The film is seven hours long, but every minute is thunderous and fascinating. I wish I could read it again every year as long as I live.
- Susan Sontag
This film, praised by Susan Sontag, is the representative work of Hungarian writer Krasno Holkaj - "Satan Tango". In the original novel, the author's wonderful text structure and language style are unique, and all the protagonists in the dilapidated small village have no way out of their lives, and collectively enter a desperate situation.
The Fangsuo Book Department wrote in its recommendation: "We and Eastern Europe were once a community of destiny, and many things and means are self-evident. No nation has a deeper understanding of topics such as collective farms and communism than Eastern Europe."
quartet of resurrection
In the opening 450 seconds of the movie "Satanic Tango," we follow Bella Tal's long shot of the long herd of bulls from a distance. They emerge gradually from the narrow darkness, and finally disappear into another geometric space that seems to be different. Following the timescale of the camera, we complete a cycle of creation and extinction. In the original translation of "Satan Tango", the images of ouroboros and cobwebs constitute a similar metaphor.
The stagnant movement of life is like a brief wandering after the resurrection of the undead, leaving the darkness and entering another kind of barren void.
Although the author Laszlo does not admit that "Satan Tango" is a completely black work, readers will undoubtedly intuitively feel its solemn undertone. Unprovoked belief blurs the boundary between hope and despair, guiding the undead to sleepwalk into life, while the ruling "eternal sphere" remains motionless. The various voices contained in "The Sphere" collectively describe this resurrection of the dead.
1
Ordinary peasants in the collective farms formed the deepest voice. The common ideal of the village community has been lost for a long time, and people sacrifice their bodies to alcohol and sex that go back and forth and transcend all precepts. The undead have long been accustomed to this sublime decay, and the broken narrative perspective symbolizes the closed movement of life that devours itself.
The coincidence of fate brought them not so much hope of recovery as a seventh continent-style symbol.
"Time will wash away his face, like rain now running on glass; in this reflection, a certain grand, distant poverty is reflected and radiated to him as a composite layer of shame, pride, and fear. "
2
Whether in a deadly life or a carnival death, they are still watched by the gaze of a higher layer, but rely on it for recovery. Ilami Ash is the most direct and naked image of "Satan", and is also the architect of the "recovery" industry for the undead.
Yu Zemin wrote in the translator's preface: "The liar is the most vital and infectious person. All those who desire to live are numb, wretched, and stupid."
In the story, Ilmiash often completes the sermons of hope and persistence in the way of speeches, orders, etc. with performative significance; at other times, he exists ghostly in the words, moods and psychology of the peasants, and becomes the place of faith. Refers to—or the driving force that accomplishes “recovery.”
For Satan, the revival of the undead is a part of the decaying deduction, and it is also a bargaining chip. Whether his record is a fictitious fictitious name or a fictitious fictitious truth, Ilemiah already constitutes an underlying narrative.
3
In addition to the connection between the undead and Satan, the doctor who has disappeared for a long time seems to have become a role detached from the closed loop of fate. Yet there's no denying that he's also one of the threads that make up the story -- even if it's often insignificant.
He is trying to find a place on the other side of history. At the moment of the closed-loop connection, he completed the construction of his own narrator's identity. And in the dark night before and after this moment, his absence seems to have implied the failure of history itself. The resurrection of the dead spirals into a deep echo at the tip of the pen—and in this layer, fictional visions harass reality.
4
Here we have come to the brink of the text, and the character of the doctor has virtually completed a reflection on the author himself—whether it is Krasnoholkaj Laszlo or Bella Tarr. The difficult and entangled words and the long mirror of carving time all bear the heavy style and national complex of the two authors.
"Although this novel adopts a postmodern writing style with strong formalism, its essence is austere historical materialism." The translator Yu Zemin's comment formed a distant but subtle connection with Laszlo's self-report on the book's "tragicomedy" .
Doctors "manipulate cobwebs, and are bound by cobwebs"; they try to escape and complete the care of history, but they are in it with great sadness. The memory of being displaced on this land made them finally complete the mutual dissolution with the peasants, the lowest voice—the closed loop appeared faintly again.
Readers who stay out of the story may enjoy the requiem of the resurrection and disappearance of the dead; while those who go deep into the historical and cultural hinterland can reach the gap in the stretch of the story. The cold bell blows, and this "melody of hope that has been lost" is blurred by the structure of literature, but it also produces more possible dimensions.
Is the closed loop of the story really complete? Is the harmony of the quartet intact? Does despair speak of absolute eternity?
The expressions of literature and film are not without fragments covered by history, and they are still waiting for the restoration of time and people.
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