AN IMAGE OF RECURRENT TIME NOTES ON CINEMATIC IMAGE AND THE GAZE IN BELA TARR'S SATANTANGO

The article deals with Bela Tarr's longest film Satantango and examines relations between image, time and ways of looking, comparing it to Laszlo Krasznahorkai's 1985 eponymous novel on which the film was based. It reveals connections between episodes and shots in Satantango that lead to a conception of time that passes extremely slowly. It is recurrent-leading toward similar, repetitive situations-but at the same represents an inability to change. The image in this film is often conceived as it is mediated and Tarr frequently uses compositions involving ways of looking through some kind of optical device or a window. The only way of accessing reality is to look at it when there is no real opportunity, will or ability to intervene and change it. In this sense the article shows the relationship between the image of the fictional world of Satantango, inhabited by passive and demoralized characters, and the world of the film spectator and his or her relation to film image as such.