Aisha’s
away for the weekend and I’ve got no other plans, the hotbed of social activity
that I am, so I’ve made the most of a fairly sunny weekend by staying in and
watching the longest film left on the list, Satantango. At 7 ½ hours long, it
rounds out the top 5 longest films (though technically two are TV series and
one is an eleven-part serial) on the List, which between them have taken up
over 48 hours of my life that I’m never getting back. I doubt it’ll come as a
surprise to many, but of the 14 films over four hours in length of the List,
all of them are from Europe, and only one is in English (Kenneth Branagh’s
Hamlet). More than half of them are French. America doesn’t start to get a look
in until Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time in America (227 minutes), but it’s got
a lot around the 3-hour mark instead. Also, of the 4-hour-plus films, three of
them are Holocaust-related documentaries. Yay.
So,
Satantango. I’m going to try and make this review be not entirely about the
length of the film, but it is bloody long. And needlessly so. Many of the
sequences involve nothing happening – the first 9 minutes follows cows
wandering around in the mud, later a child walks purposefully towards the
camera for what seems an eternity – so that whenever a conversation occurs –
other than some sporadic narration, dialogue doesn’t kick in for about 15
minutes – it comes as a shock.
The film
sees the inhabitants of a run-down Hungarian village. The villagers have a
large sum of money they wish to share out, but some want to leave with more
than their fair share, whilst others wish to wait for a man believed dead to
arrive, with the possibility of making even more money with his help. This is only
the central structure of the plot, for there are several detractions, but no
real motives or details are ever expanded upon. We see the same events through
different viewpoints, at one point witnessing a drunken dancing session (at
least 10 minutes long) from the perspective of a young child outside the
window, and then later we’re shown it again, longer this time, but from inside
the room. This new vantage point offers nothing new, and just serves to make me
wish to never hear an accordion ever again, for the same short tune segment is
repeated over and over and over again for the entirety of the dance.
This is,
however, a great achievement in terms of direction and cinematography. Much of
the film takes place in long, unbroken shots, the aforementioned dancing, for
example, which at times are truly breathtaking, and others thoroughly
unimpressive due to the lack of anything happening onscreen (it’s a completely
unbroken shot! Of someone sat down!).
Though I
was never bored, and I was also far from entertained or engaged. The large gaps
of nothingness allowed my mind to wander and expand upon what I was watching,
and also gave me time to jot down the improvements I’m intending to make to the
site over the next few weeks. It did, however, feel like an arduous watch,
something I had to work at to pay attention, and after seven hours I’d hoped
for a satisfying conclusion to make it all worthwhile, a reward for the patience
and sacrifice of time, but alas I was left wanting.
Choose
life 5/10
