Sátántangó (no 20)

(Hungary 1994 452m) DVD1/2

Aka. Satan’s Tango

The sound of bells

p  György Feher, Ruth Waldburger, Joachim von Wietinghoff  d/w  Béla Tarr  novel  László Krasznahorkai  ph  Gábor Medvigy  ed  Agnes Hranitsky  m  Mihály Vig  art/cos  Janus Breckl, Béla Tarr, Gyula Pauer

Mihály Vig (Irimiás), Putya Horvath (Petrina), Lászlo Lugossy (Schmidt), Éva Almássy Albert (Mrs Schmidt), János Derzsi (Kranér), Irén Sjajki (Mrs Kranér), Alfréd Járai (Halics), Miklós Székely B. ( Futaki), Erszébet Gaál (Mrs Halics), Erika Bók (Estika),

If ever a film demanded to be called indescribable, this is it.  If ever the term ‘not to everyone’s taste’ meant anything, it is here.  If ever a film carried a warning ‘not for cat lovers’, it is also here (well, along with Bill Douglas’ trilogy and Bad Boy Bubby).  Yet in addition to all these statements, another one might just as easily add is ‘all true cineastes, stop right here.’  Béla Tarr’s film is, not to put too fine a point on it, one of the greatest masterpieces of nineties cinema, a film of incredible scope within its truly unique structure.  A film that challenges you to believe that the cinema is capable of more than had hitherto been thought possible.  It’s a film that has been called “a masterpiece from this decade” and “one of the biggest experiences you can have in a cinema”, and that’s only from reviewers on the IMDB, where it still attains an average rating of over 9.0. 

            In the years following the fall of communism, an old communal collective farm and surrounding village is on its last legs.  The villagers wait patiently for their wages for the previous year, with the intention of then moving on.  Yet they are wary of the return of one of the villagers, a con-artist who will likely tempt them to give him their money in the promise of trying to keep the farm going. 

            Right from the opening sequence, a sense of doom hangs over proceedings.  The opening narration warns of the autumn rains, and the ensuing mud baths, and this we see for ourselves, as cows (mating, no less), chickens and divers other creatures are left roaming the yards unattended.  The almost funereal quality of the opening pan recalls the incomprehensibly reminiscent traffic jam in Godard’s Weekend.  The parallel may at first seem shaky, but both detailed flotsam and jetsam being passed by life itself, in the form of the camera.  It has been said that certain films live sub-consciously in the memory long after the plot details fade away, and this is certainly true of Tarr’s film, it’s visual bleakness – the entire film is shot in cheap monochrome, like a home movie shot on a portable CCTV camera – ingrains itself on the memory.  There are entire sequences that contrive to seem endless and about very little, but which prove unforgettable, as when two men walk in front of a camera into a gale-like wind blowing litter towards them, or in various shots of villagers walking up endless muddy lanes and tracks.  Yet for a film told so much through its visuals – and certainly dialogue is often kept to a minimum – it’s the sounds that stay with you as much as the visuals, be it a bluebottle buzzing round a room, hobbling footsteps through pouring rain, or the piercing silence of loneliness.  Not to mention the sound of the bells that toll, it seems, for the village itself.  These are noises that convey most effectively the desolation of the body and spirit.  A desolation further achieved by Tarr’s roving camera, conveying the infinite spaces of the locale, while at the same time metaphorically using the said bleakness to show the villagers’ collective sense of imprisonment.  At times, it comes across like a dream in slow motion, perhaps owing something to the rhapsodic vistas and movement of fellow countryman Miklós Jancsó’s sixties works, but wholly original nonetheless. 

            As for the title, it’s best left ambiguous, referring not only to the dancers in the café-bar sequence, but perhaps also to the back and forth nature of the narrative – in the opening half alone several stories taking place at the same time are weaved together.  Gareth Evans has called it “the great film of entropy” and, as open to interpretation as that statement may be, no-one could ever accuse Tarr of conformity.  Taxing, but terrific.