In 1969, Pier Paolo Pasolini (already known for such works
as Oeidipus Rex and The Gospel According to St. Matthew) wrote and directed a
version of Medea, based loosely on the Euripides script. He cast famed opera
singer Maria Callas, known for her fiery temper, to play Medea.
While we tend
to think of the ancient Greeks in the Classical Period of chitons and columns
and white naturalistic statues from the 5th to 4th
century BCE, Pasolini, his costumer Piero Tosi (Death in Venice, The Damned) and
production designer Dante Ferretti (Gangs of New York, Shutter Island, Hugo)
place the film in a prehistory time period and a world we haven’t seen before
when thinking of the ancient Greeks.
We begin the film with the centaur Chiron teaching a growing
Jason about the world and the gods. When he becomes a man, he follows Chiron’s
advice and goes to his uncle to reclaim his throne. His uncle sends him on a
quest to return the golden fleece which had been stolen by the people of
Colchis. Jason sets off with his Argonauts. Rather than the fine sailing vessel
of the Argo, we see a flimsy and poorly maneuverable square raft that has a
mast and oars.
The people of Colchis are shown living in an African-looking
wasteland mountainous environment where the houses are gigantic cave structures
that look like human-proportioned anthills.
Our first sight of the people is
their sacrifice of a young man in a fertility celebration. The young man is led to his doom
decorated with a grain headdress and crotch-piece. He smiles seemingly unaware
of what will happen to him. A man paints him with two different colors and he
is led to an upright bar where his neck is broken by two men with another bar.
The chief priest comes and brutally dismembers the youth, whose blood is then smeared
on the crops, and along with his body parts, eaten. Medea can be seen among the
people. Following the sacrifice, the people spit on the king and queen, Medea’s
brother is beaten with leafed branches, and Medea is led carrying a bar like
the young man had been trussed upon.
We know from this beginning that the people of Colchis are
violent, but we also see that they have a more complicated civilization than Jason’s
people.
The nobility wears variations of blue and lapis caftans. The
king and queen wear elaborate fantastical costumes and headdresses, and in
their “throne room” sit in a small alcove being stared at by their subjects.
Eventually we see Medea worshipping in their “temple” cave where the golden
fleece is hanging on a similar bar as the youth’s sacrificial bar with garlands
of leaves like a tree behind it. Medea has a vision that the youth Jason comes
to her and she realizes she must bring him the fleece.
Pasolini sees the archaic Greeks as nothing but thieving
marauders, so Jason and the Argonauts steal horses and then raid the village taking
gold coins. Medea, along with the help
of her brother, comes in a square cart bringing the fleece. When she joins
Jason, she kills her brother and chops him up. She throws his body parts along
the way so that her father has to stop and pick up while he pursues Jason.
Medea sails off with Jason. She becomes a “barbarian in a
civilized land” and makes love to Jason. He gives his uncle the fleece. The
uncle says he lied to him about getting back the throne, and Jason laughs and
tells him in his quest he learned the world is bigger than his uncle’s little
kingdom.
The women of his uncle’s country wear saffron yellow
costumes, and in an act of “accepting?” Medea, they strip her of her dark
clothing and replace it with a yellow dress.
The film jumps ten years and Medea is living in a two-story
building outside the walls of Corinth. She has two children but Jason has
deserted her. We are finally in the world of Euripides’ play. Since Medea is
the granddaughter of Helios, the sun god, her women tell her that she should
punish Jason. We see some ritualized
pacing with Medea leading and the women following her lead—a nod to the chorus
and lead actor of Euripides.
The colorful costumes of the Corinthians are an orange-red
coral. Medea’s costumes again contrast
by being dark colors.
[Spoilers] Medea chooses to punish the king Creonte and his daughter
Glauce. She prepares a special gown for Jason’s wedding. We see the action
twice. The first time must be Medea’s vision of what the events will be like.
The second time what actually happens. Rather than Glauce burning up as we
first see, she throws herself off the walls of Corinth and her father follows
her. Medea kills her two sons by knife. We don’t see her actually kill the
children, but we do see Medea lovingly taking her sons to their beds, bathing
them and holding them before she kills them. In the end Medea sets fire her
house and Jason comes to get the children's bodies, but she stands defying him among the flames. The
film ends abruptly. (In Euripides' play, Medea gets on a chariot pulled
by a dragon and rides off to safety.)
Pasolini’s script reinterprets the story of Medea in a new
way. His dialog is often sparse, relying much more on facial and eye
expressions than actual words. Callas brings a lot of presence to her
non-singing role and can move us with her rage at being cast off. (It is with
irony that this film comes about the time her real-life lover Aristotle Onassis
left her to marry Jackie Kennedy.)
Medea (1969) ****
The trailer is shown below. The entire film can be found on You Tube.
No comments:
Post a Comment