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criterionsnob wrote:I would recommend watching it in one sitting. I would also recommend you get a good wine buzz going. I only had one bottle, but could've used a second.

Great, thanks. Wine is very good idea so I will wait until Saturday to start watching it around 5pm and it will finish past midnight. I think two bottles will be the key here. A white wine for the first half and a red wine for the second half and maybe follow that with a brandy chaser...

davidhare wrote:Marty I want to be around when you fall down pissed during the plum brandy scene.

Then again I might be too.

I will post after I see the film (if I can still type) with my virginal experience of watching Satantango for the first time.

My viewing of Satantango stretched over three nights - 1 disc per night. But I can see why some recommend watching the film all in one day. No, I didn't have wine - just Earl Grey tea and gingersnaps. Damnation and Werckmeister Harmonies couldn't even prepare me for the unbelievable weight and meaning of Satantango. The film is gorgeously, incredibly epic - a work of enormous length and soul.

Here's my advice: set aside a day, turn off your cellphone, turn off every light bulb in the room and get cozy. Take a couple of breaks between the three discs. And good luck to sleeping peacefully after the life-changing journey through Tarr's beautiful, unique hynposis.

I prefer Michael's method - ginger snaps, yum!

I love the ones you find at Ikea. Anna's Thins. I'm known for breakfasting on them with coffee.

But anyway, you know what's most astonishing about Satantango? At 7+ hours, I can't imagine removing a single scene. And I remain shocked that it was made 12 years ago. It certainly doesn't look like it was.

marty wrote:

criterionsnob wrote:I would recommend watching it in one sitting. I would also recommend you get a good wine buzz going. I only had one bottle, but could've used a second.

Great, thanks. Wine is very good idea so I will wait until Saturday to start watching it around 5pm and it will finish past midnight. I think two bottles will be the key here. A white wine for the first half and a red wine for the second half and maybe follow that with a brandy chaser...

It's only a matter of time before we come up with elaborate Satantango drinking games. Any tracking shot lasting longer than three minutes = a shot of brandy? Or a shot for every chorus of that perky accordion tune at the bar (not recommended if you want to see the end of the film)?

That's funny, zedz. I don't see why anyone would need a wine buzz to get through Satantango. Satantango itself is a drug.

I agree with you 100% Michael. I didn't mean to imply one needs to be drunk to enjoy Satantango. I'm going to try tea and gingersnaps next time. I viewed it for the first time on Friday night and already want to watch it again.

already want to watch it again

Me too but I will wait till after New Years. It's time for me to pull out A Christmas Story and A Charlie Brown Christmas. And also Vernon, Florida just in time for Thanksgiving. Gotta revisit that turkey hunter.

Michael wrote:I really love the plum brandy doctor. Where's he going?! Joining the attic whores (one of them looking eerily like Jennifer Coolidge)?

Krasznahorkai's book gives some hints what's happening to him. The book ends with the doctor writing in his diaries what the other protagonists will be doing soon -- whether in the doctor's imagination or in reality is not clear. There are a few are cases where the book reveals more than the film. For instance, when Irimias kneels down and looks at the fog, there is body of the girl who committed suicide supposed to be floating in the fog. I have the feeling that a couple of hours are missing from the film...

Krasznahorkai's book gives some hints what's happening to him. The book ends with the doctor writing in his diaries what the other protagonists will be doing soon -- whether in the doctor's imagination or in reality is not clear.

I think Tarr wants to leave the characters to our imagination and it works majestically.

There are a few are cases where the book reveals more than the film. For instance, when Irimias kneels down and looks at the fog, there is body of the girl who committed suicide supposed to be floating in the fog.

Geez, I don't think the girl's floating would work in the film.. it'd look downright ridiculous or creepy in the supernatural sense (it'd bring me right toThe Exorcist!) The fog itself floating as shown in the film is breathtakingly beautiful and it says more than enough cinematically without the need for the girl floating along with it. The girl is the fog and vice versa.

just saw it in one loooong sitting at the portland art museum on saturday. there were maybe 30 or 40 of us in the audience (gus van zant was one of us). i feel like we deserved a certificate of completion after it was all over. it was incredible, it is still blooming in my mind today, and it wasn't as trying due to length as i imagined it might be, but it was still f**king long. the print is scratchy but sharp, so much better than the dvd bootleg i have somewhere.

there were times where i thought maybe the black and white was almost just barely on the underside of being in color. anyone else experience that?

I watched it this weekend as well on DVD. Ironically, earlier in the day I saw Borat and couldn't help comparing the characters in Satantango to those in Borat's Kazakhstan.

Satantango was an amazing experience. I still see these images and scenes play over in my head even now three days later. The way the girl rolled around in the shed holding the cat, the drunken fat man walking in the dark rain for his next helping of brandy and the final shot of him boarding up his house with the planks of wood for the upcoming winter (and his eventual death). What an ending! From the opening shot of the herd of cows slowly making their way out of the farm to the final haunting shot, Satantango is a great, great film and it now ranks as in my top 5 films of all time.

willycaslon wrote:there were times where i thought maybe the black and white was almost just barely on the underside of being in color. anyone else experience that?

Sure. In fact, for a couple of months after I first saw Werckmeister I insisted that it was in color, even to the people I saw it with. I've often wondered why it struck me that way.

I remember noticing a sprinkling of green (more like chartreuse) patches but I thought maybe the color blooming like moss in several scenes was the result of being so hypnotized by Tarr!

I'm excited that you folks find Satantango an amazing experience. I couldn't agree more.

Sorry for taking so long to post my thoughts. I saw Satantango for the first time this weekend, and as I expected, it flew right over my head. I think my problem is that I'm remarkably susceptible to hype, so it often takes me three or four viewings before I can appreciate a film of this stature on its own terms instead of expecting a richly moving experience right off the bat.

There was a lot I enjoyed about the film. The long takes were lovely for a filmgoer who is sick and tired of music video style cutting. Even a self-described minimalist filmmaker like Eastwood is falling for that nonsense, so watching a film based on long takes was a relief. Someone asked on the first page how many cuts there are in the film; well, the theater manager who introduced the film said that it was just under 150. 150 cuts for a 7 hour+ film! Amazing. I was also quite impressed with the photography. To my admittedly untrained eye, it looked as though Tarr photographed every scene only with available light. Anybody know for certain? The ending was also fantastic. What a bold move to end a film with no image, just dialogue and ambient noise!

Did anyone else find the scenes with the cat as unsettling as I did? I read in Rosenbaum's review that it was highly staged and the cat wasn't hurt, but I really have a hard time believing that. I hope it's true anyway since that was one of the very few times in my life where I've been offended by the content of a film. There were at least three people who walked out of the screening at the point, and I can't say I blame them. It's hypocritical for me to judge, however, since I am not a vegetarian or vegan, and I'm sure I've contributed to much more inhumane treatment of animals because of it.

Overall, despite certain touches that I enjoyed, I didn't find it a satisfying film and I remain pretty bewildered by it. I still don't understand what happened in the last two or so hours of the movie, and as pedestrian a criticism as it sounds, I found the length entirely unnecessary. Bottom line, I need to rewatch it at home, on the sofa, with a bottle of wine.

Highway 61 wrote:Bottom line, I need to rewatch it at home, on the sofa, with a bottle of wine.

Oh, you MUST have wine with the film. I had two bottles of wine. A white wine for the first half and a red wine for the second half followed by a glass of brandy and port. By the end of it, it was one of the greatest films I had ever seen.

So as far as acquiring taste goes, should I pick this one up?

SncDthMnky wrote:So as far as acquiring taste goes, should I pick this one up?

Yes, I think you should.

Highway 61 wrote:Did anyone else find the scenes with the cat as unsettling as I did? I read in Rosenbaum's review that it was highly staged and the cat wasn't hurt, but I really have a hard time believing that. I hope it's true.

Some reassurance about the cat:

That scene, Tarr insists, was done humanely under a vet's supervision, and the cat is healthy and living with him and Hranitzky outside Budapest.

From: http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/in ... 21,00.html

I don't know if this has been addressed previously, but I was wondering if anyone could explain any of the political allegories presented in the film... I think that this is the one thing that hindered my understanding of this film. I really liked it (I saw it on Sunday at the NW Film Center here in Portland) but much of it went over my head.
I think my favorite parts of the film revolved around the Doctor, those scenes were so powerful (and beautifully shot) that I was hypnotized.

my one problem with the film were some of the shots that seemed completely under-exposed following the horizon on the road... other than that I found the film quite beautiful and hypnotizing.

My most vivid memory of seeing this at the NY Film Fest in 1994 was after the press screening, when everybody was milling around in the lobby, and John Simon was harrumphing that Tarr in Hungarian means "shit" and demanding that Richard Pena give everyone those 9 hours back!

miless wrote:I don't know if this has been addressed previously, but I was wondering if anyone could explain any of the political allegories presented in the film...

This is good starting point

miless wrote:I don't know if this has been addressed previously, but I was wondering if anyone could explain any of the political allegories presented in the film...

The pace of the movie was a bit too fast for me to ponder about politics while being under a flood of incredible images. Afterwards, I found it interesting to read up on the history around the prophet Jeremiah. A good starting point

Bordwell blogs on Sátántangó.

For denti and zedz: the shot count is apparently 172, offering us an average shot length of two and a half minutes. Bordwell's excellent analysis helps (it's a little scrappy, but the best I've read so far), yet even he cannot pin down its ineffable quality.

EDIT: Cinemetrics have measured the ASL at 145 seconds.