The dance with the devil based on novelist László Krasznahorkai's novel about the aftermath of the fall of communism for sure has to rank very high up when it gets to unconventional motion pictures. Filmed in beautiful black and white by Hungarian director Béla Tarr in the early Nineties, the movie consists of twelve parts and lasts seven and a half hours with single tracking shots up to ten minutes, often with very little or only repetitive action on screen. And it rains and rains and rains. Make no mistake: Despite its length Satantango is not an epic narration, but rather achieves long lasting impressions by pointing the camera on banalities inspired by the bleakness of the scenery, perfectly enhanced by the director's choices what to show and how to show it in order to induce a trance-like reaction in the viewer. And while doing so Satantango mesmerizes, shocks, devastates, enthralls.
The time line is a bit unclear and episodes overlap or could have happened the same way at another time. Yet there is a main thread of story about a con-man in the messiah's disguise, a seemingly eternally lasting dance in the very middle, and an essential episode about a little girl representing the core of the film - a symbol of the disillusionment and victim of betrayal, desperately searching for ways to exert some power herself in her forlorn reality. Not that much is happening in Satantango, and some things remain vague, but reality is also transcended at key points adding to the allegorical impact. The aesthetics of the experience and its ultimate conclusion will remain with those who are open for it.
The time line is a bit unclear and episodes overlap or could have happened the same way at another time. Yet there is a main thread of story about a con-man in the messiah's disguise, a seemingly eternally lasting dance in the very middle, and an essential episode about a little girl representing the core of the film - a symbol of the disillusionment and victim of betrayal, desperately searching for ways to exert some power herself in her forlorn reality. Not that much is happening in Satantango, and some things remain vague, but reality is also transcended at key points adding to the allegorical impact. The aesthetics of the experience and its ultimate conclusion will remain with those who are open for it.