Sátántangó

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Simon T Why do I prefer Bela Tarr's movies to anything by Tarkovsky? For all his stylistic quirks - the long takes, the relentless rain and mud, the grinding poverty of his characters - there is always a humanity beneath the surface, an understanding of human frailty. In this massive 7-hour epic he gives us a community who have lost their purpose and now drown their sadness in drink and wild dancing, failing to notice that one of their children has poisoned her pet cat and taken her own life. This in turn leads to a returning villager exploiting their grief and running off with all their money. You do have to surrender to the slow pacing of all Bela Tarr's films - I must admit that I found the final section testing - but they are endlessly rewarding and very different to anything you'll have seen before. And very beautiful too. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 02/23/24 Full Review Sean H This movie is like a 7 and a half hour of a constipated person trying to have a bowel movement. It's a disgust to any Hungarian who suffered the horrors of communism!!!! Shame on the reviewers!!!! Rated 0.5/5 Stars •  Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 12/21/23 Full Review J.J. L I found a way to watch this film and not feel like I wasted time. I type this review while looking at it, I check email and surf my social media feed. I play solitaire. Try to do that at a cinema for 7 hours... Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 11/15/23 Full Review Audience Member I just lost a day forcing myself to watch this. There was a lot of fast forward going on but still it's a tedious waste of time. I only watched because it makes so many top 100 lists so it piqued my interest but jeez even by Béla Tarr standards this is self indulgent. Rated 0.5/5 Stars •  Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 01/28/23 Full Review Audience Member Giving this movie more than 1 Star is being overly generous to say the least. The 2nd star is only for the sake of one Character I found remotely entertaining and amusing and that was the Doctor. Had this film revolved around him entirely; I might have been able to endure the painful 7 1/2 hours of never-ending Torture of having watched it. And the only reason I managed to stumble across this bizarre work of Bela Tarr's was purely motivated on a dare by my Cinephile husband who swears by Tarr's genius. Unfortunately the only geniuses I recognized were the Poor Cows left to their own devices at the beginning of the film with nothing to do but look bored. I could relate to their muse more than any human being portrayed in this circle jerk of a chase for more money and change that never arrived at its destination. In the end everyone ended right back at square one only this time at a different location without a self sustaining farmland or their Cattle. Why anyone would abandon those cows to begin with remains a mystery... Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 02/18/23 Full Review Audience Member Discussing movies with my wife a few nights ago, I impulsively submitted Bela Tarr's Satantango as my pick of all-time favorites. Such a choice is unavoidably arbitrary, given the ability of cinema to touch us in so many different yet equally effective ways. I must, however, stand by my choice, in that I have yet to see a film which so audaciously offers up the range of haunting, affecting, and downright bizarre qualities that abound in this behemoth of a work. The film stands as a paradigm of contradictory qualities, achieving an ultimate depiction of shimmering, crystalline beauty indistinguishable from the muck and mire which perpetually dominate the screen. It is both deeply humorous and unbearably tragic; cynical in attitude and yet hopeful in the stubborn persistence of its characters. Tarr's mastery somehow convinces us to care unreservedly about a panoply of rogues completely ungoverned by any hint of moral decency. This may occur as a result of the film's undeniably absurdist element, allowing the viewer essential breathing space, without which the grime enshrouding the events might otherwise prove intolerable. The dialogue is ridiculous, but necessarily so, as it permits the characters to become fascinating, surreal mockeries of themselves. Both daunting and engaging, the film's time sense absorbs us in a 7-and-a-half-hour meditation on the abyss of life, while somehow ushering us towards the light by way of defiant contrast. Final note: while the notorious scene involving the cat is surely distressing and perhaps even imperfectly rendered, it is ultimately indispensable. We may be consoled by Tarr's thorough account of how the effects were achieved without infliction of actual harm on the cat. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/14/23 Full Review Read all reviews

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