The following is one of the entries from my 100 Greatest Films from Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal list, which I invite you to visit on this site if you haven’t already done so. — Dennis
“I have a dim foreboding of grief.” — Medea
The first half of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s anthropological Medea contains his most brilliant work; when the part corresponding to Euripedes’s tragedy kicks in, the film is less satisfying, partly due to the inadequacy of opera diva Maria Callas, whose striking poses do not add up to a performance.
But the first half! The film opens with his adoptive father, Chiron, talking to Jason, who is, first, an infant, then thirteen, then an older teenager, then grown, as the centaur continues, telling the boy the boy’s family history and, ironically, contrary to the passage’s continuity over time, registering a changing viewpoint, beginning with a belief in the gods and that “[e]verything is holy,” and ending in disbelief in any god’s existence.
But we know the story of the Golden Fleece, and that is partly why Pasolini doesn’t spoil his solitudinous vision of Medea’s barbaric culture with intrusive dialogue. In an extraordinary passage, a virgin is sacrificed—a boy this time—so crops will grow. His neck broken, the boy is communally slaughtered, his blood and body parts imbibed and devoured. Haunting pans of the barren land are correlative to the primitive madness we everywhere see. The hard edge of the film’s fiercely sunlit images collapses the distance between reality and ancient myth.
Medea’s relationship with Jason is an instance of cultural collision. The barbaric sorceress Medea: can her marriage to civilized Jason prosper? No. He betrays her, and to punish him she murders their sons and Jason’s new bride, bringing to fruition what we first see as her premonition or dream. “Nothing is possible!” she cries out at Jason.
The tenderness with which Medea tends to each of her children right before dispatching them is a highlight of the second half.
This entry was posted on November 2, 2007 at 11:24 pm and is filed under Formal Capsule Film Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
MEDEA (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969)
By grunesThe following is one of the entries from my 100 Greatest Films from Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal list, which I invite you to visit on this site if you haven’t already done so. — Dennis
“I have a dim foreboding of grief.” — Medea
The first half of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s anthropological Medea contains his most brilliant work; when the part corresponding to Euripedes’s tragedy kicks in, the film is less satisfying, partly due to the inadequacy of opera diva Maria Callas, whose striking poses do not add up to a performance.
But the first half! The film opens with his adoptive father, Chiron, talking to Jason, who is, first, an infant, then thirteen, then an older teenager, then grown, as the centaur continues, telling the boy the boy’s family history and, ironically, contrary to the passage’s continuity over time, registering a changing viewpoint, beginning with a belief in the gods and that “[e]verything is holy,” and ending in disbelief in any god’s existence.
But we know the story of the Golden Fleece, and that is partly why Pasolini doesn’t spoil his solitudinous vision of Medea’s barbaric culture with intrusive dialogue. In an extraordinary passage, a virgin is sacrificed—a boy this time—so crops will grow. His neck broken, the boy is communally slaughtered, his blood and body parts imbibed and devoured. Haunting pans of the barren land are correlative to the primitive madness we everywhere see. The hard edge of the film’s fiercely sunlit images collapses the distance between reality and ancient myth.
Medea’s relationship with Jason is an instance of cultural collision. The barbaric sorceress Medea: can her marriage to civilized Jason prosper? No. He betrays her, and to punish him she murders their sons and Jason’s new bride, bringing to fruition what we first see as her premonition or dream. “Nothing is possible!” she cries out at Jason.
The tenderness with which Medea tends to each of her children right before dispatching them is a highlight of the second half.
Tags: Pasolini
This entry was posted on November 2, 2007 at 11:24 pm and is filed under Formal Capsule Film Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.