Love Letter to Damnation (Béla Tarr)

Why can’t you love me? You don’t know what I can do. I’ll break your neck. Mouth to mouth, heart to heart, star to star. I couldn’t believe that frail body had so much blood in it. You’ve killed the love and decency in yourself. But there’ll be no shame anymore and the veil comes off. Don’t count on temporary ruin. Because this ruin is always final, as ruin generally is. The land is full of bloodshed and the city is full of violence. There’s nothing for you here.

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Take a look around. Make it more tempting for me. One must return to beauty. Rediscover life again. The joy of great things. The taste of victory and success. They want me to watch the pitiful effort everyone makes in trying to speak before they drop into the grave. But there’s no time, for they are already falling.

It’s all over. Over. And there won’t be another. It won’t be good. Ever again. Never more. Maybe never more. It’s like a nightmare. All of it. Maybe. Where is somebody new? Where will he come from? If he comes. Or won’t he come. Ever again? Maybe never more. Take it or leave it. This is what you’re stuck with. What can you do? You lose your words. Yet you cannot go.

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Go home now and go to bed. The fog gets into the corners, into the lungs. It settles in your soul because stories end badly. Stories are all stories of disintegration. The heroes always disintegrate. I’m not attached to anything anymore. I am going to leave. Kick me, spit at me and I’ll return again and again. And I really do love you. Maybe.

I like to watch the water run down the window. It always calms me down. I don’t think about anything, I just watch the rain. I know that I’m alone. I realized that, between you and a world forever out of reach, there is a strange and empty tunnel. I don’t know anyone else who knows that road. You’re standing alone at the entrance to the tunnel because you know something I can’t even put a name on, something deeper and more ruthless than I can ever understand. I realize that I can never get closer to that world. I can only long for it, because it is hidden by a light and warmth that I cannot bear.

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Then she crawled into the corner and would not move. I was looking at her nightie. All I saw was the nightie, that lacy nylon nightie. Then I jumped on her. I pulled it and tore it, I ripped it. The madness of hopelessness. I’m just sitting here, so it was this awful inner tension that brought me here Mourning for you, darling…There is nothing like finding one another, when there is music that warms the heart. Two hands clasped together, one foot senses where the other will step. And follows, no matter where the other steps. Because it believes they’ll be flying from now on. From every swing and turn. Who knows? Perhaps… it is flying.

(Collage aus den Untertiteln zu Kárhozat von Béla Tarr)

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