Author: Bella Tarr
Translator: Issac
Proofreading: Easy two three
Source: Little White Lies (February 26, 2019)
Bella Tar strode through the lobby of the Savoy Hotel in Berlin and asked, "Is this interview long or short?" After a moment's hesitation, he gave a short answer. "Short!" He teased, a hint of cunning in the sixty-three-year-old's eyes. He asked for forgiveness, he wanted to smoke a cigarette.
Bella Tal
"Satan Tango" is famous. The seven-and-a-half-hour film is widely regarded as the Hungarian retired filmmaker's most powerful artistic proclamation: a melodious and bleak lyrical passage that surrounds the viewer at a slow pace that seems to test their patience. However, for those who can get to the end, it is still an unforgettable, searing film meditation on human despair.
Satan Tango
To celebrate the film's twenty-fifth anniversary, Arbelos Films performed a 4K restoration of the film. The respected director was supposed to talk about it, but before that, he sat down in his chair and examined everything in front of him. "Movies nowadays mostly look like comics. They ignore 'time,'" he said wearily.
When people asked Tal to elaborate, he spoke of his trademark long shot. "In the beginning, I noticed that when the camera turned and the whole scene was moving, everyone started breathing in the same rhythm: the actors, the crew, the cinematographers, everybody. You're all in shape. This is very important. It creates a special tension. It produces a special kind of vibration. Somehow, you can feel it on the screen, too. You became a part of it."
Visually, "Satan Tango" doesn't stray too far from the blueprint Tal established before 1994—the stylistic features that appear in 1984's Fall Almanac and 1988's Curse are only magnified to a greater extent. The film's narrative is perhaps its grandest part, like a vain tango, pushing back and forth: six steps in twelve chapters.
The film tells the story of an isolated rural farming community facing the plight of degradation, and the return of a mysterious colleague who was previously thought to have died (played by Mihay Wieg, who also provided a carnival-like soundtrack for the film), injecting fear and hope into the desperate villagers.
"I saw the movie a month ago and to be honest, I'm not going to make any changes," Tarr said. "Twenty-five years is enough time to let you know whether one thing is good or bad. A lot of movies are gone. They're like a tissue: throw it away when you've used it. That's how markets work. Time is cruel, and only some of the movies survive."
Tarr was interrupted by a waiter who put a drink on the table and duly gave him a breath. When the conversation turned to his professional relationship with Lászlýl Kasaznahokai, the screenwriter of "Satan Tango", he stroked the glass and sorted out his thoughts. "We wanted to make Satan Tango in 1985," Thar recalls, "but the Communist Party in Budapest stopped a lot of things." This is not possible."
Suppressed by a repressive political climate, the two decided to devote their collective energies to the project that would later become Curse. After the film's release, Tal, his editor and wife, Anias Khranitzki, left Hungary for West Berlin.
The Curse
During their time in Germany, there were major social changes in their hometown. Janos Kadar, the communist leader who has led the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party since 1956, stepped down, ushering in an era of greater freedom.
The director reflected that this was a pivotal moment in his career. "At the 1990 Berlin Film Festival, a guy came up to me and said, 'Hungary is changing.' You can come back." I did, and only then could I start making Satan Tango."
Tal chose Hortobagy in the Hungarian Great Plain as the background for the film. The area's wet dirt roads, fields and woodlands form a simple and striking picture that conforms to the bleak tone of the material and eventually becomes characteristic of the film. "One hundred and twenty days of shooting in the Hungarian lowlands, there has been trouble, which is really scary," Tal admits. "Spiritually, however, it is amazing: time; isolation."
We then discuss the scene of Satan's tango's infamous cat, in which an unattended little girl, Estik (Erica Bock), plays with a cat on a concrete floor, rolls it over, throws it, teases it, and poisons it to death.
To this day, these scenes remain a source of controversy. When the question of animal welfare was raised, Tal jerked up in his chair and stood visibly upright, as if it were the first time he had heard such a question.
"Are you crazy?" He said suddenly. "I have two cats at home. Can you believe I'll kill a cat? Never! First of all, we know that the cat scene is coming, and we know that the cat needs to rehearse with the girl. Every day in the hotel room, they play this "tumbling" game. By the end, the cat is used to it and doesn't care."
Tarr continued: "We knew the cat was going to die, so I called the veterinarian who was taking care of my cat at home and he came to the filming location. I told him, 'You've got to give her a sleeping pill.' When the cat feels dizzy, you give us a gesture and we turn it on." We turned on the signal he gave and the cat fell asleep. The whole team stood there and waited for twenty-five minutes until she started waking up. No problem at all. Believe me, the cat didn't have any trouble. All the cat sounds you hear are samples that we find in the sound archives on the internet, because the cat doesn't make a sound at all."
Satan Tango is in many ways the prototype of Thar's films, exuding all the hallmarks of a director: long, languid shots, roaming heel shots, rough, bad weather, and characters facing an indifferent universe when struggling to maintain a simple life.
In response to years of criticism of his work, he said: "Some people say stupid things like ' your film is sad'. I said the question was this: How do you feel when you leave the cinema? If you feel stronger, I'm happy. If you're weaker, I'm sorry."
Despite lingering on the path of memory, Tal hates nostalgia. "I'm looking for something new," he said. "I'm a creative person, I have to create or I'll die." Since 2011's "Horse of Turin" brought to an end to thirty-four years of his film career, Tal apparently stopped after choosing glory.
The Horse of Turin
He is a professor and curator at the Factory Film School in Sarajevo, while also curating an exhibition for the Eye Film Museum in Amsterdam called "Until the End of the World", a work that combines film, theatre and installation. He continues to serve as a visiting professor at several film schools and recently completed the documentary The Missing Man, which is expected to be released later this year.
The Missing Man
However, he confirmed that his days of making films were over. "We made these films together, me and Mihay, Laszlo, and Anias. Laszlo is the screenwriter, Mihay is the soundtrack, and Anias is the editor. I'm just the conductor. I just put them together." The artist's humble gesture undoubtedly broadens the audience's horizons and also expands the possibilities of cinema.