The last people are preparing to leave a desolate village at the edge of the world, but their plans are thwarted by the return of Irimiás, a prophet or a perhaps criminal who went missing over a year earlier and was believed to be dead. Béla Tarr’s magnum opus of over seven hours is a mural in which time—both physical and filmic—create a warp that sucks the audience in. Garage Screen is hosting the Russian premiere of the newly restored film.
The last inhabitants are preparing to leave a desolate farm somewhere in Eastern Europe and decide to split the money they made there, but their departure is interrupted by the return of Irimiás, a mysterious man with a troubled past, who went missing over a year ago and was considered dead.
Béla Tarr’s black-and-white adaptation of a novel by his frequent collaborator László Krasznahorkai has twelve chapters that form an epic narrative about an old and very imperfect human world, that seems to have been waiting for death, unchanged, since its very beginning. In Sátántangó, Tarr’s signature long takes show how time, originally fluid, stalls in space that is heavy with crime and lies or traps people spiraling around them.
The film will be screened in Hungarian with Russian subtitles.
Please note that the film contains a scene of animal cruelty. According to Béla Tarr, it was shot in the presence of a vet, and the animal did not suffer any injury. All sounds were added to the scene in the studio.
Sátántangó
Director: Béla Tarr
Hungary, Germany, Switzerland, 1994. 450. 18+