**** (out of ****)
Starring Mihaly Vig, Putyi Horvath, Laszlo Lugossy, and Eva Almassy Albert
Directed & written by Bela Tarr, from the novel by Laszlo Krasznahorkai
1994
450 min NR
My film-snob street-cred is now unassailable. I found the glowing red film-snob spot and shot it three times. Yes, I saw “Satantango,” the 7.5 hour black-&-white Hungarian movie, in one day at the Fine Arts Museum. That’s a lot of subtitles. It doesn’t matter what I thought of it or even if I understood it. I’ve seen the fucker – and you haven’t. They gave us a ten-minute bathroom break during the first four hours. After that, we got an hour-long dinner break. With my ticket stub I got 10% off my Café Express bowl of chili, so with admission the entire day cost about nine bucks. Except that I got a glass of wine before the movie started. I thought a muscle relaxant was in order. I sat in the front so I could lay down sometimes just to keep my neck from calcifying. The next day I got a massage.
Anyway, the movie itself is impressive. It reaches its insane length through long, long, looooong takes. If someone does something, we see him do the WHOLE thing. One crook says to another, “let’s divide up the money.” The second thug says “okay.” And then he divides an entire wad of bills, one at a time. A crazy old dude decides to board his windows. So, without an edit or a dog shot, the camera follows him as he boards every window.
In most forms of fiction actions acquire artificial spontaneity through editing – a character says “let’s do it!” and suddenly he’s doing it. “Satantango” strips this away and the meanings of those actions change – everyone who does anything is now much more determined – it’s not enough for us to be TOLD the crazy girl carries around a dead cat, we share in the experience by watching her entire walk. It’s not enough to be told it’s a cold, wet, and rainy walk to get the liquor re-filled; if we share in the entire walk we know how much he wants the booze. To hear about someone spying on his neighbors is one thing, but when we see how much dead time that involves it becomes different.
Narratively, “Satantango” echoes Faulkner in how we circle incidents and sets of characters from different points-of-view. The first episode mentions the arrival of two ex-cons in a bar. Episode two shows their arrival. In episode one, the adulterer sneaks out of his woman’s house, watches her husband go inside, then knocks on the front door as if he just got there. In episode three, we watch him sneaking around from the POV of a nosy neighbor. In episode two, the ex-cons hike through the woods. In episode four, the crazy girl watches them go. Then she’s harassed by the drunken spying neighbor. Then she watches everyone dancing in the bar. Episode, uh, something else shows the entire barroom dance. The ex-con gives a speech and we watch everyone depart over his shoulder. The next episode repeats the speech with his face on screen, then we follow him.
So, in the end, if someone ever asks me “Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?” now I can say “Yes. And he tangos.”
Finished Tuesday, January 16th, 2007
Copyright © 2007 Friday & Saturday Night
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