Satantango Is Challenging Cinema That Shatters Conventions As Often As It Makes Powerful Imagery

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #21
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #35 (tied with Metropolis, Psycho and Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles)

"Pushing the envelope" feels like an ill-suited descriptor for what director Bela Tarr is doing with his filmmaking in Satantango, the dude's practically challenging every convention known in the artform to fit his creative vision. While Satantango is my first time watching a movie from the Hungarian filmmaker, it's obvious this guy has got more ambition in his finger than many other directors have in their entire bodies. Now, to be perfectly frank here, that ambition does result in a movie that's frustrating in some aspects (and outright painful in one extended sequence) but actually becomes quite haunting in a way few movies could hope to be in its best moments. It's a give and take scenario, I suppose, when it comes to Bela Tarr's unique style of filmmaking.

Bela Tarr's most unique traits as a filmmaker in this particular feature (which is based on a 1985 Hungarian novel of the same name) are the choice to shoot the movie in black-and-white despite being filmed in the early 1990's, a somber atmosphere and the constant use of long takes, which is apparently a trait in all of his films. This guy just lets the camera roll without cutting away not just for a few extra seconds but entire minutes, allowing the atmosphere of certain moments to really sink into both the viewer and characters. Like I said, this doesn't always work but it sure does make it a memorable experience that really does feels like Bela Tarr is pushing the envelope in terms of what cinema can achieve.

In the course of the 420-minute long running time of Satantango, its plot doesn't quite kick in until the 250-minute mark, with the preceding running time being devoted to showing a dilapidated town and its equally rundown citizens going about their business as cows run across the streets and muddy lawns populate the ground. One man lives in paranoia of his neighbor, one woman is having an affair behind her husband's back, a local doctor slips and falls onto the ground and a little girl, right after planting a "money tree", tries to gain some form of control in a world (by way of torturing a poor cat) where she's always being tossed around by the adults around. These extended character pieces don't really have conventional plot structure rhythms to them, with character actions just sort of transpiring while the stories occasionally intersect.

This portion of the movie is at times fascinating but I'll freely admit I also found it frustrating at times too. Bela Tarr's use of long takes can sometimes be engrossing, but there are other times (like an extended shot of the little girl and another person walking off to plant the "money tree") that don't seem to be using that type of shot for extra thematic resonance or to enhance the mood but rather are being forced into this specific style of filming. Because of the way the camera is always lingering on these characters for extended periods of time, some of these scenes seem to drag on for forever, with an extended dance hall sequence (with this accordion music that just repeats itself over and over again) being borderline torturous in the way the long take becomes more excessive than beneficial to the scene.

An early sequence where the little girl tortures an actual cat has a similar problem with excess replacing depth. There's actually a super interesting idea in here, in that the little girl's anger at being trapped in a rundown town and always being pushed around by the adults around her manifest in her wanting to exert control over a local cat. An intriguing concept that gets completely undermined by the way the cat is tossed around in this scene like a ragdoll and making explicit cries of pain and discomfort. Seeing an animal being treated like that, making howls of torment all the while, took me right out of the movie and made me outright cry for all the wrong reasons. Sorry folks, but if you actually can't come up with a better way to visually represent a character's inner pain than hurting an actual animal, then that's just, well, sad, really. It's just such an icky scene that shows how Satantango, in these early scenes, has a tendency to replace substance with general superfluity.

But in these early sequences, you do get some truly memorable imagery that beautifully reinforces just how shabby the living conditions of this town have become. Even that aforementioned dance hall scene culminates in a bittersweet tracking shot where various townspeople are shown being asleep in various positions that reflect their own lives. It's here that one can see how much emotional power Bela Tarr can wring out of one singular shot and that level of success permeates the last 170 minutes of the motion picture, as the townspeople pack up and move on to new living quarters, all of them hoping to find some prosperity in their newfound surroundings.

After the more mixed bag that preceded this section of the movie, I was outright shocked how phenomenal the last three hours or so of Satantango are, as the melancholy mood becomes visually palpable in a way that lingers with you just as the camera lingers on the characters. Seeing these people put their trust in one man, who offers them promises of a better life beyond the confines they know, is a leap of faith that gives the past 250 minutes of the movie a whole new layer of substance to them since we now fully understand how low these people have sunk. We've been able to see, in great detail, just how important it is for them to find someplace new to go, someplace where they can have a chance to live.

The somber mood of the movie doesn't leave once all of the townsfolks pack their things and hit the open road though, as seen in a number of memorable shots such as horses clip-clopping across an empty pavilion or that absolutely incredible ending where the local doctor (the one person who stayed behind) realizes "The Turks Are Coming" and, knowing impending doom is about to grab him, calmly boards up his windows, sealing himself and the audience in perpetual darkness. This is one incredibly haunting ending, a perfect encapsulation of the sort of chilling dour aesthetic that only Satantango could deliver. The movie may stumble and fall along the way, but I tip my hat and offer a tremendous round of applause to director Bela Tarr for making such a unique and powerful piece of cinema that is as challenging as it is incredibly powerful.