In the darkening embers of a Communist utopia, life in a desolate Hungarian town has come to a virtual standstill. Flies buzz, spiders weave, water drips & animals root desultorily in the barnyard of a collective farm. But when the charismatic Irimias
- long-thought dead
- returns to the commune, the villagers fall under his spell. The Devil has arrived in their midst. Irimias will divide & rule: his arrival heralds the beginning of a period of violence & greed for the villagers as he sets about swindling them out of a fortune that might allow them to escape the emptiness & futility of their existence. He soon attains a messaianic aura as he plays on the fears of the townsfolk & a series of increasingly brutal events unfold. Satantango follows the villagers as they are exploited & taken in by Irimias; as they drink & stumble their way toward the gradual realization of their mistake & ultimate demise. In its measured prose & long, Tolstoyan sentences, Satantango is nothing short of a literary masterpiece; a formal meditation on death & avarice, human fallibility & faith.