Family Nest (1979)

My good pal Exiled recommended Bela Tarr's films to me, saying that he's frequently compared to Tarkovsky. The only films that I can find, anywhere, are his first 3, recently released in terrible quality by Facets. Little did I know that his earlier films were more Cassavetes than Tarkovsky, as evidenced by Family Nest, which feels more like a Cassavetes than some Cassavetes do. And, well, you know me and Cassavetes.

The film is shot in a documentary style, and for the most part, it's very effective and believable. The characters all feel very real, probably due to an improvisational style, similar to Cassavetes'. The bulk of the film takes place in a small apartment shared by a large number of members of the same family. Some of them, notably a young couple, try their hardest to get their own flat through the government, yet straits are so dire in Hungary at this time, that it's impossible. Adding to the tension, the man's Father is convinced that she's cheating on his son.

The Father is a strange character, to me. He's probably the most developed of all the characters, but he still felt kind of incomplete to me. I don't really see how he can give his daughter-in-law all this guff because he has suspicions, yet go out and chase women and try to bully them into sleeping with him, the way he does. Maybe it's Tarr's take on the hypocrisy of people, I don't know, but something about it rubbed me the wrong way.

The film derives most of its emotional impact from the poor living conditions of their apartment, and country to some respect. This, to me, seems kind of hollow, like it's a form of 'cheating' as opposed to actually developing the characters well. It seems like these could be any people living in Hungary, and you don't really get to know them much. But, I don't know, maybe that was Tarr's intent, similar to Italian Neorealism, to show the conditions in his own country.