MEDEA (TV) (director: Lars von Trier; cast: Vera Gebuhr, Ludmilla Glinska (Glauce), Solbjørg Højfeldt, Henning Jensen (Creon), Udo Kier (Jason), Kirsten Olesen (Medea), Baard Owe (Aiceus), 1987-Denmark)
So what if the great Danish director, Carl Theodor Dreyer's screenplay, written with Preben Thomsen in the mid-60s, is not adhered to, so be it! Dreyer died in 1968, unable to get funding for the film.What counts is what von Trier has done with the film he has inherited from Dreyer. Right ! So who cares about his self-promotional schemes that have turned many people off him. I'm talking about him saying that he communed with the spirits of Dreyer and those spirits approved of what he is doing to change the film. I just can't get caught up in that nonsense, for me, it's what I see on screen that counts. It does not matter how others filmed it or would have filmed it, whether it is Pasolini's most interesting 1969 version of it, starring Maria Callas or von Trier's take on it, that is the better one. And even though both Pasolini and von Trier are gifted filmmakers, with Pasolini, in my opinion, being the more poetical and imaginative of the two, nevertheless, Dreyer is still the master, and I would have expected more from him than I do from the others, though I am pleased to say, I am sated by both these differing versions of Medea, but in differing ways.
Vision and intensity are certainly important elements in a film, and that is what is the driving force behind this film, based on Euripides' tragedy, that was made for Danish TV. And that is what made me become taken aback by the power of von Trier's camera, the majesty of his amber and golden and brownish shadings, that is what made the tragedy even more moving, as he took me into the hearts of the innocent kids this woman hung from a small tree in order to satisfy her vanity. It was as mythic as the crucification of Jesus or the sacrifice Abraham would have done if God asked him to do it. This tale of Medea is still a living myth, one that every generation should come to its own terms with, and that is precisely what Trier has attempted to do.
Knowing the story doesn't necessarily preclude that we can feel the story. Whatever opinion you might have about von Trier's telling of the myth, you can agree that his version of it, is definetly a deeply felt emotional experience, one that went to the heart of the matter in terms of feeling the agony of what a woman who has lost touch with herself because of her pride, is going through. By emphasizing her feelings as being only for herself, her irrationality is made rational, even if it isn't rational. Through her fall from grace, we see the tragedy unfold, and the deadly consequences of her jealousy and sense of being wronged come around to its bitter fruition.
Medea (Kirsten) has been dumped by her husband, Jason (Udo), for a younger and more attractive woman, Glauce (Ludmilla), whose father is King Creon (Henning). Jason comes across as a modern male chauvinist pig, someone with cold feelings, whose ambitious nature rules his life. Medea is the scorned woman, the intuitive one, the one capable of performing black magic. When told by King Creon that she must leave the country with her two sons or else, she plots her revenge. And she gets her wish for revenge, by sweet talking Jason into accepting her wedding gift for his bride, a queen's crown that she has dabbed with poison, hoping that the bride will prick herself on it. Playing on Jason's paternal instincts, she gets him to believe that she wants him to keep the kids because she was wrong and he was right in what he did, now that she has had time to think it over. Thusly, she talks him into softening up his bride with the gift, and then, he will be able to get her to ask her father to give permission for the kids to remain with him and his new bride, and she would be content to leave the country knowing that her children will be properly cared for.
The dialogue is sparse. The open air scenery is intense, it appeared to me as if I was looking at Van Gogh's wheatfields, with the wind swirling forcefully in and out of the fields. There was a mystical feel to his mise- en- scene, tragedy was inevitably in the air, whether in the distant sea or on the faces of the children running through the fields, playing like children do but stopping at times to look into the camera with perplexed expressions on their faces, as the wind runs across their blond hair.
And this tale is all the more a tragedy... because Medea takes the children to the tree to hang them even though she loves them both. And when the younger one runs away, the older one brings him back to her, and her deed is done, her mold is cast in stone, as she then proceeds to carry out the death of the older, the more obedient son, the one she dearly loves as much as she loves anything else in this world.
All that is left for us to see, is the final fade-out shot, with the disbelieving and enfeebled Jason, who is left with a poisoned father-in-law and bride, and the dead children he would have abandoned or kept with him, whatever the circumstances dictated. As a result, he has lost his will to live, and we see him moaning in pain as he takes his life in the amber fields.
Kristen is an accomplished and noted actress, her performance was as emotionally and intellectually satisfying as the one Dreyer got from his young unknown actress (Renée Falconetti) in his THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (1928). The only difference is that from Dreyer's style of simplicity in filmmaking, we can feel the pains ourself, we didn't need it enlarged and magnified by wasted and unnecessary movements. For von Trier, he must get himself catapulted into the story, simplicity and spareness is not enough for him, he doesn't trust it, everyone must know that this is his stylized version of the myth.
That he succeeds in this film, is certainly evident. He succeeds because he has found the right Medea for the part, and has caught enough of the mood without ruining it as he almost does, by going overboard with his excesses. I am mainly referring to the hanging scenes of the children. He came very close to turning me off, as I was beginning to suspect that these scenes didn't have to be that explicit in all its morbid details, the idea of having the older child go back for the younger one, seemed to me, to be exploitive and incredulous, as well as unnecessary. All we had to see was the pained expression on Medea and the children and we could have drawn our own visions, even more powerful ones than the ones we materially witnessed.
The reason Dreyer is a master and one of the greatest directors ever, is because he did not compromise his integrity or the film's integrity going after anything that was superfluous to the telling of the story. I always get the feeling when I am seeing a Dreyer film, I am seeing something that is truly visionary. Yet when I see a von Trier film, I can't say the same, even though he is a very talented director, I just can't trust his judgment when it comes to telling the story without it seeming to be pretentious. I am never sure if he really got it or if he is putting me on.
REVIEWED ON 3/6/99 GRADE: B+
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus's World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
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