Review of Medea

This would have been completely marvelous had Dreyer actually lived to direct this. The strength of the script is obvious to anyone who sees it, but (I'm voiding this comment if it turns out that the DVD transfer is simply shoddy) Von Trier's pre-Dogme Dogme-style camera makes a mockery of Dreyer's intentions. Von Trier makes a disclaimer that he isn't out to make a "Dreyer film," but that doesn't excuse the Dogme-style visual work. The true master Dreyer made films that are supposed to last; this Dogme fad is a travesty: lots of otherwise really good material is just getting mangled for the sake of misguided, thoroughly pretentious (nay, hypocritical) notions of "realism" in cinema. This is a comment on the Dogme-fad-artists' *style*, which panders to the (insert any number of negative descriptive terms) post-modernist sensibilities of the college-age pseudo-cineastes who worship it.

That bit of frustration aside, my impression of this film is otherwise overwhelmingly positive. The good aspects of this have Dreyer written all over it. Maybe it can be re-made by someone who actually respects cinematic form and presentation, not some rebellious child playing around with a (low number)mm camera.

Hey, I'm not saying that the visual storytelling wasn't otherwise superb, but for crying out loud, let's actually *see* it as it is, rather than like it's being put through some yellow filter and fuzzed up. Dreyer, unafraid to present his subject matter in the starkest terms, could do it. Why won't Von Trier?

Nevertheless, see it, and then do yourself the benefit of imagining away the travesty part.