Lars Iyer's Blog, page 96

I had a task, did not do it, and now the failure is wrecking my life. I ought to have done something positive with my life, to have become a star in the sky. Instead of which I remained stuck on earth, and now I am gradually fading out. My life has really become meaningless and so it consists only in futile episodes. The people around me do not notice this and would not understand; but I know that I have a fundamental deficiency. Be glad of it, if you don't understand what I am writing here.

Wittgenstein, in a letter to Engelmann

We haven't met since 11 years. I don't know if you have changed during that time, but I certainly have tremendously. I am sorry to say I am no better than I was, but I am different. And therefore if we shall meet you may find that the man who has come to see you isn't really the one you meant to invite. There is no doubt that, even if we can make ourselves understood to one another, a chat or two will not be sufficient for the purpose, and that the result of our meeting will be disappointment and disgust on your side and disgust and despair on mine.

Wittgenstein in a letter to Keynes

Review from Library Journal, February 15, 2012

http://reviewscenter.mediasourceinc.net/detail%2FLibrary%20Journal%2F2012-Feb15%2F12-698111271839845951.xml

This sequel to Iyer's Spurious brings back W. and Lars, perhaps the most unlikely and absurd literary duo since Samuel Beckett's Vladimir and Estragon. This is a loosely constructed philosophical comedy with an episodic feel. (Spurious began as a series of blog posts, and this novel feels similar.) While there is a minimal plot (W. and Lars take a trip to America; they start an intellectual/performance art movement they call Dogma; W. worries about losing his professorship in departmental cutbacks), there's little in the way of change or character development. But that's really not the point. Rather, this book is about the crazily dysfunctional friendship of the main characters (one of whom may be a projection of the other's imagination), filled with cuttingly witty insults, and W.'s acid take on nearly everything.

VERDICT Like Godot, this novel is a philosophical rumination, at once serious and playful, on the nature of existence and meaning. While it's comic, there is at bottom a profoundly tragic sense of the chaos and emptiness of modern life. Despair has rarely been so entertaining.

Lawrence Rungren, Merrimack Valley Lib. Consortium, North Andover, MA

Your films are quiet, almost meditative experiences. Does it feel that way on the set?

No! None of it is meditational. You have to hold everything in your hands. Filmmaking is horrible work and you're always fighting with the weather, the time, the money situation.

Bela Tarr, interviewed

In my films, I want to be closer to life than to cinema.

Bela Tarr, interviewed

What is the role of God in this film?

The god created this fucking shit, what we have. We just wanted to show you how we disappear and I don't know who is the god. But if you remember, Nietzsche stated, God is dead.

Bela Tarr, interviewed

Do you remember, Milan Kundera wrote this book about the lightness of the being? We just wanted to show you the heaviness of the being. You are doing always the same thing every day, but every day is a little bit different, and the life is just getting weaker and weaker, and, by the end, disappears. This is what this movie shows you.

"'The Turin Horse' is that kind of movie after which it is hard to make the next one," Mr. Krasznahorkai wrote in an e-mail. "Right after the apocalypse? One more? About the apocalypse? There is only one of it."

From a profile of Bela Tarr

Publisher's Weekly reviews Dogma.