“One of the great, largely unseeable movies.”—The Village Voice
One of the most notable achievements in recent art house cinema and a seminal work of “slow cinema,” Sátántangó, now is available in this striking new digital restoration. Based on the book by László Krasznahorkai, the film follows members of a small, defunct agricultural collective living in a post-apocalyptic landscape after the fall of Communism who, on the heels of a large financial windfall, set out to leave their village. As a few of the villagers secretly conspire to take off with all of the earnings for themselves, a mysterious character, long thought dead, returns to the village, altering the course of everyone’s lives forever.
Shot in stunning black-and-white by Gábor Medvigy and filled with exquisitely composed and lyrical long takes, Sátántangó unfolds in twelve distinct movements, alternating forwards and backwards in time, echoing the structure of a tango dance. Director Béla Tarr’s vision, aided by longtime partner and collaborator Ágnes Hranitzky, portrays a rural Hungary beset by boozy dance parties, treachery, and near-perpetual rainfall that is both transfixing and uncompromising. Sátántangó has been justly lauded by critics and audiences as a masterpiece and inspired none other than Susan Sontag to proclaim that she would be “glad to see it every year for the rest of [her] life”.
Sátántangó is being restored in 4K from the original 35mm camera negative by Arbelos in collaboration with The Hungarian Filmlab. 1994, Hungary, 4K DCP, in Hungarian with English subtitles, 438 minutes. Screened with two intermissions. Recommended for 16+.