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MovieMail's Review
Although it was voted by the Cinematheque Ontario's international poll of programmers, archivists and historians as one of the key films of the 1990s, Béla Tarr's magisterial Sátántangó has long been unavailable on video, and has become almost mythic in its absence.
Those familiar with the two Tarr films already released by Artificial Eye, Werckmeister Harmonies and Damnation - both of them, like Sátántangó, based on the writing of Hungarian author Laszlo Krasznahorkai - will be prepped for Tarr's inimitable style.
Often compared to the stately and poetic works of Tarkovsky and Jancsó, the films are set in small Hungarian towns, shot in black-and-white with long takes that gracefully follow myriad characters as they trudge through the icy, perpetually water-logged and muddy locations, conspiring, dreaming, and hoping for a better tomorrow.
Tarr's films brilliantly use their downshifted pace and epic length (Sátántangó is seven hours) to submerge the viewer in atmosphere and setting, evoking a rainy Eastern Europe that viewers may be unfamiliar with, but which is emotionally startlingly familiar.
Sátántangó is named after the six-step back-and-forth movement of the tango dance, and one reason for its length is the way in which it doubles back on itself and reframes events from multiple perspectives. Residents on a collective farm eye one another as dissension grows and an enigmatic messianic figure arrives, and the sense of interconnected observation and judgment is virtually palpable.
Is the film an existential allegory for the fall of Communism and the search for political utopia? A sly critique of the spiritual hopes and deceptions that have befallen an archetypal human community? Tarr is mischieviously ambivalent in interviews, refusing to endorse any political or metaphysical readings of his work and insisting the viewer take it on its own terms.
Yet the evocative tension between the harsh landscape, the sublime music, elegant camera movements and ambiguous narrative produces powerful cinematic poetry ripe for interpretation. Sátántangó is more than just a formal tour-de-force, it's an experience to be embraced, cherished, and remembered for years to come.
An epic, exceptional, unforgettable cinematic experience about the end of Communism in Eastern Europe and the dreams and betrayals of a failed farm collective. With its trademark choroeographed long takes it casts a spell on the viewer. Devote time to it and it will reward and haunt you.
