Its seven-hour runtime warns off dabblers, the one-screening-a-day bulk defies profit motive, and its protagonists -- Tarr's "poor, ugly, sad, and damned people" -- deny expectations of pleasure. It is also, at times, funny as hell.
Satantango (1994)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:14
Fresh:14
Rotten:0
Average Rating:8.3/10
Synopsis: This ambitious, black-and-white, seven-hour Hungarian film from idiosyncratic auteur Bela Tarr follows the inhabitants of a run-down Hungarian village still reeling from the collapse of Communism.... This ambitious, black-and-white, seven-hour Hungarian film from idiosyncratic auteur Bela Tarr follows the inhabitants of a run-down Hungarian village still reeling from the collapse of Communism. Based on Laszlo Karsznahorkai's novel and filmed over a period of two years, the critically acclaimed epic takes the time to explore each character's unique point of view. [More]
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Reviews for Satantango
Those with a strong will for art house extremes will strike gold here, while those demanding speed and snap may doze throughout the endeavor.
It is a good movie. It's a great movie, in fact, one of the greatest of all movies.
A fascinating seven-hour epic black comedy in entropy (ponderous musings on misery and despair) by the internationally acclaimed Hungarian director Béla Tarr.
Critics have rightfully hailed Tarr as one of filmdom's criminally undersung geniuses.
In Sátántangó, life is beautiful and grotesque by turns, and never less than mesmerizing.
This startling, apocalyptic work is sometimes over-extended, but it builds to a powerful, rhythmic climax of breakdown and withdrawal.
It is an insidious yet ambiguous political nature that characterizes Sátántangó as a Hungarian film, in turn perpetuating its obscurity and qualifying its art.
Sátántangó is structured in a repetitive chronology that apes the rhythmic tally of the tango.
At seven hours, Bela Tarr's 1994 Satantango is one of those unusual works of contemporary art that demand from the audience a concentrated commitment -- the luxury of time.
How can I do justice to this grungy seven-hour black comedy (1994), which in many ways impressed me more than any other film of the 90s?
Just as the film eschews typical filmic moralizing and simplification, it also casts off the typical language of film.
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 44% 44% | Night at the Museum: B… |
| 32% 32% | Terminator Salvation |
| 36% 36% | Angels & Demons |
| 95% 95% | Star Trek |
| 25% 25% | Four Christmases |
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 88% 88% | Inglourious Basterds |
| 78% 78% | The Hangover |
| 49% 49% | Taking Woodstock |
| 26% 26% | The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard |
| 47% 47% | The Girl From Monaco |
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