Sátántangó
Sátántangó, also known in English as Satan's Tango, is a 1994 internationally co-produced epic drama film directed by Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr. Shot in black-and-white and running for more than seven hours, it is based on the 1985 novel of the same name by Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai, whose works Tarr has frequently adapted since his 1988 film Damnation. Tarr had hoped to make the film since 1985 but was unable to proceed with production due to the strict political environment in Hungary.
Sátántangó has received widespread critical acclaim from film critics. In 2012, it appeared in the British Film Institute's Sight & Sound critics' top fifty films.
Plot
In a desolate Hungarian village, after the collapse of a collective farm, two people, Futaki and Mrs. Schmidt, are in a romantic embrace when Futaki is awakened at dawn by the ringing of church bells. Mr. Schmidt conspires with another co-worker named Kráner to steal the villagers' money and flee to another part of the country. As Futaki is sneaking out of the Schmidt home, he overhears Schmidt's plans, after which he demands to become part of the scheme—all this being watched by a lonely drunken man known as the Doctor, who writes the events down in a notebook.The conspiracy fails when rumors spread across the village that the charismatic and manipulative Irimiás, a former co-worker who had been presumed dead, is returning with his friend Petrina. Previously, Irimiás and Petrina had been forced under threat of arrest to continue their criminal enterprise in the employ of the police captain in a nearby town. After hearing a mysterious drone in a bar and proclaiming their intent to blow everything up, they begin their march to the village. They are welcomed by their young ally Sanyi Horgos, with whom they had made a deal so that Sanyi would spread word among the villagers that the two had died.
At the village, the Doctor discovers that he has run out of fruit brandy. Unaccustomed to leaving his house, he decides to go out to buy liquor nonetheless. Outside, he is met with hostile weather and the arrival of night. He meets Sanyi's older sisters, who are prostitutes dreaming of running away to town since none of the locals have money anymore. After an impossibly long time, the doctor arrives at the local tavern to purchase his brandy, but is unable to find the courage to enter. The doctor is accosted by Estike, Sanyi's little sister, whose father hanged himself and who had previously been institutionalized. Estike causes the doctor to fall in the mud. In a state of emotional tension, after reacting angrily to this, the Doctor reconsiders and naively tries to apologize as the girl leaves and disappears in the darkness. Chasing after her, the Doctor passes out and collapses in a nearby wood, and is found in the morning by the town's conductor who takes him to a hospital.
The morning before the Doctor left his house, Estike is tricked by her older brother Sanyi into planting a "money tree" in the forest. She tortures and poisons her cat to death, and carries its corpse to the money tree, finding it dug up by her brother who has reclaimed the money. Marauding through the woods, the girl approaches the local tavern and peers through its window, where most of the villagers dance to accordion music, unaware of the peeping child. Afterwards, she encounters the Doctor and retreats into an abandoned ruin, fatally poisoning herself with the feeling that every movement of the world is preordained.
The following day, Irimiás arrives at the village while Estike's funeral is being held. Irimiás tells the villagers they were all guilty of Estike's death and talks most of them into handing him all their money in order to start a new collective in a nearby estate. The villagers walk together, wheeling their few belongings to a distant abandoned mansion where they lie down to sleep, whereupon the narrator describes the dreams each of them has. Meanwhile, Irimiás, Sanyi and Petrina are walking when Irimiás drops to his knees while hearing once again the mysterious drone as the fog lifts from the ruin where Estike died. They later meet with an accomplice in a nearby town to acquire a large amount of explosives, for reasons never explicitly explained.
The next morning, when Irimiás is late, the villagers decide that they have been duped by Irimiás, and fight among themselves. Schmidt and Kráner accuse Futaki of having led them into this trap and demand that he return their money. As they beat him up, Irimiás arrives, scolds them for their squabbling and tells them that his plan to establish a new farm has been delayed by the authorities and that their only hope is to scatter around the country for an unspecified amount of time. Kráner demands that Irimiás give their money back. Irimiás does so, but expresses his disappointment at their lack of trust and unreliability, shaming Kráner into once more giving his money to him. Irimiás, Petrina and Sanyi drive the villagers and their belongings by truck to the city, where Irimiás assigns the Schmidts, the Kráners and the Halicses different towns and different tasks, gives them each 1,000 forints and dismisses them. Futaki, however, tells Irimiás that he would rather find a job as a watchman, takes his thousand forints and leaves on his own. The fate of the headmaster remains unclear.
The police receive Irimiás' devastating report about the villagers' poor abilities and defects and decide to rewrite it in a less vulgar manner before filing it away and leaving.
The Doctor returns home after thirteen days in the hospital, unaware that Irimiás has taken the entire community away with him. He sits down to write his notes, assuming that all his neighbors are snoring in their beds. He suddenly hears the same bells toll that woke Futaki at the beginning of the film. The Doctor leaves his house again to investigate the ruined church from which the sound of the bells comes, because the bell tower is not supposed to be working. He discovers a madman inside the ruins striking a bell clapper with a metal rod like a gong and shouting endlessly that the Turks are coming. Frightened, the Doctor returns home and proceeds to board up the window in front of his desk, plunging himself into total darkness as he sits and writes the narration which began the film. The tolling of church bells continues throughout the last part of the film and the displaying of the end credits.
Cast
- Mihály Víg as Irimiás
- Putyi Horváth as Petrina
- László feLugossy as Schmidt
- Éva Almássy Albert as Mrs. Schmidt
- János Derzsi as Kráner
- Irén Szajki as Mrs. Kráner
- Alfréd Járai as Halics
- B. Miklós Székely as Futaki
- Erzsébet Gaál as Mrs. Halics
- Erika Bók as Estike
- Peter Berling as the Doctor
- Zoltán Kamondi as the Innkeeper
- Péter Dobai as the Police Captain
Themes
Regarding the film's most prominent theme, the character of Irimiás can be seen wielding a God-like influence over the villagers to the point of convincing them of doing anything and to make himself greatly feared by them. In "The News is They Are Coming", Futaki and Mr. Schmidt are forced to cut off their plans to escape with the money of the village's farm as a result of Mrs. Kráner telling them of the discovery of Irimiás' return. Futaki is seen reflecting on the character of Irimiás with great fear, saying at one point "he could turn a pile of cow shit into a castle if he wanted to." The divine influence of Irimiás is symbolized heavily throughout the film. In "Knowing Something", the Doctor catches a glimpse of Irimiás and his companions' arrival before he blacks out in the forest. In the three middle chapters, concerning Estike's death, the villagers burst into an impromptu feast at the tavern in fear of Irimiás' imminent arrival. Precisely because of their fear of him, as well as their inherent mistrust of their neighbours, they fail to see Estike in the woods outside as she first watches from a window, proceeds to cry to the Doctor for help and subsequently kills herself. Further on, Irimiás makes use of his rhetoric to persuade the villagers to hand him all of the money they had earned at the collective farm, pledging them to the guilt of Estike's death. In many scenes, Irimiás appears as a knowledgeable and worldly person capable of manipulating the villagers, but also fearful of people less naive, such as the Captain and, to an extent, Futaki. Repressed fear of true authority from Irimiás can also be seen in "Going to Heaven? Having Nightmares?", when he encounters the ruins where Estike committed suicide. While he is ignorant of the event that took place in the ruins, Irimiás nonetheless bows before them, almost instinctively, as an acknowledgement. The fact that the villagers are aware they have lost all prospects of stability, but are still willing to follow Irimiás due to his leadership, places him in the position of an archetypical False Prophet, with more Satanic traits to him than divine ones.
Similarly, the character of the Doctor wields an important symbolic side of the film's themes. Appearing as man of culture and developed interests, the old Doctor is past the point of disillusion of his village, staying indoors most of the time and behaving introvertedly. The Doctor only decides to go out after running out of brandy, and his choice is deeply regretted when he is met with hostile weather under the cover of darkness and collapses. In "The Perspective From the Front", the villagers remember they have left the Doctor in the desolate village—although he was actually in the hospital—and Futaki's suggestion is that they leave him behind "to starve." The Doctor seems to be deprived of the villagers' indifference; in spite of his hostile behavior towards Mrs. Kráner, he attempts to help Estike before she commits suicide and is disturbed enough to investigate the ringing of the bells in "The Circle Closes." Out of the entirety of the village's inhabitants, the Doctor seems to be the only one willing to accept death, as he chooses to remain in the abandoned village—perhaps to starve—rather than follow Irimiás.