Sátántangó

Béla Tarr's Sátántangó, completed in 1994 after a seven-year shoot, runs seven hours and twelve minutes, which makes it one of the longest narrative films ever to receive a theatrical release. It is adapted from László Krasznahorkai's 1985 novel of the same name, with Krasznahorkai co-writing the screenplay, and it cemented the Tarr-Krasznahorkai collaboration that would continue through Werckmeister Harmonies and The Turin Horse. Sátántangó sits in the upper tier of Sight & Sound's all-time critics' poll (number 36 in 2022) and is the central reference point for slow cinema as a mode.

The setting is a failing collective farm in rural Hungary in the dying months of communism, drenched in autumn rain. The conman Irimiás (Mihály Víg, who also composed the score), presumed dead, returns with a plan to reorganise the residents' shared savings into what he calls a new project. The film's twelve chapters (six steps forward, six back) circle the same events from different points of view, in the structure of a tango, and the long takes, some over ten minutes, dwell on mud, drink, sex and the slow collapse of a way of life.

What stays with you is Gábor Medvigy's black-and-white photography, the cattle in the yard at the opening, the long drunken dance in the tavern. Tarr's project, in this and his later films, was to find a tempo for despair that the rest of European cinema had abandoned. Few films are so committed to their own duration, and fewer repay the time so completely.

Why it's an Editor's Pick: It is the most ambitious work of post-Wall Hungarian cinema and the formal foundation of slow cinema as a modern mode, and its seven hours earn every minute.