New 4K Restoration!
Sunday, March 1 | 12:30 pm (screening with two intermissions)
“One of the greatest achievements in recent art house cinema and a seminal work of “slow cinema,” Sátántangó, based on the book by László Krasznahorkai, follows members of a small, defunct agricultural collective living in a post-apocalyptic landscape after the fall of Communism who, on the heels of a large financial windfall, set out to leave their village. As a few of the villagers secretly conspire to take off with all of the earnings for themselves, a mysterious character, long thought dead, returns to the village, altering the course of everyone’s lives forever.
Shot in stunning black-and-white by Gábor Medvigy and filled with exquisitely composed and lyrical long takes, Sátántangó unfolds in twelve distinct movements over the course of 7½ hours, alternating forwards and backwards in time, echoing the structure of a tango dance. Tarr’s epic vision, aided by longtime partner and collaborator Ágnes Hranitzky, is enthralling and his portrayal of a rural Hungary beset by boozy dance parties, treachery, and near-perpetual rainfall is both transfixing and uncompromising. Voted the 36th best film ever made in the most recent installment of the prestigious Sight & Sound poll, Sátántangó has been justly lauded by critics and audiences as a masterpiece and inspired none other than Susan Sontag to proclaim that she would be ‘glad to see it every year for the rest of [her] life.’” –Arbelos Films
Museum Films is proud to present this modern classic in a new 25th anniversary 4K restoration.
Director Béla Tarr | 1994 | In Hungarian with English subtitles | 450 minutes | NR | DCP
