"Cowardice, sinful Impotence" -- Irimiás, an outsider.As the movie opens, a Herd of Cattle is seen wandering aimlessly in the Village. These animals differ not much from the Villagers they symbolize and share the rural air with. The humans here, are living (or rather dying) a life of Hopelessness, Aimlessness and Despair with nowhere else to go and nothing else to do.As if to augment villagers' own Woes, there's Mother Nature, hell-bent on grinding, beating the Villagers down with a Catastrophe of it's own: Heavy Torrential Rains that do succeed in hiding the tears of the Villagers, but also succeed in destroying everything that the Villagers have a scarce sense of ownership of, ...including the thin Coats on their stagnant bodies, which perhaps are their Last Resort of Protection.To stave off a certain Madness looming over them and thus to ascertain Psychological Survival, each villager has an elusive escape-route of his/her own: extra-marital affairs, brandy, note-taking, holy books...anything goes by. It's a tragic affair, because not even small children are exempted from this shadow of Pessimism and their Neurotic Behavior is always simmering on the surface. The degree of Despair in the Villagers can be gauged from the fact that they trigger into some kind of blurry action only after a particular Tragedy strikes them and that's because each villager is a Reactive individual, not willing to find solutions himself/herself, but waiting passively and infinitely for some external miracle to show them the way.Each villager has a Personal Story of his own...and a varying Degree of Madness. The Doctor is mad, the Repent inside him not being sufficient enough to offset his Addictions. Kelemen is crazier than the Doctor. But Kelemen, still, may not be as mad as the Madman who tolls the bells of the dilapidated church the whole day, but he is surely on his way there.Thankfully, Irimiás who arrives from outside the village as per the orders of the Law to help the Villagers, is looking for a Redemption from a personal past of his own. If not for the above quoted stinging words that Irimiás describes the villagers with, until their hearts burn, probably they might still have been lying around snoring, exactly like the Doctor believes them to be. But Irimiás has a plan...not a definite one...but nevertheless he has something that he has brought with himself that the villagers don't have: A Sense of Authority, Leadership Qualities ...and a Glimmer of Hope.Can he save the Villagers from their own Pessimism? ...Or will the Heavy Rains succeed in grinding the Villagers down?---- Sátántangó (1994), a Hungarian Drama from the acclaimed director, Bela Tarr.In a way, this movie is strangely ironic in that, we realize that the level of Despair in the atmosphere is at its deepest...but we also know that it cannot get deeper than this and now the only way out, is the way of Rising high up.The background scores by Mihály Víg, play a very important character in themselves and provide a distinct personality to each scene.The technique that makes this movie unique, is that we are witnessing the same Segment of Time from different Point of Views of various characters involved. Each View, arrives at a common point of a specific Revelation that has an immediate impact and then moves onward to that specific character's Individual Arc that again climaxes with a concrete Event.

Satan's Tango: You can tell from the first 10 minute enormous tracking shot following cattle meandering in the rain through a devastated, crumbling, seemingly deserted village, that it was going to be THAT kind of film.This is Hungary after the withdrawal of the Soviet occupation of 40 years, and we are at a collective farm on the Hungarian great plain that has collapsed along with Communism.Surreal, mesmerizing, sinister it challenges the mindful viewer to look closely, and listen, rather read closely, except I was lucky to do both. This film is for more mature audiences. I would compare it to plunging into Shakespeare drama that is really hard to follow at first, but pulls you on regardless, even if you are not getting everything, with a big payload.I could not believe I was watching it from when I got home from work till after midnight. One main theme that stuck out for me was how developing a public persona, and the art of speech can be so powerful. The enigmatic central figure, Irimiás, is an epitome of this. Good looking, tall, educated, and with a golden tongue, he sure has a Satanic allure for whom the disparaged, uneducated villagers dance the tango.There are some really funny parts too, the old doc watching and writing everything down in an alcoholic haze, then especially when the two officers rewrite Irimiás' letter and how they describe the villagers. The scene with the little girl and her cat is a heart stopper. I did not get everything to a T and want to read more about this, and want to watch it again.

To say this film isn't The Sound of Music is putting it mildly; it is a hard film to like, but for those who love the art of film, easy to admire. I do not love this film, and often did not particularly like it watching it--but I gave it a top rating because it is surely a masterpiece of its kind. Grim, dark, and brutal, Satantango moves at a pace that is almost glacial, but is completely one of a kind, a close examination of a people left behind by a government too busy to notice, left behind by a world beset by technological advances, left behind because nobody cares.Not one character in this lengthy film is particularly attractive, and in one section we watch for nearly an hour as a local Doctor becomes staggeringly drunk and lurches outside into the mud and the dark to refill his jug.This film is an immersion into the lifestyle and the textures and the surroundings of a small village in winter, a place where the villagers have put their faith in a man who has clearly decided to leave them in ruins; the film is seven hours long, and frequently a puzzlement. And if you allow yourself to be hypnotized by its dark, careful composition, unforgettable. This is absolutely not an entertainment in the usual sense of the word; be forewarned--but if you want a visual puzzle, an intellectual challenge, and a cinematic world all its own, Satantango is inimitable

Warfarin isn't this quick.Seriously though...superb, frustrating, rich, imaginative, absorbing, annoying, aggravating, repulsive.If you've got a couple of minutes spare watch it! It's a great big Hungarian soap (sorry this doesn't give it justice, I'm being superficial).I adored those looooooonnngg takes; the outstanding cinematography.Don't watch it if you hate the rain. Oh and try not miss the hour long torture scene....involving no one but a drunken Doctor! (Plus Cat lovers beware...I only just manged to get through that part!).