by Jacques Rancière, The Story of the Eye (Hu Di) translated by
Jacques Rancière, famous contemporary French Philosopher, author of "Lessons of Aldousser", "Masters of Ignorance", "The Edge of Politics", "Perceptual Sharing", "The Destiny of Images" and "Liberated Audience", etc. He is keen on art reviews including film reviews, and often writes articles in film publications such as "Movie Manual" and "Trafic", and publishes film reviews collection "Film Fables".
Some people ask us to express our righteous indignation, and some people ask us to repent. Some people even want us to share the infinite sorrow for the victims of utopia. Bella Tal is obviously more restrained, he only asked us to give some time.
But some time may seem too much if it just disrupts the way we use time. "Satan Tango" is first and foremost known as the longest and least incident film in film history: a seven-and-a-half-hour-long film in which almost nothing happened except a scam. The imagination of movement dissipates in itself, bringing us back to the starting point.
However, this is not a "formalist" work. We might say that, on the contrary, this is the last masterpiece of historical materialism film. In this film that unfolds between the two bells, nothing is completely material and completely sensible. They are replaced by turns: the stubborn ticking of the bell, the repeated words of a drunk, and the glass is filled with The sound of dry drinking, the accordion, the rhythm of tango, especially the constant rain on the Hungarian plains. The enhancement of feeling here is not as consciously in Tarkovsky or Sokolov: shaking us in the spiritual world. The bell in the spooky church was ringed by a fool. The long fixed lens and slow camera movement did not lead us into any spiritual world. They keep us firmly in the material reality of the story familiar to Hungarian movie audiences: the disintegration of a rural cooperative, a scam about a better life, and it itself is also affected by a person who does not even believe in the effectiveness of their own relationship. Manipulated by the police.
"Satan Tango" is a completely materialistic film about the history inherited by Hungary in the 1990s. But obviously the materialism of the film machine rejects another materialism, the materialism of the new society's history of production (l'histoire productrice).
So is it necessary to talk about a materialist film about the illusion of communism? This film may contain its own moral in the middle section: in the story of Jr. Esteck, his gangster brother persuaded her to bury her savings in the ground, often watering them, and finally you can see a tree with golden branches there. The tree grows out. But is the relationship between reality and illusion, the relationship between film and communism so simple? She thinks that we can make trees grow leaves by watering. In order to laugh at the child’s innocence, we must assume that watering is necessary first, and then that there is something that grows in the same place. This is a crazy plant. But the camera doesn't even let us imagine. The only place away from the mud is obviously the ruins of the church that was invaded by plants, where Estac later swallowed the rodenticide she used on the cat in order to let the angels come to her, showing that she was at least capable Do something to a life.
If this is a film about hallucinations, it is almost only distinguished from other films by slight differences. This is an incredible difference: there is no "reality" opposite to hallucinations. What the earth shows us very accurately is a land where nothing grows except empty words.
This is a display of the wonderful speech given by Irimiyas, a liar or a fake prophet, when the body of the little girl is displayed on the table in the tavern hall. The magnetic sound fascinated people, and said the thought-provoking point of the incident: How did this incident happen? Do people live like this? How did we lead the mediocre and hopeless humble life to such a dramatic event? We heard these empty words countless times in an article by Lenin, and it was attacked by Chekhov's "Sixth Room" and the sentiment that the whole of Russia is just a huge sixth room. But the director completely exposed the rhetoric of the seducer. Is he thinking about other things? Hasn't his camera proved these empty words? Irimyash said that maybe the lost child came to the small bar yesterday and saw you all drunk and dancing wildly. An outdated display of an orator. He didn't see more than them. But we saw the face on the window that was washed by the rain. Irimyash can draw a conclusion from the incontrovertible facts, from what we have seen but they have not seen: one must get out of the quagmire and start a new life elsewhere, where no children will go. suicide. However, those who are ready to let go and start a new life should start by letting go of his small savings.
It's just empty talk. To be precise, words are material things. In order to give them the heaviness of reality, Bella Tal rejected what many others would do: search for shots of the audience's face reacting to the speech. What the lines produce, what the camera shoots, is not emotion, but action. At the end of the speech, one hand went around the audience and placed a pile of money on the table near the corpse. Although we could not see the pile of money, we could feel that it was nearby. Soon the other hands Stacks of other money followed.
When a scam or hallucination appears, it indicates in an inappropriate way what happened, what the camera produced: one materiality against another. Fight against the regularity of the never-ending rain, against unexpected physical activity. At the center of the narrative, time is chaotic, discourse sprouts, and stillness transforms into movement. Bella Tal follows the theme of Krasznahorkai's novel – Irimiyas sends the farmers to abandoned mansions and then disperses them everywhere. The narrative returns to the starting point: the still time in the village, where the drunk doctor continues Observe the empty neighbors with binoculars, and write down his comments on the disappeared residents in a notebook that no one will read. The narrative follows the opening and closing movement of the accordion and the tango dance steps back and forth. But this narrative creates a completely different materiality. This shows that the farmers are visiting this place at night, and their new life begins here. It would be boring to show the frustration of the peasants when they entered this dimly ruined mansion. It would be more interesting to observe them silently looking at the mottled walls and empty rooms with their lighters or lamps. What the camera captured on their faces was something more shocking than disillusionment or anger: the consternation of people who completely abandoned their own possessions when they perceive and adjust to these places and environments. Burning furniture is a destruction of the relationship between words and things. The words that want to try to rationalize should stay on the sidelines (hors champ). The only thing that hears them is the owl occupying the screen alone. Its fixed face pays more attention to the sounds of animals in the distance than the words that disappear under its feet.
Under the owl's gaze, there was no historical lesson or any wisdom allusion. This is just a fork in the road. The three couples of Krane, Schmidt and Harix were "led" by Irimiyas and embarked on their own path. Irimyash has nothing to lead other than the illusion of guiding some things and leading the humanity that would otherwise be able to walk very well on his own. The camera keeps the manipulateur and his victims in the frame in order to let the doctor use a wooden stick to pin the exit to end everything like in the novel. The last chapter of the film tells us "There is no way to escape". We cannot misunderstand these words. To be sure, there is no dehors to escape, no reality that can expose hallucinations or dreams that make people forget the reality. But there is indeed an advanced trick that belongs to the counterfeit prophet. In the process of constructing connection and separation between escape and return (dans la construction de l'intervalle qui lie et sépare la dispersion et le retour), there is an internal path. There is artistic work here, which gathers and dilutes time, connects and interrupts routes, and mobilizes the body, thereby giving a completely material "illusion". Bella Tal’s despair lies on his unparalleled joyful path, between the victim’s sneer of widespread corruption and the call for spiritual servants. No one who can spend seven hours watching the rain in Bella Tal's film has no time to realize the happiness of art.
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