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Inhabitants of a small village in Hungary deal with the effects of the fall of Communism. The town's source of revenue, a factory, has closed, and the locals, who include a doctor and three couples, await a cash payment offered in the wake of the shuttering. Irimias, a villager thought to be dead, returns and, unbeknownst to the locals, is a police informant. In a scheme, he persuades the villagers to form a commune with him.
Avis de la communauté (5)
If you need 7+ hours and an abused cat to tell this asinine story than you are not a very good storyteller/filmmaker. What a waste of time.
[Filmin, 4K Restoration] Cows. Poverty. Land. "Don't read Genesis; read Revelation." Rain. Communism. Mud. "The rain destroys everything." Tango. The dance of the poor is tango. "My father is the sea, my mother is the land, my name is Tango". Long takes. Time stopped. Bells. "Futaki woke up to the sound of the bells." Despair. Cinema. Masterpiece.
Béla Tarr’s seven-hour Sátántangó dissolves initial suspense into a nihilistic rain. Irimiás, a manipulator reminiscent of a "low-budget Che Guevara," dominates the villagers yet ultimately bows to higher authority, revealing that he, too, is merely a "twig in the wind." The film exposes a terrifying "order" maintained not by grand villains, but by banal bureaucrats eating lunch meat while typing fates. The tragedy culminates in Estike—a Mathilda without her Leon—and visual metaphors of a semi-blind world, like a blinking owl mirroring a broken windshield wiper. A striking realization occurs when the madman’s cry of "The Turks are coming!" rhythmically sounds like a marching cadence ("One, two, one!"), transforming historical trauma into an absurd, ghostly military drill. Ultimately, the suffocating atmosphere evokes my own middle school memories—a closed loop of despair. As the doctor boards up his window and writes the story's opening line, the tango completes its circle, trapping us in eternal darkness.
Felt shorter than The Turin Horse. Watch in a cinema not at home.