20 Seconds of 26,380
In awe of Sátántangó
Drunk, lecherous, cantankerous, the Doctor lurches up from his chair. There is a textural quality to his chair that one feels like falling into, the desk slid awkwardly between doorway and window. The doctor takes twenty seconds to stand and walk out of frame before tumbling onto the floor. These twenty seconds take place about a hundred minutes into Bela Tarr’s 1994 Sátántangó. I watched this scene over a month ago, then again the next day, and then again. Even for the endless seven-hour runtime of Sátántangó this blip, this slice feels so crucial, so particularly beautiful to me. This moment is special not simply because of why the moment sticks, but because it sticks at all.
Seven hours in a movie theater does something to you. With an intermission, an hour for dinner, plus a combined forty minutes of driving, an audience member is forced to sit with Sátántangó for almost nine hours. One may consider this math at many points during the film, but Sátántangó is just as fascinated with such calculations. The film’s name follows its structure, a take on the tango in which the narrative is divided into twelve parts, six steps forward in time and six steps back. Within this dance, the film employs endless eleven-minute takes, constant repetition, waiting, walking, and the examination of various forms of stillness. Being stuck inside this structural machinery, sinking into the theater seats, letting your mind wander during a take, and coming to during that same take, all become as essential to the experience of Sátántangó as what appears on the screen.
The irony of its machinery, and the fact that you are meant to be swallowed by it, is that Sátántangó is so bare. It seems to goad you into distraction. Its black and white wide Hungarian landscapes, its communist concrete expanses, and its strange stony interiors give the film a haunted, desolate quality. You are meant to find voids everywhere, stillness and emptiness in even the most dramatic and intense of dramatic turns. Instead of becoming the fulfillment of some sadistic snobbery, Sátántangó expects you to give in and seems to trust you, the viewer, with the weight and power of what you see. Sátántangó provides the kind of emotional power that takes hours and hours to brew, but in the process, it understands that with time there are bound to be voids. The process, the relationship with the audience, and the reliance on isolated experiences in theatres make the film feel impossible and utopian. The film transforms into a kind of theatre in that while Sátántangó’s images could obviously be reproduced, I could never relive the strange madness, the boredom, the hunger, and the emotional exchange that occurred in that theater.
This is why my memory of this twenty-second scene is so powerful: it is the afterlife of an intense emotional shedding, the last whispers of the strange spell the film put me under. On one hand, this memory could easily be universalized to reflect the powerful after-effect of powerful cinematic experiences. On the other, the scene is a perfect encapsulation of what makes Sátántangó a particular and special experience. You can look at the screencaps I’ve enclosed, but none will tower above you. You will not feel the sadness and revulsion and tedium that emanates from this man. You will not find yourself snapping back to reality at the cut to that fading suede chair.
I don’t think I could write a complete review of Sátántangó. I do not know how to do that, how to collect all that drapes and expands about this film, or how to generalize or conceptualize theme and form without slashing at so much of what this film does. After all, this twenty-second bridge is twenty seconds of 26,380. It may be utopian, experimental, and bizarre, it may be seven hours, and it may drive you mad but this scene reminds me that Sátántangó is after all, still a film.
