What I’m Seeing This Week: I’m going with It Was Just an Accident at Cinemapolis and Die My Love either there or at the Regal Ithaca Mall. I’m also going to try to see Frankenstein at Penn Cinema while visiting home this weekend.
Also in Theaters: It’s a hockey line change week, so today is your last chance to see Blue Moon, The Mastermind, and One Battle After Another at Cinemapolis. After that my top recommendation would have to be the 35mm print of Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai playing Cornell Cinema tonight at 8:30pm. Another special events highlight is the free screening of the essay film John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office there on Monday followed by a conversation with writer/director Courtney Stephens. In addition to the titles listed in the previous section, I’m also hoping to see Bugonia (Cinemapolis & the Regal) and Good Fortune (just the Regal) before they close. Finally, noteworthy repertory options include 40th anniversary screenings of Back to the Future at the Regal all week, The Wizard of Oz at Cornell Cinema on Sunday, and Saving Private Ryan at the Regal on Tuesday.
Home Video: 432 minutes is an intimidating runtime, and with two intermissions, Sátántangó *can* be broken up into three viewings. It really is worth making an occasion out of it, though. As I recently wrote on Letterboxd:
I’ve now set out to watch this film in a single go while the family was away twice, first starting at 10am and then 9:00, but didn’t finish until long after the sun went down either time. I’d eventually like to try a theatrical screening on for size, too, but as of this writing I’m not at all convinced that stopping at the chapter breaks and intermissions to have a think while you walk the dog, smoke a cigarette (don’t tell!) and cook a meal or two and basically structuring an entire day around it isn’t in fact the best way to approach this lowkey apocalypse.
Which: Sátántangó could swap titles with Do Not Too Much from the End of the World to no ill effect in either direction. If I owned a hip bar, I’d cut all the long takes of Mihály Vig’s Irimiás and Putyi Horváth’s Petrina walking with trash swirling all around them in the wind together and play them on a loop with the sound off. The two characters function here like minor demons, terrifying to the poor mortals unfortunate enough to catch their gaze, but virtually anonymous in the immense bureaucracy of hell. Animal imagery is one structuring device, but it’s never too on the nose: a slow camera movement in on an owl suggests that Irimiás is a raptor, except that dialogue confirms that he fancies himself as a spider, and who’s to say that one of the escaped horses at the end isn’t actually the best fit? Throw the ten minute single take opening shot of meandering cows into the mix and you end up with an extradiegetic synthesis like he’s a sheepdog with wild traits not eradicated, but harnessed for a purpose.
However you want it, he’s a careful observer on a spectrum that has damnation on one end and fast (Erika Bók’s Estike) or slow (Peter Berling’s alcoholic doctor) death on the other, with the distracted villagers who make up most of the rest of the cast constituting the vast purgatorial middle. And then, of course, there are the twelve steps of the tango and a diagram of the solar system in the doctor’s house which foreshadow the reappearance of many of these same ideas and themes in Werckmeister Harmonies six years later. Which movie you prefer is likely just a matter of taste: a diffuse nebula and bright star are both beautiful! Definitely an experience.
Current Ithaca faculty, staff, and students have access to this film on Kanopy via an institutional streaming video license paid for by the library; all others are encouraged to purchase it on Blu-ray from Arbelos Films.
Previous “Ithaca Film Journal” posts can be found here. A running list of all of my “Home Video” recommendations can be found here.
The Prodigal Cinephile 