Northwest Film Forum

A soul-baring portrait of proletarian life in socialist Hungary, THE PREFAB PEOPLE offers a detailed examination of an unhappy family's struggle for survival. Tarr's third feature, his first to use professional actors, is exemplary of his early cinema: loose in structure, improvisational in acting style, and generous in it's use of a handheld camera. Beginning with a terrible argument between husband and wife, Tarr subsequently examines the minute details of his character's lives to see what brought them to this moment.

"The best of Tarr's early forays into Cassavetes-style social realism" -Jonathan Rosenbaum, CHICAGO READER