Sátántangó

Well... it is a challenge to remain relatively short about a 7.5 hour-long film. Probably I will post more bits than I usually do. I tried to sit down and pick a few scenes I especially found interesting, and ended up with 13. That much I will not post here, but it may be useful to help me write up the whole thing. The film is a very epic one, the action is very little, and the plot is not too complicated either. It conveys feelings, it has an "inner language" element I have written about earlier. A very meditative movie, with extreme long takes. It does summon up in a concentrated manner the feeling I have in me, about the Hungary as it was before the end of the Communist era, that depressed struggle for nothing, which you cannot imagine without constant raining, and which is still somehow beautiful as it is told in the language of slow moving images. The visual language is influenced by its topic, and part of the story is in fact the reaction of sensitivity to that indifferent world, sensitivity which is capable of creating such a beautiful depiction of something yet so stuck in dark hopelessness. Indeed, there is still something left there today that shows the same stagnation. I feel that I even know some of the characters, the plots they have to change things but which they never carry out, the resentful way they live mixed up with some sympathy when realising the fact that all this is due to a naive simplicity on their part. The introductory sequence, first posted here, is a good example of the long takes used in the movie, sort of replacing the descriptive passages of a novel.

The film is based on the novel of László Krasznahorkai, and was directed by Béla Tarr. Its shooting was supposed to start before the fall of Communism, but could only begin afterwards due to topics involved. The title of the novel refers to the six forward and six backward steps in tango, which in turn implies the chronology of the twelve segments the film is broken down to. When Communism is about to come to an end, we find ourselves in a village where life seems to have stopped since the charismatic Irimiás (played by Mihály Víg, the composer of the film's music) has disappeared. The inhabitants are about to leave the place, when they learn that Irimiás is on his way back to them... It seems that a persuasive police captain leaves him no choice but to help the police with their cooperation... The manipulative Irimiás then starts off to rid the inhabitants of their money and involve them into the very system they want to break free from. In the above clip Irimiás describes the mental hibernation the inhabitants live in, whereas in the one below illustrates the sort of quarrels they have. How many times have I heard "THIS" speech...

There is another important subplot that I want to mention briefly, and only briefly. The film had a controversial scene where a little girl torments a cat. I believe this is symbolic, as she torments the only one weaker than herself, similarly to her own torments from her environment. She is sensitivity in the movie, whose injuries from an uncaring world lead to a tragedy that Irimiás can use for his own purposes. That episode alone would be worth a post... Anyway, I decided to add a final post from the end that echoes the structure of the movie, another long take that follows on the mysterious bells we heard of in the introductory sequence.