Drama of the Moment

This is an excerpt from Donato Totaro's excellent review of Bela Tarr's "Satantango":

On many occasions the subject of Tarr’s long takes are the Hungarian plains themselves (the puszta), the former stomping grounds of another great Hungarian long take stylist, Miklos Jançso. This unfettered camera stare also has the effect of escalating drama, even when simply perusing the muddy puszta. (...) Why is it that the excessively long takes in Sátántangó, many with little action, movement, or narrative development in any conventional sense, are still fascinating and riveting (setting aside, of course, questions of personal taste)? The answer rests in a distinction I will make between narrative drama and drama of the moment. Most films, both popular and art cinema, derive their drama from machinations of the plot and/or our involvement with the fate of characters. Drama is created by what Noel Carroll calls “erotetic narrative”: questions are posed in one scene and then answered in subsequent shots and scenes (either immediately or later on). Will the hero arrive in time to save the damsel in distress? Who is the murderer? What will become of the kidnapped child? Will the heroine score that new job? Drama arises out of the movement of the plot and story. In contrast to this are the (usually) long takes in Sátántangó where drama is achieved not by large concerns of the plot or story, but by the audience simply wondering what will happen in the very next moment?, or more specifically, when will something happen next?, or when will something different happen? For example, after the young girl has tortured and maimed her pet cat she forces the cat’s face continuously into a bowl of milk. She then leaves it alone and backs up a few yards behind the cat until her back rests up against a wall. The image of the little girl flat up against the wall is itself a wonderful metaphor for the girl’s tragically dead-end life. The camera remains static with little ‘action.’ The girl does not move, the cat is barely able to move its maimed body. But the drama comes from wondering what, if anything, will happen next. The poor cat, unable to move its legs, attempts to lift its head to and fro from the bowl. Will the cat survive or drown in the milk? Will the girl bounce on the cat, as she did countless times before? Will she run up to the cat and kick it like a ball (that was the thought running through my mind.) These are the minor dynamic potentialities that make this a dramatic moment.

Here are a few other instances of the “drama of the moment.” On the first night of their renunciation the messiah followers fall asleep together in a large room. The scene cuts to a slow dolly forward to an owl perched on a balcony. What does the presence of the owl mean? The shot cuts to a overhead ‘ceiling’ shot of one of the characters lying asleep in a fetal position. The camera begins to dolly slowly across the other sleeping people, eventually performing a 360 degree arc by returning to the first sleeper. But the shot continues again in the same arc, and again, and again, and again. The movement and the ground covered is so constant that it may just as well be the point of view of a slowly moving ceiling fan. [2] At some point we begin to wonder, will one of them wake up? Will the arc ever stop? Is this the point of view of a dreaming sleeper (a voice over tells us about the floating dream of one of the sleepers, Mrs. Schmidt)? The previous described dolly shot that follows the doctor into the ruined church leaves the doctor for a close-up of the shell shocked old man chiming his makeshift bell. The camera remains fixed on his face for several minutes. We begin to wonder, will he stop the bell ringing? Why is he doing this? How long has he been doing this? During the pub dance scene a similar effect is achieved by the repetitive nature of the action. Will the bearded man repeating the same annoying phrases over and over ever shut up? Why doesn’t someone tell him to shut up? Once the dance begins the players dance and play on repeatedly. The accordionist plays the same musical phrase over and over and over. When will this absurdity stop? When will the accordionist play something different? The film is full of long takes like these that put the emphasis on the moment by concentrating on the singular.

Another formal quality that goes along with the long takes in achieving this “drama of the moment” are varying rhythmical patterns that establish a constancy that envelopes us and heighten our sensitivity to change. In the majority of cases this rhythmical pattern is sonic: a ticking clock, a whirring fan, the drone of a refrigerator motor, or the constant patter of rain. In the noted scene of the 360 degree overhead tracking shot it is the camera movement itself which becomes a rhythmical pattern. The effect is that each long take achieves a certain materiality, a temporal denseness which helps to “escalate the drama of the moment.”