Clara Orban, a professor of Italian and French at DePaul University, began working on cinema as part of her scholarly interest while teaching courses on film. When she was first introduced to Béla Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies at Facets Multimedia in Chicago, it led to a revelation and began a career interest in Hungarian cinema, prompting her to write her latest book on Tarr.The book intends to talk about ecologically and geographically meaningful elements in Tarr’s oeuvre from the aspects of place, space, and time in slow cinema. Among the masters of slow film Michelangelo Antonioni, Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, Theo Angelopoulos, and Miklós Jancsó are mentioned, but Béla Tarr stands out as the one who most consistently and effectively uses the slow camera to explore the human condition.Ecocriticism and geocriticism provide the framework for exploring Tarr’s films, as they rarely put the viewer into the center of our ecological predicament. The term “ecocriticism” was first used by William Rueckert in 1978.1 The approach of eco- and geocriticism leads to a broader discussion of the meaning and function of spaces and how they can benefit from multidimensional, theoretically polyvalent approaches. Orban focuses on the sensual relationship to physical space and also the relationship between the human body and space.On the philosophical level, Orban connects Tarr’s universe to the world of the Anthropocene, the age defined by the destruction of nature by humans. The Anthropocene becomes a framework within which it is possible to examine human activity, including cultural production. In that framework Orban discusses Tarr’s work, landscapes, places, objects, and animals and their particular relationships to humans. For example, the apocalyptic vision of The Turin Horse holds ecological significance, where the Anthropocene transforms into an environmental nightmare. Orban mainly focuses on the metaphysical layer of Tarr’s cinema, geo- and ecocriticism making it possible to analyze the interconnectedness of geography, ecology, and slow cinema in the works of such an exceptional cinematic master as Tarr.One of the main questions in Orban’s book is how Tarr’s art relates to politics. While not political per se, Tarr’s films explore the difficulty of freedom for people not accustomed to it and show us how the tortured characters are looking for strong leaders, often charlatans or violent exploiters, while the landscape remains atemporal and unhuman.For that reason, the chapters in Orban’s book are organized according to a logic of spaces. After the introduction (“Tarr in the Anthropocene”), the second chapter discusses the term “slow cinema” and Tarr’s relationship with its masters, as well as Tarr’s film career within the scope of Hungarian cinema. According to Orban, Miklós Jancsó, one of the most significant Hungarian filmmakers and the subject of extensive analysis within film studies, represents the most important artistic role model for Tarr.The following chapter (3) talks about indoor spaces, the kinds that tend to be part of Tarr’s work, as he often uses similar indoor spaces that recur from film to film (dwellings, cluttered apartments, taverns (kocsmák), discos, urban leisure spaces, offices, hospitals, factories). The humans and animals that live and work in each space are influenced by the space’s narrowness.Outdoor places are the focus of the fourth chapter, with extensive descriptions of the role of wind and rain in Tarr’s films and analysis of the functions of public spaces, including squares, parking lots, public parks, and open fields, as well as forests and the coal pit. As stated in Orban’s book, any hint of optimism in landscapes ultimately disappears and, as a final stage, the world of The Turin Horse shows how human life arrives to its end. At this point, Orban refers to the interpretation of Bálint Kovács, the best-known Hungarian expert on Tarr’s universe, writing that Tarr’s political vision is implicit rather than explicit, and the selection of places is a clear reflection of human misery.In chapter 5, animals—including dogs, cats, pigs, cows, horses, birds, and sea creatures—are discussed as their repeated appearance and limited variety leads to potential for symbolic meaning. At this point Orban returns to the framework of the Anthropocene, arguing that animals are represented as being the most affected by human dominance during this period of time and as a way to show how humans’ destructive tendencies can lead to the destruction of the world. According to Orban, domestic animals in Tarr’s world mirror human existence.A whole, sixth chapter deals with Tarr’s non-feature productions, like short films, followed (after the concluding chapter 7) by Appendix A, containing poetry, full Hungarian texts, and their English translations. These poems appear in the order in which they are included in each film. Appendix B contains the transcript of an interview with Tarr, conducted by the author of the book. A very useful filmography chapter outlines all of Tarr’s films, followed by the bibliography and index.In her conclusion (chapter 7), Orban characterizes Tarr’s universe as the place of violence, emptiness, heartbreak, misery, melancholy, hostility, neglect, and loneliness, with humans’ inability to connect to one another, claustrophobia, and cold destruction in the endless rain, wind, and fog. The natural world is desecrated but, as she writes, “The ruins show . . . that there was a time when beauty was possible and we could band together and build” (150).Only in the conclusion does Orban mention the significance of language in Tarr’s films as an essential element in his work, translating László Krasznahorkai’s novels into films. Perhaps this dimension of Tarr’s universe is the most difficult to approach without a thorough knowledge of the Hungarian language. The author does not mention the significance of music in Tarr’s world, and the filmmaker’s collaboration with composer Mihály Víg. Exploring the role of music could also be a potential focus in a future book on Tarr’s work.Orban’s book on Tarr’s universe is a rare and important introduction and contribution to the scholarship on Tarr’s cinematic universe in English for scholars, students, and anyone interested in film in general.