Satantango, 4.5 stars

When reading others' thoughts on this amazing and completely unique film, I came across the notion (I fear I have forgotten where) that this film was a slap in the face to the "easy" art-house movies that were coming to America in droves in the late 1980's and early 1990's. Loads of family-friendly or unchallenging dramas and comedies were released and were essentially interchangeable at art-house cinemas.

Bela Tarr threw down an unmistakable gauntlet with this 7.5-hour, black-and-white long-take masterpiece. It is a very nearly perfect film, suffering only from some very minor problems with pacing. Honestly, when pacing something this long, it would be a miracle for a director and editor to have absolutely no moments which lag, no moments which make the viewer consult his watch. But for the most part it is madly successful, telling a deceptively simple story of a con man who comes to a collapsing communal farm in an attempt to con the residents out of their savings. Essentially this describes the plot. But the map is not the territory.

The story is told in fragments, dancing around the story like the tango for which the the movie is named. Various perspectives and time changes occur between the movie's 12 portions. 8 and 9 minute unbroken takes are commonplace. This is truly a film which redefines what it means to watch a movie. During some of these takes we at first grow impatient. Then we begin to search the scene for additional points of interest. At some point after that we are simply in the room, drinking and dancing or arguing with the characters. The transition is so subtle that we only realize it when the scene changes and we have the sense of having just left a room ourselves.

This is probably the most humanist film I have ever seen, in a pure and simple interpretation of the word. Tarr clearly knows and loves humanity, and has tried to recreate it as closely as possible while telling a story that is so bleak that it barely allows for love at all. These marvelous contradictions are given room to breathe and develop within Tarr's expansive canvas, and the result is a gift we can only humbly accept and offer murmured thanks.