in Tarr's version, humanity is sealing themselves into his all-consuming darkness

cranesareflying

This is a film that features such powerful imagery, that years from now, after having seen this film, images will continue to circulate in our collective imaginations.  Revealing very "mild spoilers," without giving away anything vital about the storyline, but only to suggest some of the powerful themes and imagery which interconnect throughout this 7 hour film, the opening sequence features cows fornicating in the mud and rain which renders no harm to anyone, and is in complete balance with nature, but then sequence after sequence of tortured souls reveals the unbalanced state of man that thrives on lies, deceit and treachery, believing in false icons, following false prophets, captured in the net of their own fear, like the image of the spiders weaving their tiny nets over the satantango dancers in the bar sequence, only to do it again night after night so that their delusions, and the hold this falseness has over them, reoccurs again every day just as sure as the sun rises...

...and the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells...

...like Edgar Allan Poe, who knows who sounds the bells that captures the attention of our imaginations?  What about Odysseus tied to the mast by his shipmates as he sails past the luring voices of the Sirens, whose sound is intoxicating, but is the key to luring unknowing sailors only to be eaten alive when they set foot on land... ...or like the false Prince in Tarr's most recent film, "Werckmeister Harmonies," who knows the source of evil?  How many of us ever see the face? But we are lured by so many influences, not the least of which are the temptations of man so prominently featured in this film, the face of evil... ...fear, conspiracy, perdition, and all the many demons that live inside the human soul that perpetuate delusions of grandeur and evil, the evil that is human...

SATANTANGO is a unique film experience requiring the audience to sit through the incredible duration and severity of this film, filled with unbelievably compelling images of bleakness and despair, literally holding the audience captive, sealed into the already darkened room of a movie theater.  In Tarr's version, humanity, it seems, is sealing themselves into the same total darkness.  In this film, there is no light, there is only rain and a consuming darkness, and in the distance, the sound of bells...

"And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;  it tolls for thee..."

score 10/10

cranesareflying 13 February 2002

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0350858/