It is easy to compute that I spent ten of this past week's waking hours viewing Bela Tarr's Satantango and the finally realized The Watchmen. I have felt the lingering warmth and pity of the prior repeatedly. I just saw the latter yesterday and aside form the opening credits, I am not sure there has been much resonance. I understand if such creates discord: how can I lavish such praise on a 7.25 hour saga of Hungarian rural life and not be moved by the celluloid treatment of what many consider the greatest graphic novel ever? It proves quite simple, actually. It was little surprise that Gus Van Sant admits that Tarr is his greatest influence. Many of the shots in the overrated Paranoid Park indeed owe something to the rich abstinence of Tarr's focus. As raindrops compete with wind blown refuse, we can peek behind to see the questions wrestling Tarr to static ecstasy: its the errant poet cum messiah who avoids interment by guiling the yokels into exile. If this sounds akin to the machinations of the Comedian in Watchmen, then wait, there's more.
Behind both Alan Moore and Tricky Dick I smell sulphur and that spectre in the Hungarian midst is of a similar species: Godard's Marx, where Chairman Mao can only dream of factories that manufacture the transcendence of Hollywood's High Definition milk and honey (with a mail-in rebate)Let us then fetishiue biceps and pussy along with Coke Zero and await Saul of Damascus in the loo's glory hole -- that's a firm grip there, apostle. If Tarr's children, abandoned by Social Realism, choke their cat's out of boredom and then sup on rat poison, we of Private Idaho should estimate in earnest and then temper our own priapic belch by giving Jon Benet the dirty Sanchez in Rod Serling's utility closet. Personally, I blame Sophocles. If it weren't for Antigone's sense of filial duty, as if any debt is owed once the husk begins to decompose. Only films and bawdy songs should be preserved.
