If there was one film I could bring with me to a Desert Island, this would be it. Every viewing experience for has always been different, something very few films a quarter of its length could achieve. For the 2 years I’ve owned this seven and half hour film on DVD, I’ve seen it 5 times; the first four times it took me 2-3 days each time to watch the film completely (in between each disc is an intermission, and my intermissions would vary from 6-12 hours at a time, I took naps). But the 5th time I saw it, I dedicated one whole day to watching it. And it was this viewing where everything finally came together for me, what was actually going on, and who was who. for a seven and half hour film, it contains a nonlinear story (as the title suggests, the structure is 6 steps forward, six steps back; so 12 chapters all in all); add to that about a dozen characters, so it can take awhile to get a grasp of everything. It is a mammoth work, well deserving of its reputation, yet it’s not really a test of one’s dedication to cinema: aside from its length and its shooting style of black and white unedited takes, the story is actually accessible (Van Sant used a similar structure in Elephant), and with characters you can relate to. It’s set in small farming town at the end of communism, all the workers have given their final pay and plot against each other, only to have a Messianic figure (thought to be dead) come into town and play all ends against the middle. From the film’s opening shot, containing the most well directed cows I have ever seen; to the film’s metaphorical and literal black out at the end, it’s an unforgettable experience.
One last thing I just want to mention is that on my initial viewings of the film, the sections involving the town’s unhealthy doctor felt the most over extended, but as I viewed the film more, those sections gradually became my favorite, the black humor became more evident for me and when the film reaches its end, I came to realize how central the doctor was to everything. Oh, and what an amazing performance by the film’s composer, Mihaly Vig, as the Messianic figure Irimias, he’s really a commanding screen presence.

I’ve realized it’s best to spend a day with this film to really experience its full impact.