Satantango is my all-time favorite movie. It's about a small town and the dissolution of its collectivized farm after the end of communism. All My Good Countrymen (the title on my DVD, though listed on IMDb as All My Compatriots) is about a similar small town, but it's about the period of collectivization instead of de-collectivization. In All My Compatriots, there is a steady demoralization of the townspeople as the collectivization and politicization moves along from 1945 to 1958. If you follow that trajectory until the collapse of the Soviet Union, you get to the lethargic, soul-destroyed nadir from which Satantango begins. Even though All My Compatriots is about a Czech town, and Satantango takes place in Hungary, it's remarkable how similar the towns feel and how much the one movie feels like the continuation of the other.
While Satantango is an unusually long movie (over 7 hours!), it felt like it moved along a lot faster than Compatriots. (Satantango isn't fast-paced by any means; but time goes by faster than in Compatriots because it manages to mesmerize in a way Compatriots does not.) Besides its slowness, Compatriots was also rather hard to follow. Nonetheless, Compatriots had a quirky quality I liked, and it's especially interesting as a movie made during the Prague Spring. Also, the town and landscape had a delightful Brueghel-like quality, and many of the faces made me feel like Fellini had managed to slip into Eastern Europe to shoot the close-ups.
While Satantango is an unusually long movie (over 7 hours!), it felt like it moved along a lot faster than Compatriots. (Satantango isn't fast-paced by any means; but time goes by faster than in Compatriots because it manages to mesmerize in a way Compatriots does not.) Besides its slowness, Compatriots was also rather hard to follow. Nonetheless, Compatriots had a quirky quality I liked, and it's especially interesting as a movie made during the Prague Spring. Also, the town and landscape had a delightful Brueghel-like quality, and many of the faces made me feel like Fellini had managed to slip into Eastern Europe to shoot the close-ups.