In S��t��ntang��, the problems were not because I wanted a faithful rendering. It was not an adaptation, because we don���t do adaptations. I tried to make something that B��la could feel he could do what he really liked with, and that was the script, the novel was a sort of inspiration. Almost everything was decided in the time of shooting, and everything depended on the state of the characters because that was a very long shooting. Everyone was almost always drunk.

MJC: The actors?

LK: Not only the actors, but the people behind the camera, the lights people, everyone.

MJC: And that bar scene, the one we were talking about earlier, the one with my favorite Hungarian word, babtetu, which is repeated over and over���

LK: The one who repeats that word, for example, he���s not an actor. He was a wonderful cameraman who photographed small things, fantastic pictures of surfaces. And some of the other actors were painters, musicians, an actress from Yugoslavia, B��la could handle these characters very well. Sometimes cruel and sometimes very friendly.

MJC: And in that long bar scene, was that choreographed quite a bit or were they just drunk?

LK: Everybody was actually drunk. In real time, when the camera was shooting, B��la or I or Agnes would give them directions, go left, and they would go, ���Ah? What?��� ���Left, left!��� ���What?!���

MJC: There���s an interview in which you talk about a beautiful moment that happens to you and B��la Tarr when that same actor, the cameraman, in that same bar scene, starts singing, ���Tango, Tango������

LK: That was the turning point for B��la and for me. Until then we were absolutely unsure why we were doing this shit. But this man, this cameraman, began to sing, and that was absolutely an improvisation, we had an idea that if he can sing, or if he can remember something, because he was drunk all day��� He���d brought a harmonica, suddenly he tried to play this song and sing, ���Oh the tango, my mother used to sing! Oh the tango, my mother used to sing! Do you know this? Oh the tango!��� And so B��la and Agnes were, ���Please, shoot it, shoot it!��� That was outside the story, actually, and that was so heartbreaking, that I felt B��la holding my leg, because we were sitting next to each other, and B��la���s hand was so strong, that after the minutes I had a big bloody fleck here on the leg and B��la wept. B��la is not a sentimental figure. But that was so heartbreaking, him singing for us. And after that we understood, okay, we got the film. Because of this.

[...]

LK: Yes, these are the very important figures who allow us to be in the world, this kind of people who are sacrificed, who are victims of this world, in the sense of the Russian literature, in the sense of Dostoyevsky, in the sense of Tarkovsky. They are the prize for us so that we can live with compromises in this world. They are the prize which we pay for the possibility to live with compromises in this world. There are of course similarities between these figures, but they are not absolutely similar. Estika is the purest, simplest victim, because she believes everything that���s promised to her from whom she loves. But she���s absolutely defenseless. And this kind of people I love very much. In a big crowd I immediately recognize this type of person. And they perceive each other in the world. This is a secret community between these kinds of people. But they are always alone. They cannot help each other. They have only one fate: to lose himself or herself. Because him or her, they are really victims. This is their only one task, one very cruel task in this world. Without these figures, the whole machinery of the world doesn���t work. S��t��ntang�� is the best example of this fact. The whole machinery of S��t��ntang��, this whole story, the state of the men and women there, couldn���t exist without a victim, without a sacrifice. These people there, these characters there in this novel S��t��ntang�� couldn���t make their fate without Estika���s victimization. Valuska���s a little bit of a different case. Valuska is like a small animal, Valuska is made of belief, because Valuska has a secret contact with the whole creation, and the whole creation is wonderful, and Valuska sees only this fact. And for Valuska the world is absolutely the same like the created world and humans are only a very, very small part of this big huge creation, and this is not so interesting for him, a very small mistake, or failure in the creation because the whole creation is really wonderful. Actually, you and I are sitting now very close to nature [gestures toward a view of the Pacific Ocean], and if you find a place where you can see only the nature without human beings, this is actually the paradise, but in the next moment the human being walks into this picture and we are immediately and suddenly in the first chapter of the old testament. And we���ve lost it.

Krasznahorkai, interviewed