They have, it seems, all the time in the world. No one leads them or chases them but they seem to know their way. One cow becomes many, and they slowly make their way together. We see a cow emerge from behind the building, nothing in front of him but a vast scene of thick mud with glimmering streaks of wetness that resemble the trails that snails make when they zigzag across dark pavement. Throughout the notes, we acknowledge differences between the novel’s content and the film’s content, as well as translation differences between the novel and the DVD’s subtitles. (Notes on discs two and three are forthcoming.) Our time stamps are based on the Facets Satantango DVD (2008). What follows is a collection of take-by-take notes on disc one of the film and the corresponding passages of the novel.

But despite the convergence of the two forms of Satantango, we do not believe the demands of the long take are the same as those of the long sentence. This reversal of the traditional adaptation-viewing chronology (in addition to Krasznahorkai’s role as screenwriter) makes it difficult to think of the novel independent of the film. Because of the duration between the appearance of the film and the publication of the English translation, we (like most) had watched Tarr’s adaptation long before reading its antecedent. Krasznahorkai’s collaborator and fellow apocalypse maker Béla Tarr adapted the 288-page novel into a seven-hour film in 1994. Published by New Directions, the novel displays the melancholy, bleakness, and long sentences that define Krasznahorkai’s other books ( War & War, The Melancholy of Resistance, etc.). Released in Hungarian in 1985, Satantango, László Krasznahorkai’s first book, was translated into English only last year. 288 pages / $25.95 Buy from New Directions or Amazon

László krasznahorkai satantango