“Time is very cru­el, only some films sur­vive” – Béla Tarr on Sátán­tangó at 25

Béla Tarr is strid­ing across the con­course of Berlin’s Savoy Hotel with a ques­tion form­ing on his lips. ​“Is this going to be a long inter­view, or a short one?” A moment’s hes­i­ta­tion is met by a quick answer. ​“Short one!” he teas­es, a wry twin­kle in his 63-year-old eyes. He excus­es him­self briefly for a cigarette.

Sátán­tangó is a film pre­ced­ed by rep­u­ta­tion. With a run­time that nudges the sev­en-and-a-half hour mark, it is wide­ly regard­ed as the retired Hun­gar­i­an filmmaker’s most impos­ing artis­tic state­ment: an expan­sive, des­o­late mood piece that envelopes the view­er and ambles along at a patience-test­ing snail’s pace. For those who last the dis­tance, how­ev­er, it remains an indeli­ble, sear­ing cin­e­mat­ic med­i­ta­tion on human desperation.

To cel­e­brate its 25^th anniver­sary, the film has received a 4K restora­tion cour­tesy of Arbe­los Films. The ven­er­a­ble auteur is sup­posed to be talk­ing about this fact, but before he does, he set­tles into his chair and sur­veys the present. ​“Films now most­ly look like comics. They ignore ​‘time’,” he says wearily.

When asked to elab­o­rate, Tarr refers to his sig­na­ture use of the long take. ​“Ear­ly on, I noticed that when the cam­era is rolling and the whole scene is mov­ing, every­one starts to breathe in the same rhythm: the actors, the crew mem­bers, the cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, every­one. You are all ​‘in’. And that is very impor­tant. It cre­ates a spe­cial ten­sion. It gives a spe­cial vibra­tion. Some­how you can feel it on the screen too. You become a part of it.”

Visu­al­ly speak­ing, Sátán­tangó does not veer too far from the blue­print Tarr had already estab­lished by 1994 – styl­is­tic traits which pre­vi­ous­ly appeared in 1984’s Almanac of Fall and 1988’s Damna­tion are mere­ly ampli­fied on a grander scale. The film’s nar­ra­tive is per­haps its most ambi­tious aspect, push­ing and pulling like the tit­u­lar tan­go: six steps for­ward and six steps back across 12 chapters.

The film chron­i­cles the plight of an iso­lat­ed rur­al farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty fac­ing obso­les­cence when the return of an enig­mat­ic co-work­er (played by Mihá­ly Víg, who also pro­vides the lop­ing, car­ni­va­lesque score) pre­vi­ous­ly thought to be dead injects fear and hope into the des­per­ate vil­lage folk.

“I watched [the film] a month ago and, hon­est­ly, I wouldn’t change a thing,” says Tarr. ​“Twen­ty-five years is enough time to show you whether some­thing is good or not. So many films dis­ap­pear. They are like a tis­sue: used and then thrown out. This is the way that the mar­ket works. Time is very cru­el and only some films survive.”

Tarr is inter­rupt­ed by a wait­er, who places a drink on the table and is duly thanked for ​“sav­ing” the filmmaker’s life. He caress­es the glass and gath­ers his thoughts as con­ver­sa­tion turns to his pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ship with Lás­zló Krasz­na­horkai, the writer upon whose book Sátán­tangó was based. ​“We want­ed to make Sátán­tangó in 1985,” recalls Tarr, ​“but at that time the Com­mu­nist Par­ty in Budapest stopped a lot of things. It just wasn’t possible.”

Sti­fled by an oppres­sive polit­i­cal cli­mate, the pair decid­ed to pour their col­lec­tive ener­gy into what would become Damna­tion. Short­ly after its release Tarr, along with his edi­tor and wife, Ágnes Hran­itzky, left Hun­gary for West Berlin. Dur­ing their time in Ger­many, sig­nif­i­cant social changes were devel­op­ing back home. János Kádár, the com­mu­nist leader who had front­ed the Hun­gar­i­an Social­ist Work­ers’ Par­ty since 1956, stepped down, ush­er­ing in a more lib­er­al era. This proved a piv­otal moment in Tarr’s career, as the direc­tor reflects. ​“At the 1990 Berli­nale, some guy came up to me and said, ​‘Hun­gary is chang­ing. You can come back’. So I did, and it was only then that I could start Sátántangó.”

Tarr chose Hor­to­bá­gy, part of the Great Plains of Hun­gary, as the back­drop for his film. The region’s sod­den dirt tracks, fields and wood­lands pro­vid­ed an aus­tere yet strik­ing can­vass, suit­ing the bleak tenor of the mate­r­i­al and ulti­mate­ly emerg­ing as a char­ac­ter in its own right. ​“One-hun­dred-and-twen­ty days of shoot­ing with every­body in the Hun­gar­i­an low­lands in the shit, phys­i­cal­ly, was real­ly hor­ri­ble,” admits Tarr. ​“Men­tal­ly, how­ev­er, it was amaz­ing: the time; the isolation.”

We move onto the del­i­cate sub­ject of Sátántangó’s noto­ri­ous cat scenes, in which a neglect­ed young girl, Estike (Eri­ka Bók), rolls, toss­es and frol­ics a cat around the con­crete floor before poi­son­ing it to death. This sequence remains a source of con­tro­ver­sy to this day. When the issue of the animal’s wel­fare is raised, Tarr jolts upright in his chair, notice­ably bristling, as though this is the first he has heard of such a concern.

“Are you crazy?” he snaps. ​“I had two cats at home. Can you believe that I would kill a cat?! Nev­er! First of all, we knew the cat scene [was com­ing] and we knew that the cat would have to rehearse with the girl. Every day in the hotel room they would do this kind of ​‘turn­ing’ game. By the end, the cat was used to this and did not care.”

Tarr con­tin­ues, ​“We knew that the cat has to die, so I called my vet, who was look­ing after my cat at home, and he came to the loca­tion. I told him, ​‘You have to give her a sleep­ing injec­tion. We will push the but­ton on the cam­era when you give us a sign that the cat is get­ting dizzy’. We shot on his sig­nal and the cat fell asleep. The whole crew stood around wait­ing for 25 min­utes until she start­ed to wake up. It was total­ly okay. The cat did not have any trou­ble, believe me. All the cat nois­es you hear are sam­ples that we found from the sound archive on the inter­net, because the cat was total­ly silent.”

Sátán­tangó is in many ways the arche­typ­al Tarr film, exud­ing all of the director’s hall­marks: long, lan­guid takes, roam­ing track­ing shots, abra­sive, inclement weath­er and char­ac­ters fac­ing an indif­fer­ent uni­verse as they strug­gle to eke out their mod­est lives. Respond­ing to crit­i­cism of his work over the years, he says, ​“Some peo­ple say stu­pid things such as, ​‘Your movies are sad’. I say the ques­tion is this: how did you feel when you left the cin­e­ma? If you feel stronger, I am hap­py. If you are weak­er, then I am sorry.”

Despite this sojourn down mem­o­ry lane, nos­tal­gia is anath­e­ma to Tarr. ​“I am hunt­ing new stuff,” he says. ​“I am a cre­ative per­son and I have to cre­ate – oth­er­wise I will die.” Since 2011’s The Turin Horse brought the cur­tain down on a 34-year film­mak­ing career, Tarr has cer­tain­ly avoid­ed lau­rel-rest­ing. He has worked as both a pro­fes­sor and the head of pro­gram­ming at the film.factory film school in Sara­je­vo, while also curat­ing an exhi­bi­tion, ​‘Til the End of the World’, a hybrid work com­pris­ing film, the­atre and instal­la­tion, for Amsterdam’s Eye Film­mu­se­um. He con­tin­ues to serve as a vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor at sev­er­al film acad­e­mies and recent­ly com­plet­ed the doc­u­men­tary Miss­ing Peo­ple, which is due for release lat­er this year.

He con­firms, how­ev­er, that his days mak­ing fea­tures are over. ​“We did these films togeth­er, Mihá­ly, Lás­zló, Ágnes and I. Lás­zló was the writer, Mihá­ly was the musi­cian, Ágnes was the edi­tor. I was just the con­duc­tor. I sim­ply put them all togeth­er.” A hum­ble ges­ture from an sin­gu­lar artist whose dis­tinct style has unques­tion­ably broad­ened audi­ences’ hori­zons and expand­ed the pos­si­bil­i­ties of cinema.