The ending of Béla Tarr's 7-hour meditation Sátántangó still haunts my soul, and let the fact I'm starting at the ending be your spoiler warning. In the movie, a group of bickering villagers is led from their farm by Irimiás, a figure they fearfully respect and whose promises they swallow. Left behind is The Doctor, who spends his days in seclusion. Suddenly, the mysterious sound of church bells (also heard at the start of the film) prompt the lumbering Doctor to actually leave his seat, almost as if faith replenishes him. However, he finds that the church is in ruin and the sounds were those of a madman hammering the remnants of the bell, repeating the phrase "the Turks are coming". He returns home and nails his doors and windows shut, sealing himself in for good. In the darkness, he recites the film's opening narration as the credits start to roll.

I find that few films beg for analysis and speculation quite like those of Béla Tarr. Just enough is kept vague and open for interpretation, but just enough is obvious too. The above paragraph gives us plenty to pontificate when it comes to false prophets, nihilism, the nature of human faith in general, and whatever else. This is to say nothing of characters like The Captain and his lecture on authority (wherein he references Pericles; one that I'd never heard of).

This is one of those movies you may use as a joke to describe what film snobs are into. If I told you that the film begins with an 8-minute take of cows on an abandoned farm, themselves eventually forsaking it, you'd probably chuckle and snort in disbelief.

However, nothing could set the film's tone of desolation more perfectly than this opening sequence. The image is a grainy black-and-white, the wind echoes between the empty buildings, the soulless cattle go about their way, and the cinematography is without fault. Some speculate that the opening also foreshadows the fate of the principal characters. Indeed, certain characters in the movie do seem as easy to herd as common livestock.

But there is more to talk about. How about the plotline about the little girl (Erika Bók) who is convinced to kill her cat due to the promises of her brother (the scene is disconcerting in how believable it looks, but a veterinarian was reportedly on set at all times)? Or the rainy night where Irimiás returns and each of the other storylines comes to a pivotal moment? Or the part where Irimiás sees the ruin where a death will take place and collapses to his knees as a fog brushes past it and vanishes? Or the non-chronological way in which Tarr and László Krasznahorkai present the narrative, aptly stepping back and forth in time as though it were a tango? You may laugh again, asserting that this is just one of those films that try to be artistic and cerebral. Possibly, but do please exert a few more mental horsepowers to determine if it succeeds, before deciding it is merely fartsy.

My praise of the film's more technical achievements is genuine, as well. The sets, costumes, and effects are completely and utterly convincing. The actors, likewise, seem at home in the movie's universe. The music by Mihály Víg, who also portrays Irimiás, captures the time period and rural environment skillfully, whilst sometimes also being quite bone-chilling. Of Gábor Medvigy's long-take photography, where the camera almost constantly hovers about the scenery, I cannot say enough.

The catalog of Bela Tarr may be the final stage of film fanaticism. He who "likes movies" starts by looking at all the new mainstream releases for fun, then he might learn about the essential old classics, then he probably seeks out something more obscure and artsy (where vision is untarnished by studio interference),soon he starts looking at straight-up weird movies, and eventually, he reaches the most impenetrable auteurs of the past. I don't know that this is the process of all cinephiles, but I know many consider it a rite of passage to sit through all 7 hours of the bleak, slow, yet endlessly muse-provoking Sátántangó. Nail your door shut and let the film swallow you whole.

The dance with the devil based on novelist László Krasznahorkai's novel about the aftermath of the fall of communism for sure has to rank very high up when it gets to unconventional motion pictures. Filmed in beautiful black and white by Hungarian director Béla Tarr in the early Nineties, the movie consists of twelve parts and lasts seven and a half hours with single tracking shots up to ten minutes, often with very little or only repetitive action on screen. And it rains and rains and rains. Make no mistake: Despite its length Satantango is not an epic narration, but rather achieves long lasting impressions by pointing the camera on banalities inspired by the bleakness of the scenery, perfectly enhanced by the director's choices what to show and how to show it in order to induce a trance-like reaction in the viewer. And while doing so Satantango mesmerizes, shocks, devastates, enthralls.

The time line is a bit unclear and episodes overlap or could have happened the same way at another time. Yet there is a main thread of story about a con-man in the messiah's disguise, a seemingly eternally lasting dance in the very middle, and an essential episode about a little girl representing the core of the film - a symbol of the disillusionment and victim of betrayal, desperately searching for ways to exert some power herself in her forlorn reality. Not that much is happening in Satantango, and some things remain vague, but reality is also transcended at key points adding to the allegorical impact. The aesthetics of the experience and its ultimate conclusion will remain with those who are open for it.

I saw this film at a Bela Taar festival and I remember it having 3 or 4 breaks because it was so long. But it was worth it. I am constantly remembering the images from this piece, I don´t even remember the exact story, but the images, the sequences, were just lovely. If you ever have a chance to see this film projected, take it. Don´t worry if you can´t sit through the whole thing, just see some of it, you won´t forget it. Marvelous long takes, wonderful characters. That first scene with the tracking shot of the cows and the two guys walking down the street with the garbage blowing in the wind around them. Wonderful black and white film. I advise all cat lovers to stay away. Bela Taar is one of the best.