Sátántangó

Béla Tarr's Sátántangó, completed in 1994 after a seven-year shoot, runs seven hours and twelve minutes — making it one of the longest narrative films ever to receive theatrical release. Adapted from László Krasznahorkai's 1985 novel of the same name, with Krasznahorkai co-writing the screenplay, the film 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 cinematic mode.

A failing rural Hungarian collective farm in the dying months of communism, drenched in autumn rain. The presumed-dead conman Irimiás (Mihály Víg, also the film's composer) returns with a plan that will reorganise the residents' shared savings into something he describes as a new project. The film's twelve chapters — six steps forward, six back — circle the same events from different points of view, the structure of a tango. Long takes (some over ten minutes) of mud, drink, sex, and the quiet collapse of a way of life.

Gábor Medvigy's black-and-white photography, the legendary cow-yard sequence, the sustained drinking-bar dance — these are the indelible elements. Tarr's project, in this and his subsequent films, was to find a tempo for despair the rest of European cinema had abandoned. Few films are as committed to their own duration; few reward the time as completely.

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