Sátántangó

Gruelling and punishing effort from Tarr feels almost like an Andy Kaufman routine in that Tarr seems to want to deliberately alienate large swaths of his audience by being as tedious and pedantic as possible in his telling of what amounts to a straightforward rumination on fate and morality. There comes a point where there really is no rhyme or reason for this to stretch beyond the *7 hour* mark, especially when many scenes appear to drag on past their natural “cut!” moment with no additional insight provided. The sequence involving the torture of a cat particularly drags on to feeling cheap, nasty and exploitative. Reading of other reviews suggest that other people end up striking gold at the end of this particular rainbow, but some genuinely striking imagery aside (especially our “heroes”’ tramp through the trash strewn streets), this is a bit of a snooze.