One of the best speeches captured on film. In one shot, Mr. Tarr showed how smooth-talking con-man Irimias duped the farmers by guilt-tripping them and offering elusive hope to them at the same time. Bravo, Mr Tarr.
I agree with the comments below credit to Tarr and his exquisite script and direction, Gábor Medvigy's cinematography, incredible camera operation, but the name that is missing from the accolades is Mihály Vig in the role of Irmias, who memorized and executed this sublime 10+ minute monologue. Vig, was actually a composer and created the haunting score for Satantango and Tarr's final films moving forward.
One of the best speeches ever recorded on film. Bravo, Mr. Tarr. In one shot, Tarr showed how Irimias conned the villagers after appealing to their guilt and their sense of hope. A psychopath and master manipulator of human nature.
Ok, I've seen the movie twice and read the book. But I still can't quite place Irimias, and I imagine thats largely intentional. From what I can gather, he and Petrina were criminals in the past are now being coerced by the police Captain into the role of informants. Further, in the book, it was explicitly stated that Irimias is plotting to lead the villagers towards their deaths (by means of the explosives) - although his method of doing this raises more questions (spreading them around his web of contacts instead of keeping them in the mansion). I can't connect the logic as to why he is plotting against the villagers. What purpose would it serve him? He seemingly decided on the explosives when in the bar immediately after meeting with the Captain, so was it just out of spite or defiance? Surely there would have to be a deeper motive...
Behemoth29 I don’t think he was plotting to blow up the villagers. He wanted to take their money and also put them into his own network of informants and use them that way. I think he was wanting to blow up the police who wanted to control him and maybe society in general but not so much specifically just the villagers.
In my view, Irimiás embodies the two contradictory qualities of Order and Freedom within the same being. He's wedded to a bureaucratic system, he has to serve a higher power, i.e, the Commander. At the same time, him arranging for explosives makes him seem like a revolutionary. He appears to want to liberate the villagers and yet seems to resort to manipulation and coercion to do this. His motives are never clear, and that's what makes him so interesting.
I think to understand both works, you need to embrace the unknown, the senseless and nothing. Late Soviet-sphere nations only existed to perpetuate itself where ideas of communism, collectivism and the furor of a proletariat/workers revolution had subdued greatly. For people living there, the state is kind of like Irimias. The violence, death and austerity for what? So that each person can enjoy a life in working poverty? Irimias also represents a twisted, perverted Christian ideal. Of course, Jesus Christ is the first and only true Christian ideal but we can see derivations of that in literature, whereby the most prominent examples are Don Quixote and Prince Myshkin in Dostoyevesky's The Idiot. (We see that Irimias' partner is like the Sancho archetype). However, instead of being godly, holy and inexplicably good, Irimias is, as you identified, an unexplainable and absurd force of evil, tricks and destruction. Its quite pessimistic but perhaps salvation from this is hinted in the very last scenes in the film picturing the doctor. He somehow, admist all this madness, continues on..
It doesn't sound that good in hungarian you can't translate it to english I mean we have a word that means: for can't (or doesn't ) the day when the sun and moon shines exactly the same amount of time is an act you and others are doing. It sounds like elnapélyegyenlőségteleníthetetlenkedéseitekért hungarian is the most complex language we have words for things most people never even thought about you can't translate it to the most basic form of language. It's like trying to talk about atom physics with words that you used before kindergarden.
@@balfiman something like "for your being without equinox " the "your" in this case means multiple people, the main word is "napélyegyenlőség" which means equinox but instead of this one word we literally say "daynightequality" so thats why it is this much longer. The other parts of the word are just suffixes mainly