 300 homeless people, all of whom had agreed to be photographed while they waited in line for some food: a stream of endless faces, human, fragile, forgotten. This is how he saw Hungary in Europe. Bella was leading me to the shoot, and asked me, almost in a shy way, if I thought this would make a good short film. Why would a great director ask a young assistant such a question? Maybe he already knew that I would always respect the tradition to which he belonged, and that I would do my best to keep the flame burning.