Hacker Cinema
Satantango
Sátántangó
1994 · Film · 432 min
Directed by Béla Tarr
Inhabitants of a small village in Hungary deal with the effects of the fall of Communism. The town's source of revenue, a factory, has closed, and the locals, who include a doctor and three couples, await a cash payment offered in the wake of the shuttering. Irimias, a villager thought to be dead, returns and, unbeknownst to the locals, is a police informant. In a scheme, he persuades the villagers to form a commune with him.
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14 comments on Hacker News
Try Out 1: Noli Me Tangere at 14 hours
Satantango was screened with a full dinner break in the middle (long enough to see another movie in the interim) when I saw it, but this one I went to had to be spread out over two days
Yes, Sátántangó is quite the experience. Seven hour investment for one film, and I actually want to do it again.
Try to see Tarr's movies on film. Except for the last couple that got Bluray releases there are only horrible quality DVDs available. But they come around on 35mm in cities like NY somewhat routinely.
When Turin Horse came out I saw it at the NYFF (with an hour long talk in a small room with the director) and then another 3 times in theaters afterward. I've been lucky to catch Satantango and Werckmeister on film.
Tarr also mentored a young Chinese director, Hu Bo. His two works are very good: An Elephant Sitting Still and Man in the Well. Tarr came out to TIFF to introduce and eulogize the latter with an impassioned speech.
edit: Forgot that Criterion finally released a new edition of Werckmeister recently.
He's my favorite working author! (Well, maybe that's Pynchon)
I recommend not only his early works like Satantango but also his recent ones like Seiobo There Below (lucky to have a signed copy of this one).
The short ones are interesting too. Animalinside (with Max Neumann), The Last Wolf.
Interested in checking Chasing Homer which has musical accompaniment: "Publishers Weekly described the book as a cross between a Jean-Claude Van Damme film and the works of Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka"
> I honestly say the films from Tarr are arguably the best book-to-film adaptations ever, especially Sátántangó, he is the master of literary filmmaking where the spirit of text comes across the screen perfectly. If that is so, then these are books that you read to experience ultimate ennui?
I know the films, I've watched them all, but doing e.g. Satantango in book form sounds not so enticing?
It is not easy to commit seven hours to a single movie; for me, Sátántangó was worth it. Warm up on Werckmeister Harmonies which is a short two hours since Bela Tarr isn't and doesn't need to be for everyone. That said, Sátántangó is in my top four movies of all time because of how well it reflects humanity and how much it says about how we interact with each other. (The cows are a metaphor for HN, obviously.)
You can't mention Krasznahorkai without Béla Tarr. Tarr's main filmography is basically Krasznahorkai's main bibliography: Damnation (1988), Sátántangó (1994), Werckmeister Harmonies (2000), The Man from London (2007), The Turin Horse (2011). I honestly say the films from Tarr are arguably the best book-to-film adaptations ever, especially Sátántangó, he is the master of literary filmmaking where the spirit of text comes across the screen perfectly.
Watch the film Sátántangó in one sitting with no distraction. If you can do that, you are healed. I imagine a chronic tiktok user would find the film a form of torture.
3 movies you would hate ranked from most to least:
1) Christian Marclay's The Clock
2) Sátántangó
3) Dekalog
Even if cinema is declining as a mass art form due to short attention spans, internet filesharing and streaming has made it more accessible than ever. I have been part of internet discussions about famously long films like Tarr's Satantango (7 hours) or Rivette's Out 1 (13 hours) where some participants were from non-Western countries, sometimes disadvantaged ones, but Bittorrent had brought all these riches to them.
Satantango I’d seen after a couple hours sleep after a going away party. It’s great and definitely benefits from the detail of 35mm film. I saw Turin Horse three times in theaters (NYFF then its release) not to mention the 4-5 times on video, and while both are rewarding the theater is best if the audience is fine and it’s actually a good projection.
Aside from writing and directing films like "Raging Bull" and "American Gigolo", Paul Schrader as film theorist has christened the genre of long movies as "Slow Cinema." In his thesis "Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer", Schrader argues that the deliberated depictions in lengthy movies transforms the act of the ordinary into a realm of transcendence.
He has produced a famous diagram where he identifies acclaimed filmmakers like Tarkovsky, Akerman (mentioned in article), Weerasetakul, Tarr as practitioners of slow cinema[1].
[1] https://www.indiewire.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/figure18.jpg?w=725
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Personally, these long films were an experience in themselves:
- Sátántangó, Bela Tarr, 7 hours 18 min
Tarr depicts the countryside as a slow, humdrum experience. By confronting viewers with the elongated pedestrian experiences, the film accentuates the subtle rhythms in everyday life.
- Hitler: A Film from Germany, Hans-Jurgen Syberberg, 7 hours 22 min
Perhaps bombastic, and even pretentious, but Syberberg has successfully constructed his own world from his poetic sentiments. It laments on how the noble "Germanism" has been (as put by Susan Sontag) "retroactively tainted" by Hitler.
- Nostalghia, Andrei Tarkovsky, 2 hours 5 min
I know this isn't as long as the other titles, but the penultimate shot of the film is 10 minutes long. It depicts a man walking around holding a candle. While very little happens, the parsimony of the shot directs the audience's attention to the sparse movements, which compounds the until the action is resolved.
If you're into the long sentences thing, try Laszlo Krasznahorkai: http://www.amazon.com/The-Melancholy-Resistance-Laszlo-Krasznahorkai/dp/0811215040 , http://www.amazon.com/Satantango-L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3-Krasznahorkai/dp/0811217345
Sometimes sentences span pages. Each chapter is a single paragraph.
The movie adaptations are fantastic too.
Or there's the Wexner center which is the type of place that shows 'Satantango' (450 min. runtime) and often has double features for $7 (and less for students/members). I now regret having missed even a single film while I was nearby.