Genre: Comedy/Drama
Director: Béla Tarr
Writers: László Krasznahorkai (novel) and Mihály Vig (story), Péter Dobai (story), Barna Mihók (story); László Krasznahorkai (screenplay) and Béla Tarr (screenplay)
Producer: György Fehér, Ruth Waldburger, Joachim von Vietinghoff
Cast: Mihály Vig, Putyi Horváth, László feLugossy, Éva Almássy Albert, János Derzsi, Irén Szajki, Alfréd Járai, Miklós Székely B., Erzsébet Gaál, Erika Bók, György Barkó, Peter Berling, András Bodnár, Ilona Bojár, Péter Dobai, István Juhász, Zoltán Kamondi, Barna Mihók, Mihály Ráday
Music: Mihály Vig
Cinematography: Gábor Medvigy
Distribution: Facets (US)
Release Date: February 8, 1994
Running Time: 450 min
There’s been a change in schedule; my review of Umberto D. is on hook until further notice.
Béla Tarr, anyone with even a passing interest in art cinema has heard that name. Roger Ebert calls him a director that’s more talked about than watched, and indeed for the longest time Tarr was just a name to me. I’d heard about Werckmeister Harmonies and Sátántangó, but I’d never actually taken the time to sit down and view the films. Why? Sátántangó is a long movie, and I don’t mean long as in it’s more than and hour and a half and the teenagers with ADD find it long, I mean seven and a half hours long. If you’re still here, good. It’s not an easy film to write about, and not just because of its length, but simply because it’s artistry is so intense it’s difficult to know where to begin, but I will make an attempt to review Béla Tarr’s 1994 masterpiece Sátántangó and prove that the film isn’t just known for its runtime.
Béla Tarr has constructed such an impressive, and hard to define work most summaries of the film come off as obscure and incomprehensible. What the film actually is about is a group of desperate strangers on a failing collective farm at the fall of Communism who fall prey to the conman Irimiás (Mihály Vig) and his partner Petrina (Putyi Horváth). The film is organized around the steps of a tango, for every step forward the story takes it takes a step back. The film is divided into three different acts and further into twelve smaller chapters that all twist back and forth in time. Though this is by no means Quentin Tarantino in Hungary, though Tarr’s film does have the explicit language, but unlike other films like Rashomon and Citizen Kane which use flashbacks and time-twisting narratives to create confusion Tarr here uses his narrative as a means of actually making the film flow more, there’s a certain poetry to the structure of the film and it’s hard to imagine the film working as a single flowing narrative.
Tarr has complete technical control over his film at all times. Sátántangó has been described as a two hour film elongated to seven hours, and that’s not untrue. Tarr shot Sátántangó entirely in long takes very reminiscent of Andrei Tarkovsky’s work, although unlike Tarkovsky who would break up long takes with quicker ones Tarr uses only 150 shots throughout the entire film and all are at least four-five minutes long. However his compositions are striking. Shot entirely in a grungy black and white, and often using Lynchinan industrial noise every shot in the film is perfectly controlled and beautiful, whether the camera is still or moving everything is sublime. I’ve never seen a film where each shot has such gravity as Sátántangó, there’s a weight and atmosphere of doom that Tarr creates, and he never lets up. Because of the film’s unique style it takes some adjusting to get used to the length of the shots, but once you’ve entered Tarr’s world there is no escape, the long takes are so astounding, and the way his camera flows from one situation to another without cutting is amazing.
There are so many hypnotic scenarios in the film, but the most memorable revolves around an old alcoholic doctor played by Peter Berling. The entire hour devoted to him shows him spying on his neighbors and recording their activities in a journal while trying to get drunk. The entire sequence is disgusting and unholy yet absolutely hypnotic. His house is like a giant piece of mold slowly enveloping him, and when he treks out to get more drink night begins to fall and he stumbles around in the dark, its enthralling cinema. There are so many other sequences I could discuss, the men walking in the wind, the little girl and her cat, the manor sequence where the camera flows from one character to another in a strange melancholy. Tarr’s use of rain is extremely sensual, and the rain and mud become characters unto themselves surrounding the film, the characters, and the farm.
Tarr leaves much room for contemplation throughout the film, and as a viewer I was left with far more questions than answers. The characters motives, the interpretations of certain scenes, and the overall structure of the film leaves a lot open to debate. Tarr insists that his films contain no symbolism, but Sátántangó does contain a lot of symbols. On the surface the film is about the failure of Communism but also a critique about the corruption of Capitalism, but the film isn’t a political drama by any means, its main theme is more of a power struggle, not just between the villagers but between nature and machine.
The acting in the film is a tough nut to crack. On one hand the actors are more like chess pieces to Tarr, and yet there are some great performances. Peter Burling is perfect as the doctor, and he plays a good drunk and Mihály Vig is exhilarating as Irimiás, but the film isn’t a textbook for great acting, but that’s alright because this isn’t an actor’s picture, and for the material given the actors do a good job. One performance that really stood out to me was Erika Bók as the tortured little girl Estike, for a child actor her performance is nothing short of outstanding. Overall this is a well-acted picture, but don’t expect too much.
Sátántangó is not easy to write about, and it’s a film that since finishing a few days ago I continue to be puzzled by. One recommendation I make is to watch a disc at a time. This isn’t like Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz which can be watched in parts, but it’s rather one long take. It’s a film that fascinates me though, and on some level it’s a strange sort of masterpiece. I look forward to the required second viewing as insane as that sounds.
No comments:
Post a Comment