SATANTANGO (1994) by
Bela Tarr
SATANTANGO by Bela Tarr from the novel by Laszlo Krasnahorkai is one of the most respected recent films to surface on the international cinema scene.
Such major critics as Susan Sontag, Jonathan Rosenbaum, and J. Hoberman have all called SATANTANGO a master works of the present day cinema.
At seven and one half hours, in black and white 35mm film, this cinematic event must be experienced if one is to understand why Bella Tarr is considered so highly in international cinema.
SYNOPSIS:
In the ashes of the Communist utopia in Hungary, a group of lost souls from a collective farm choose to follow a new messiah towards an uncertain future. In the endless rain and mud they work out their salvation in a series of encounters that Tarr's camera covers in long complex shots...which reveals the emptiness and the futility of their shabby existence.
If you would like to read Jonathan Rosenbaum on Tarr: try: http://www.chireader.com/movies/archives/0596/05106.html
"BEST FILM OF 1996"........ J. HOBERMAN , VILLAGE VOICE
"BEST FILM OF 1996"........JOHN EWING, CLEVELAND CINEMATHEQUE
"Tonic, voluptuous, funny and horrifying, SATANTANGO is that rare thing in contempory cinema: an authentic event". JAMES QUANDT, CINEMATHEQUE ONTARIO "
"IT'S TERRIBLE, BRUTAL,HAUNTING: WEEKS LATER, IT'S STILL PLAYING IN MY HEAD." ...................... MANOHLA DARGIS, LA WEEKLY
The films of Bela Tarr trace the spiritual and material decay of European/Western dreams with a visual authority lacking in most present-day cinema. The formal evolution of his work reflects on a deepening concern with the possibility that there may not be only an erotics but also an ethics for modern cinema...
ROB TREGENZA, ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES, NYC, 1996
"I sat awe-struck through Bela Tarr's SATANTANGO. Tarr is incapable of a dull or lifeless frame...This stunning seven-hour film, with intermissions, is not...repeat, not...a strain to sit through.
GEORGIA BROWN, VILLAGE VOICE.
"A seven-hour epic offering a near-definitive statement about the end of Communism in Eastern Europe, this mordant and grungy black comedy by Hungarian director Tarr restricts its focus to the intrigues, betrayals, boozy revels and readjustments made by several members of a farming collective after their squalid but relatively secure form of life collapses. Employing a virtuoso, choregraphed black and white camera style suggesting despiritualized Tarkovsky, shot through with apocalyptic gallows humor, and beautifully as well as slyly structured as naerrative, this stunning masterpiece paradoxically proves that Hungarian cinema is alive and well--and, in Tarr's hands, frighteningly lucid."
FILM SOCIETY OF THE LINCOLN CENTER, NEW YORK CITY .........JULY 13, 1996