Sátántangó
Sátántangó | |
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Directed by | Béla Tarr |
Screenplay by |
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Story by |
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Based on | Satantango by László Krasznahorkai |
Produced by |
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Starring |
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Cinematography | Gábor Medvigy |
Edited by | Ágnes Hranitzky |
Music by | Mihály Víg |
Release date |
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Running time | 439 minutes |
Countries |
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Language | Hungarian |
Sátántangó (Hungarian: [ˈʃaːtaːntɒŋɡoː]), also known in English as Satan's Tango,[1] is a 1994 drama film directed by Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr. Shot in black-and-white and running for more than seven hours, it is based on the 1985 novel of the same name by Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai, whose works Tarr has frequently adapted since his 1988 film Damnation. Tarr had hoped to make the film since 1985 but was unable to proceed with production due to the strict political environment in Hungary.
Sátántangó has received wide acclaim from film critics. In 2012, it appeared in the
Plot
In a desolate Hungarian village, after the collapse of a collective farm, two people, Futaki and Mrs. Schmidt (Éva Almássy Albert), are in a romantic embrace when Futaki is awakened at dawn by the ringing of church bells. Mr. Schmidt (László Lugossy) conspires with another co-worker named Kráner to steal the villagers' money and flee to another part of the country. As Futaki is sneaking out of the Schmidt home, he overhears Schmidt's plans, after which he demands to become part of the scheme – all this being watched by a lonely drunken man known as the Doctor (Peter Berling), who writes the events down in a notebook.
However, the conspiracy fails when rumors spread across the village that the charismatic and manipulative Irimiás (
At the village, the Doctor discovers that he has run out of fruit brandy. Unaccustomed to leaving his house, he decides to go out to buy liquor nonetheless. Outside, he is met with hostile weather and the arrival of night. He meets Sanyi's older sisters, who are prostitutes dreaming of running away to town since none of the locals have money anymore. After an impossibly long time, the doctor arrives at the local tavern to purchase his brandy, but is unable to find the courage to enter. The doctor is accosted by Estike (Erika Bók), Sanyi's little sister, whose father hanged himself and had previously been institutionalized. Estike causes the doctor to fall in the mud. In a state of emotional tension, after reacting angrily to this, the Doctor reconsiders and naively tries to apologize as the girl leaves and disappears in the darkness. Chasing after her, the Doctor passes out and collapses in a nearby wood, and is found in the morning by the town's conductor who takes him to a hospital.
The morning before the Doctor left his house, Estike is tricked by her older brother Sanyi into planting a "money tree" in the forest. She tortures and poisons her cat to death, and carries its corpse to the money tree, finding it dug up by her brother who has reclaimed the money. Marauding through the woods, the girl approaches the local tavern and peers through its window, where most of the villagers dance to accordion music, unaware of the peeping child. Afterwards, she encounters the Doctor and retreats into an abandoned ruin, fatally poisoning herself with the feeling that every movement of the world is preordained.
The following day, Irimiás arrives at the village while Estike's funeral is being held. Irimiás tells the villagers they were all guilty of Estike's death and talks most of them into handing him all their money in order to start a new collective in a near-by estate. The villagers (excepting the publican, Sanyi's family and the Doctor) walk together, wheeling their few belongings to a distant abandoned mansion where they lie down to sleep, whereupon the narrator describes the dreams each of them has. Meanwhile, Irimiás, Sanyi and Petrina are walking when Irimiás drops to his knees while hearing once again the mysterious drone as the fog lifts from the ruin where Estike died. They later meet with an accomplice in a near-by town to acquire a large amount of explosives, for reasons never explicitly explained.
The next morning, when Irimiás is late, the villagers decide that they have been duped by Irimiás, and fight among themselves. Schmidt and Kráner (János Derzsi) accuse Futaki of having led them into this trap and demand that he return their money. As they beat him up, Irimiás arrives, scolds them for their squabbling and tells them that his plan to establish a new farm has been delayed by the authorities and that their only hope is to scatter around the country for an unspecified amount of time. Kráner demands that Irimiás give their money back. Irimiás does so, but expresses his disappointment at their lack of trust and unreliability, shaming Kráner into once more giving his money to him. Irimiás, Petrina and Sanyi drive the villagers and their belongings by truck to the city, where Irimiás assigns the Schmidts, the Kráners and the Halicses different towns and different tasks, gives them each 1,000 forints and dismisses them. Futaki, however, tells Irimiás that he would rather find a job as a watchman, takes his thousand forints and leaves on his own. The fate of the headmaster remains unclear.
The police receive Irimiás' devastating report about the villagers' poor abilities and defects and decide to rewrite it in a less vulgar manner before filing it away and leaving.
The Doctor returns home after thirteen days in the hospital, unaware that Irimiás has taken the entire community away with him. He sits down to write his notes, assuming that all his neighbors are snoring in their beds. He suddenly hears the same bells toll that woke Futaki at the beginning of the film. The Doctor leaves his house again to investigate the ruined church from which the sound of the bells comes, because the bell tower is not supposed to be working. He discovers a madman inside the ruins striking a bell clapper with a metal rod like a gong and shouting endlessly that the Turks are coming. Frightened, the Doctor returns home and proceeds to board up the window in front of his desk, plunging himself into total darkness as he sits and writes the narration which began the film. The tolling of church bells continues throughout the last part of the film and the displaying of the end credits.
Cast
- Mihály Víg as Irimiás
- Putyi Horváth as Petrina
- László Lugossy as Schmidt
- Éva Almássy Albert as Mrs. Schmidt
- János Derzsi as Kráner
- Irén Szajki as Mrs. Kráner
- Alfréd Járai as Halics
- B. Miklós Székely as Futaki
- Erzsébet Gaál as Mrs. Halics
- Erika Bók as Estike
- Peter Berling as the Doctor
- Zoltán Kamodi as the Innkeeper
- Péter Dobai as the Police Captain
Production
Structure
The structure of the film is based on that of the novel, which borrows, as its title suggests, from
- A hír, hogy jönnek [News of Their Coming]
- Feltámadunk [We Are Resurrected]
- Valamit tudni [To Know Something]
- A pók dolga I. [The Job of the Spider I]
- Felfeslők [Unraveling]
- A pók dolga II (Ördögcsecs, sátántangó) [The Job of the Spider II (The Devil's Tit, Satan's Tango)]
- Irimiás beszédet mond [Irimiás Gives A Speech]
- A távlat, ha szemből [The Perspective From the Front]
- Mennybe menni? Lázálmodni? [Going to Heaven? Having Nightmares?]
- A távlat, ha hátulról [The Perspective From The Rear]
- Csak a gond, a munka [Just Trouble and Work]
- A kör bezárul [The Circle Closes]
Long takes
The film is composed of long takes, a trait found in Tarr's work. Tarr's adoption of this style has led many people to draw parallels between Tarr, Andrei Tarkovsky and Theo Angelopoulos, all of whom use very long takes and let their films play out at a slow pace. According to Tarr himself, there are roughly only 150 shots in the entire film.[2] Several shots last nearly ten minutes, such as dance sequences, during which the camera rarely moves, but we see the main characters dance and drink. Tarr has said that the cast was actually drunk during these scenes.[3]
The opening shot, in which the camera tracks alongside a herd of cows, lasts nearly eight minutes. There are shots depicting main characters walking (and talking) for minutes at a time, unimpeded by a cut.
The book and the film
This film is based on literary sources and had a screenplay, but much of it was still improvised on set. Tarr had this to say on the subject of having a screenplay, but on his filming method in general:
No, we never use the script. We just write it for the foundations and the producers and we use it when looking for the money. The pre-production is a very simple thing. It takes always a minimum of one year. We spend a year looking all around and we see everything. We have a story but I think the story is only a little part of the whole movie.[4]
An omniscient narrator can be heard at several points throughout the film, textually quoting parts of the novel. It also adapts every moment in the book, leaving nothing out.
Music
Mihály Víg, who plays Irimiás in the film, was Béla Tarr's film composer since working on Almanac of Fall in 1984, until the director's retirement in 2011 with the film The Turin Horse. Tarr has described his collaboration with Víg, as well as that with his wife and editor Ágnes Hranitzky and cinematographer Fred Kelemen, as "collaborative filmmaking", in which each one of their individual works stands as a relevant production of its own. As with Damnation (1988) and all of Tarr's work since 1994, Sátántangó utilizes a small set of original compositions by Víg that play at strategic points of the film, to establish connections between themes or situations.[5]
For Sátántangó, Víg composed a type of score that has been described as "carnivalesque" by Tim Brayton.[6] It is composed of melancholic and haunting accordion themes, reminiscent of a slow and repetitive tango. The most prominent musical theme of the film is "Rain II", which is featured at most of the film's signature moments. Three tango suites play once at separate moments of the film, "Galicia" and "May I Have This Tango?" in "The Job of the Spider II"—while the villagers feast as Estike watches from outside the bar—and "Circle Dance II" after the villagers arrive at the new building that is supposed to be their farm, while the camera goes through their faces and emotions. Additionally, the unearthly sound of distant church bells plays several times throughout the film. In the 2009 compilation "Music From the Films of Béla Tarr", all of the mentioned tracks appear, and the latter is listed as "Bell I" and "Bell II."[7]
Themes
As with the novel upon which it is based, Sátántangó deals with strong
Regarding the film's most prominent theme, the character of Irimiás can be seen wielding a
Similarly, the character of the Doctor wields an important symbolic side of the film's themes. Appearing as man of culture and developed interests, the old Doctor is past the point of disillusion of his village, staying indoors most of the time and behaving
Reception
Sátántangó has garnered widespread critical acclaim since its 1994 release, and grew in reputation among American art house circles following the release of the director-approved 2006
In the 2012
Home video
The film has developed a cult following among certain audiences,[citation needed] due in part to its artistry and length, but also to its having long been unavailable on DVD. The film was only briefly out in VHS and DVD formats in the 1990s, and went out of print very quickly, initiating a period in which only bootlegs transferred from old VHS sources were available. It has since been released in a new transfer supervised by Tarr.
Sátántangó is rarely screened in theatres due to its lengthy running time. Theatres generally show the film either in two separate parts, or in its entirety with two intermissions. Tarr has expressed a wish for the film to be viewed without any interruption.[citation needed]
The scene in "Unraveling" when Estike (Erika Bók) kills her cat led to some difficulties in getting the film shown in the United Kingdom, due to legislation protecting nonhuman animals from cruelty and the British Board of Film Classification refusing to certify such films. Tarr has insisted that there was a veterinarian on the set at all times, and that the cat was under the vet's supervision and was not killed.[16]
In 2019, a 4K restoration of the film premiered at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival, produced by Arbelos Films and with Tarr's approval.[17] The film was released on Blu-ray in France on 16 September. 2020 by Carlotta Films, and in the United States on 12 January. 2021 by Arbelos.
See also
References
- ^ The English title "Satan's Tango" is found among its alternative titles at IMDb, in this Tarr interview at The Hollywood Reporter, in this article at Variety, etc.
- ^ "Interview with Béla Tarr: About Werckmeister Harmonies (Cannes 2000, Director's Fortnight) – Bright Lights Film Journal". Bright Lights Film Journal. Retrieved 14 March 2016.
- ^ Jonathan Romney (24 March 2001). "Interview: Bela Tarr, Hungarian director". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 4 August 2013.
- ^ – Waiting For the Prince: An Interview with Béla Tarr, by Fergus Daly and Maximilian Le Cain
- ^ – Béla Tarr, Fred Kelemen and Mihaly Víg, by Michael Guarneri
- ^ – Tarr Béla Dances with the Devil, by Tim Brayton
- ^ [ http://www.discogs.com/Mih%C3%A1ly-V%C3%ADg-Film-Music-From-The-Films-Of-B%C3%A9la-Tarr/release/5874859 – Music From the Films of Béla Tarr CD]
- ^ a b c Jacques Rancière (24 March 2013). "Book: Béla Tarr, The Time After". University of Minnesota Press. Minnesota. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
- ^ "Sátántangó (Satan's Tango)". Rotten Tomatoes. 8 February 1994. Retrieved 2 July 2019.
- ^ [1] Bela Tarr's Slow Burn
- ^ [2] "Finding Beauty in the Miserable and the Mundane"
- ^ [3] "Bela Tarr's Marathon Masterpiece Casts a Devilish Spell"
- ^ [4] Jonathan Rosenbaum: 'Satantango'.
- Sight & Sound Greatest Films. British Film Institute. 2012. Archived from the originalon 19 August 2012. Retrieved 12 September 2012.
- Sight & Sound Greatest Films. British Film Institute. 2022. Retrieved 17 February 2024.
- ^ Romney, Jonathan (24 March 2001). "Out of the shadows (interview with the director)". The Guardian. London.
- ^ "Béla Tarr and Arbelos Films on Restoring Sátántangó". Screen Slate. Retrieved 14 April 2024.
External links
- Sátántangó at IMDb
- Sátántangó at Rotten Tomatoes
- Sátántangó at AllMovie