Satantango DVD (Facets Video)
Directed by Bela Tarr
Susan Sontag’s 1994 pronouncement that Bela Tarr’s Satantango was “Devastating, enthralling for every minute of its seven hours” was undeniably enthusiastic but not definitive. Out of the many words expended by journalists and scholars attempting to describe and catalog this epic-length art-film, the definitive assessment actually came from film critic Dennis Delrogh who astutely noted, “It could be a great film if it was edited.”
The term “greatness” is often heaped upon Satantango as a fail-safe. It’s easier to kowtow to the heft of the thing, rather than make sense of it—that is, submitting its tale of shiftless folk in a rural Hungarian hamlet (deceitful members of a farm collective) to real critical scrutiny. That’s been the problem with a film so unweildy it rarely has theatrical engagements or ready access. Now that the diligent art-distributors at Facet Video have released a three-disc DVD version, Satantango can be easily seen, literally handled.
Tarr casts a probing, concentrating eye on people and states of weather. He deliberately combines ragged, low-life behavior and stylized high-brow visual style. The result is quasi-realism that, through the weight of his lengthy scenes, feels quasi-spiritual. A series of husband-wife arguments, infidelity with neighbors, saloon-drinking, bureaucratic interrogations, threat-filled discussions, cheating, murder, various emotional abandonments and financial games occur in desolate settings. The uncanny thing is that Tarr and cinematographer Gabor Medvigy make the provincial smallness—this interpersonal meanness—visually rich and immense. Once seen, 300-pound Mr. Futaki spying on his neighbors while sitting at his writing desk, is not to be forgotten. The image has bulk, full of psychological and (modern-day) period detail like a Dickens character description.
Every Tarr scene imposes itself--for its sophisticated, elaborate camera movement, the delicacy and focus of its lighting (Gabor Medvigy’s range, from layering curtains and windows to illuminated rain in a nighttime forest, is as astounding as James Wong Howe’s 1930s B&W cinematography). It’s a series of tableaux more than a story, twice repeating a night revelry in a public house—a clownish, drunken orgy that gives the film its title. This is where the village folk’s meanness leads to a tragedy no more upsetting than their abject daily routines. Tarr’s microscopic focus turns macro. He also throws metaphysical hints into a narrative that looks simple yet is achieved through technique so sophisticated that it practically screams out its complex intent. When an exploitive slickster Irimias (Mihaly Vig) delivers a eulogy, Tarr evokes antecedents no less cultured than Melville’s The Confidence Man and Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
Satantango’s visual style clearly derives from art-cinema’s masters: Hungary’s Miklos Jancso and Japan’s Mizoguchi, as well as Russia’s Tarkovsky and Germany’s Fassbinder. His motif of men marching forward through a windswept street is a typical repetition (and narrative transition) that marks Tarr’s self-consciousness. He refuses efficiency for style, clarity for enigma. This art pose has made Tarr a symbol—a bludgeon—the festival-circuit crowd uses to browbeat popular cinema. Fact is, Raoul Walsh’s 1959 Day of the Outlaw hits every deep thought in Satantango (including the dancehall scene) in a 90-minute western.
The thingness of Satantango gives it its rep but that’s also a distraction. Elitists use Tarr’s method to ignore his message. The vision of an inhumane society fits elitist fashion but ironically, they ignore the lament within this obstinate beauty. Tarr’s images of a godforsaken world make a cry that exceeds trendy nihilism (just as his Werckmeister Harmonies checked-in with the forgotten lament of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita). By emphasizing thingness—what’s least important about Satantango—Sontag’s endorsement threatened to exclude Tarr’s art from popular impact (as did Lars Von Trier’s rip-off Breaking the Waves). Such isolationism eventually ruined Abbas Kiarostami. The right approach to Satantango can make it useful rather than forboding. There’s a great contemporary folktale inside this oversized art-epic.
Directed by Bela Tarr
Susan Sontag’s 1994 pronouncement that Bela Tarr’s Satantango was “Devastating, enthralling for every minute of its seven hours” was undeniably enthusiastic but not definitive. Out of the many words expended by journalists and scholars attempting to describe and catalog this epic-length art-film, the definitive assessment actually came from film critic Dennis Delrogh who astutely noted, “It could be a great film if it was edited.”
The term “greatness” is often heaped upon Satantango as a fail-safe. It’s easier to kowtow to the heft of the thing, rather than make sense of it—that is, submitting its tale of shiftless folk in a rural Hungarian hamlet (deceitful members of a farm collective) to real critical scrutiny. That’s been the problem with a film so unweildy it rarely has theatrical engagements or ready access. Now that the diligent art-distributors at Facet Video have released a three-disc DVD version, Satantango can be easily seen, literally handled.
Tarr casts a probing, concentrating eye on people and states of weather. He deliberately combines ragged, low-life behavior and stylized high-brow visual style. The result is quasi-realism that, through the weight of his lengthy scenes, feels quasi-spiritual. A series of husband-wife arguments, infidelity with neighbors, saloon-drinking, bureaucratic interrogations, threat-filled discussions, cheating, murder, various emotional abandonments and financial games occur in desolate settings. The uncanny thing is that Tarr and cinematographer Gabor Medvigy make the provincial smallness—this interpersonal meanness—visually rich and immense. Once seen, 300-pound Mr. Futaki spying on his neighbors while sitting at his writing desk, is not to be forgotten. The image has bulk, full of psychological and (modern-day) period detail like a Dickens character description.
Every Tarr scene imposes itself--for its sophisticated, elaborate camera movement, the delicacy and focus of its lighting (Gabor Medvigy’s range, from layering curtains and windows to illuminated rain in a nighttime forest, is as astounding as James Wong Howe’s 1930s B&W cinematography). It’s a series of tableaux more than a story, twice repeating a night revelry in a public house—a clownish, drunken orgy that gives the film its title. This is where the village folk’s meanness leads to a tragedy no more upsetting than their abject daily routines. Tarr’s microscopic focus turns macro. He also throws metaphysical hints into a narrative that looks simple yet is achieved through technique so sophisticated that it practically screams out its complex intent. When an exploitive slickster Irimias (Mihaly Vig) delivers a eulogy, Tarr evokes antecedents no less cultured than Melville’s The Confidence Man and Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
Satantango’s visual style clearly derives from art-cinema’s masters: Hungary’s Miklos Jancso and Japan’s Mizoguchi, as well as Russia’s Tarkovsky and Germany’s Fassbinder. His motif of men marching forward through a windswept street is a typical repetition (and narrative transition) that marks Tarr’s self-consciousness. He refuses efficiency for style, clarity for enigma. This art pose has made Tarr a symbol—a bludgeon—the festival-circuit crowd uses to browbeat popular cinema. Fact is, Raoul Walsh’s 1959 Day of the Outlaw hits every deep thought in Satantango (including the dancehall scene) in a 90-minute western.
The thingness of Satantango gives it its rep but that’s also a distraction. Elitists use Tarr’s method to ignore his message. The vision of an inhumane society fits elitist fashion but ironically, they ignore the lament within this obstinate beauty. Tarr’s images of a godforsaken world make a cry that exceeds trendy nihilism (just as his Werckmeister Harmonies checked-in with the forgotten lament of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita). By emphasizing thingness—what’s least important about Satantango—Sontag’s endorsement threatened to exclude Tarr’s art from popular impact (as did Lars Von Trier’s rip-off Breaking the Waves). Such isolationism eventually ruined Abbas Kiarostami. The right approach to Satantango can make it useful rather than forboding. There’s a great contemporary folktale inside this oversized art-epic.
