The arrival of Béla Tarr's 1994 seven-hour dark comedy on DVD will clearly divide audiences into an even split. Many will view this work as an epic masterpiece that brilliantly dissects the harsher elements of the human condition with compelling yet agonizing precision; others will find this excessively artsy and often painfully tedious. In some sense, both sides are correct. Set in a dreary Hungarian agricultural collective after the fall of communism, the film details the dead-end lives of rural families who find themselves trapped in hopeless oblivion. People drink, fight, scheme, spy on each other, and fall victim to their delusions and jealousies. In its favor, Tarr's daring use of extended takes--shot in bleak b&w--offers a jolting presentation of lives being wasted in a dead end purgatory, but at the same time, the film's funereal pacing can often test one's patience (especially the eight-minute opening sequence with a lethargically-paced tracking shot that follows a herd of cows who are filmed from an extreme distance). Overall, art-house film lovers will rejoice. DVD extras on this fully restored version of Satantango include three other Tarr films—a 1982 made-for-TV version of Macbeth, plus the 1995 short “Journey on the Plain” and Tarr's segment “Prologue” from the omnibus Visions of Europe—and a booklet. Recommended. (P. Hall)
Satantango
Facets, 4 discs, 420 min., in Hungarian w/English subtitles, not rated, DVD: $79.95 Volume 23, Issue 5
Satantango
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