This article is about a movie and a novel about "Satan Tango".
The film lasts seven hours, but every minute is thunderous and fascinating. I hope to re-watch it every year in my lifetime.
—Susan Sontag
This film, praised by Susan Sontag, is the masterpiece of hungarian writer Krasnohorkaj, "Satan Tango". In the original novel, the author's wonderful text structure and language style are unique, and the lives of all the protagonists in the dilapidated small village have no way out, and the collective goes into a desperate situation.
The Fangsuo Book Department wrote in its recommendation: "We and Eastern Europe were once a community of destiny, and many things and means are self-evident. When it comes to topics such as collective farms and communism, no ethnic group has a deeper understanding than Eastern Europe. ”
This special invitation brings the feeling of overlapping texts and images.
Author: [Hungary] Krasnohorkáj László
Publisher: Yilin Publishing House
Original name: satantango
Translator: Yu Zemin
Publication year: 2017-7
Quartet of The Resurrection of the Dead
For the first 450 seconds of the movie "Satan Tango," we follow bella Tarr's long shots and watch this long cow herd show from a distance. They gradually emerge from the narrow darkness and eventually disappear into another geometric space that seems to be different. Following the camera's timescale, we complete a cycle of creation and disappearance. In the original translation of The Satan tango, the images of the ouroboros and the cobwebs form some kind of similar metaphor.
The frozen movement of life is like a brief wandering after the resurrection of the undead, out of the darkness, and into another kind of desolate void.
Although the author László does not admit that Satanic Tango is a completely black work, the reader will undoubtedly intuitively feel its dignified undertone. Gratuitous beliefs blur the boundary between hope and despair, guiding the undead to sleepwalk into Sussen while the dominant "eternal sphere" stands still. The various voices contained in the "sphere" together depict the revival of the undead.
1
The ordinary peasants in the collective farms formed the lowest voice parts. The common ideals of the village community have long been lost, and people sacrifice their bodies to alcohol and sex that repeat and transcend all precepts. The undead have long been accustomed to this sublime decay, and the shattered narrative perspective symbolizes the closed movement of life devouring itself.
The coincidence of fate brought them not so much hope of recovery as a symbol of the Seventh Continent.
"Time will wash away his face, just as rain is now flowing on glass; in this image, a certain grand, distant poverty is reflected, radiating to him, a composite layer of shame, pride and fear."
2
Whether in a dead silence or a carnival of death, they are still watched by a higher level of gaze, but they rely on it for recovery. Illimiash is the most direct and naked image of "Satan" and the setter of the "revival" industry for the undead.
Yu Zemin wrote in the translator's preface: "The liar is the most vital and infectious person, and all those who are eager to live are numb, obscene, and stupid. "Scam is synonymous with the future, and lies are the driving force behind history."
In the story, Illymiash often completes the sermon of hope in the form of speeches, orders, and other means of narration; at other moments, he ghostly resides in the words, moods, and psychology of the peasants, becoming the reference to faith—or the driving force for the completion of "recovery."
For Satan, the revival of the undead is a part of the decay of successive deductions, and it is also a bargaining chip. Whether his records are fictional and dirty names or dirty facts, Illymiash has constituted a potential narrative.
3
Outside of the connection between the undead and Satan, the long-vanished doctor seems to have become a character beyond the closed loop of fate. Yet there's no denying that he's also one of the threads that make up the story—even if it's often insignificant.
He sought a place on the other side of history. At the moment of closed-loop connection, he completed the construction of his narrator identity. And in the dark night before and after this moment, his absence seems to have alluded to the failure of history itself. The resurrection of the undead spirals into a deep aftersound at the tip of the pen—and in this layer, fictional illusions dominate reality.
4
Here we are on the verge of textualism, and the role of the doctor invisibly reflects on the author himself— whether it's Krasnohor kay Raslow or Bella Tarr. The difficult, winding words and phrases or the long mirror of carved time carry the two thick author's style and national complex.
"Although the novel adopts a postmodern approach with strong formalistic characteristics, it is essentially cold historical materialism." The translator Yu Zemin's comments and László's self-description of the book's "tragicomedy" form a distant but subtle feeling.
Doctors "manipulate the cobwebs and are bound by the cobwebs"; they try to jump out and complete the care of history, but they are in the middle of it, with a huge sadness. The memory of the displacement in this land makes them finally complete the mutual dissolution with the peasants, the lowest voices—the closed loop once again looms.
Readers who stay out of the matter may appreciate the requiem of the resurrection and disappearance of the undead; but those who go deep into the hinterland of history and culture can reach the crevices in the continuation of the story. The cold bell blows through, and this "melody of hope that has been lost" is obscured by the structure of literature, but it also produces more possible dimensions.
Is the closed loop of the story really complete? Is the rhyme of the quartet intact? Does despair speak of absolute eternity?
There are no fragments of history in the expression of literature and film, and they are still waiting for the restoration of time and man.
This article was first published in "Fangsuo Culture"