Sátántangó

So many people are coming together to find creative ways to experience cultural moments together while we need to be apart. They stream quarantine telethons (do we still call them telethons?), join online book clubs reading twelve pages per day of War and Peace, and tweet along to TV and movie watch parties. Despite the abundance of these shared experiences, my friends disappoint me. For some reason and despite my persistence, no one has accepted my invitation to watch Bela Tarr’s 1994 film Sátántangó, named one of the top 50 films of all time by the British Film Institute. Susan Sontag wrote the film is “devastating, enthralling for every minute [….]” and she would be "glad to see it every year for the rest of [her] life." 

What have I left out? Well, Sontag wrote it’s "devastating, enthralling for every minute of its seven hours.” And even she was hiding a bit: it’s seven and a half hours. Also, Tarr is known for his very long takes. Longer, I promise, than you can imagine.

Despite all of this, I am watching Sátántangó. I rented it last night to support independent cinemas and watched 20%. The 72-hour rental window is generous but perhaps still not enough.

Why am I doing this? Almost 20 years ago I saw Bela Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies at the cinema with a friend. It’s a 145-minute film that feels much longer. I recently mentioned to the friend that even though I fell asleep at least twice in the movie it was one of my favorite moviegoing experiences. He replied, “I, who did not fall asleep, was less enthusiastic.”

What will I get out of this? I don’t know. When I saw Eugene O’Neill’s five-hour play Strange Interlude produced in Chicago in 2009, someone stormed out of the theater screaming, “Why are you butchering this play, this beautiful play?” And that, more than anything else, is what I remember about the play. Outbursts are unlikely during my solo screening of Sátántangó. Unlikely, but not impossible. -Adam