The cow-eyed persistence in the father and daughter to continue in their way of life, even as it winds down and they are slowly starved by their own horse’s Schopenhauerian denial of the will to live, seems to denote a stubborn claim on bare life at whatever cost, however wretched, if only to continue onward, without regret or fear or skepticism. (The father’s weak but obstinate plea — “We must eat potatoes…we must eat” — toward the end of the film perfectly describes this fatigued, but no less present, will to live.)  

Whether we should take Tarr’s depiction of their ascetic perseverance as indicative of the sacredness of life or not is something which cannot be answered directly; but in a recent interview, Tarr stresses that it is their “human dignity” which he strove to depict and preserve, a stance that could be interpreted as a respect for life as such, no matter how ruinous and raw, whether seen as sacred or profane.

The Bare Life of the Turin Horse