Search - The Prefab People on DVD

Early Tarr Crystalizes a Theme

Eileen Corder | West Coast | 08/04/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Shot in glorious black and white, this little gem of a film is definitely on a par with Tarr's later work. Caught in a town filled with smokestacks and a maze of project-like housing, the dysfunctional marriage of a young working class couple becomes a metaphor for the problems of modern (1982) Hungarian society and the consumerist world in general. Weaving the sights and sounds of families, beer halls, beauty shops and routine, The Prefab People reveals an earlier Tarr: simple, short and to the point with Herzog/documentary-type images, including a man who plays his lips as if they were a clarinet.

Superb performances by real-life partners, Judit Pogany and Robert Koltai, trick one into feeling like a voyeur. In public and in private, they deal with the stark reality of their seemingly dead end existence. Fights and disappointments, loneliness and a shallow thinness of life fill the screen in painfully long close-ups. A good amount of (mostly live) music adds to the mix. The closing image, the one you see on the cover with the couple riding in the back of a pickup with their newly purchased Minimat 65 washer, glues the episodes of break-up back together with what money can buy. Tarr uses the film's 75 minutes to construct a single movement that revolves on and on, ending at the beginning, churning up the clothes of life in a futile attempt to once and for all get out the dirt... or have we simply arrived in hell for good?"