There's something about this adaptation of Euripides' Medea that feels just so much slower than the rest of Pasolini's filmography. Things had been slowing down for the last few entries in his filmography, but those slowed paces, especially in Teorema, had been in service to quirkier, weirder stories that still managed to get in and out in less than one hundred minutes. Going nearly a full two hours for this telling of Medea feels overindulgent to the point where it simply feels like the film stops being entertaining on its own. Pasolini isn't doing anything particularly inventive stylistically that he hadn't handled before, but this film is a much more traditional narrative than he's handled in a few years which seems to clash with the glacial pace.
Jason (Giuseppe Gentile) is raised by Chiron (Laurent Terzieff), a centaur (sometimes), and told that his uncle Pelias (Paul Jabara) has stolen his rightful throne of Iolcus, sending him to Colchis to retrieve the golden fleece as payment for giving up his throne back to Jason. Colchis is a barbarous land where prisoners are crucified before being dismembered and fed to the people. It is also where Queen Medea (Maria Callas) lives, kept in chains. When she's given a vision of Jason coming for the fleece, she steals it herself, bringing her brother along, gives the fleece to Jason, and kills her brother when he figures out what's going on. Jason is her savior from her life in Colchis, and he marries her after he casts the fleece to Pelias' feet. He bears him two children, and he decides that he's gonna marry Glauce (Margareth Clementi).
Now, why did Pasolini decide to tell this story? Well, I think it feeds his general hatred of almost everything. The barbarous tribe at Colchis are terrible. Jason, a paragon of Greek virtue, ends up terrible. The primal existence is dangerous and terrible. The more modern Greek existence is dangerous and terrible. Despite the awful portrait of both, it's the primitive Colchis society that ends up feeling more just than the Greek, especially since the ancient gods of Colchis end up siding with Medea in her conflict with Jason. It's about the powerful using their power to get what they want at the expense of the powerless, and the powerless rising up in revolution, in Medea's own small but terrible way, to fight it. It fits his filmography rather nicely from a thematic point of view.
My issue, as I stated before, is that it's painfully slow. I don't see why this film needs to be almost two-hours long. I think twenty minutes could have been snipped at throughout the film, bringing it to about ninety minutes, helping it move faster. I suspect part of the issue is that there are long stretches without much dialogue, especially near the beginning with the introduction of Medea and her life in Colchis. Who she is, her relations to other people around her, and the actual series of events around Jason are so opaque while Pasolini takes so much time to lay it out at the same time. Pasolini proved that he could be really good with wordless passages in his films, in particular the opening to Oedipus Rex, but the extended sections in Medea feel less immediate and more ambling than some of Pasolini's previous efforts at similarly delivered material.
The meat of the film is, much like Pasolini's adaptation of Oedipus Rex, in the back half of the film, the part that actually adapted the Greek play by Euripides. It's also the talkier side of things in general (excluding the scenes with Chiron who is a stream of background information to start the film), and it's where Callas has her time to shine as the eponymous character. She emotes well, Pasolini using the opera star in her film debut effectively while filming her lovingly as her world comes crashing down around her while her husband abandons her for a young woman who will bring him great wealth. Her descent into madness, including the burning of her own children , is a bit confusing (it seems like she has a vision of giving a poisoned gown to Glauce that ends in flames that gets moved on from, with the events largely replaying without the flaming gown, though I'm honestly not sure if it actually happens and people are just happy that Medea is giving another gift to Glauce, which would make no sense and calls into question the effort to spend so much time on a mere vision which has a first half that largely plays out the same way minutes later, another example of this film just dragging).
The apocalyptic vision of Medea lording over Jason as she gets consumed with flames is great, though.
So, I'm mixed. Pasolini once again proves that he can capture great images with his camera. The story of Medea is reasonably well told, though it just drags and underexplains, especially in the beginning. The performances are very good, especially Callas, though I want to single out the only real non-professional actor in the whole thing, Giuseppe Gentile, who was an Olympic athlete that Pasolini felt just fit the Jason role and comes across very well in his performance.
I think I slightly prefer Pigsty for its arch approach to its broad point, but Medea is largely serviceable even if I feel like it misses the mark slightly. Seriously, twenty minutes or so on the cutting room floor, and I think Pasolini has a well assembled retelling of the ancient story. At this length, though? It just doesn't quite do what it needs to.
Jason (Giuseppe Gentile) is raised by Chiron (Laurent Terzieff), a centaur (sometimes), and told that his uncle Pelias (Paul Jabara) has stolen his rightful throne of Iolcus, sending him to Colchis to retrieve the golden fleece as payment for giving up his throne back to Jason. Colchis is a barbarous land where prisoners are crucified before being dismembered and fed to the people. It is also where Queen Medea (Maria Callas) lives, kept in chains. When she's given a vision of Jason coming for the fleece, she steals it herself, bringing her brother along, gives the fleece to Jason, and kills her brother when he figures out what's going on. Jason is her savior from her life in Colchis, and he marries her after he casts the fleece to Pelias' feet. He bears him two children, and he decides that he's gonna marry Glauce (Margareth Clementi).
Now, why did Pasolini decide to tell this story? Well, I think it feeds his general hatred of almost everything. The barbarous tribe at Colchis are terrible. Jason, a paragon of Greek virtue, ends up terrible. The primal existence is dangerous and terrible. The more modern Greek existence is dangerous and terrible. Despite the awful portrait of both, it's the primitive Colchis society that ends up feeling more just than the Greek, especially since the ancient gods of Colchis end up siding with Medea in her conflict with Jason. It's about the powerful using their power to get what they want at the expense of the powerless, and the powerless rising up in revolution, in Medea's own small but terrible way, to fight it. It fits his filmography rather nicely from a thematic point of view.
My issue, as I stated before, is that it's painfully slow. I don't see why this film needs to be almost two-hours long. I think twenty minutes could have been snipped at throughout the film, bringing it to about ninety minutes, helping it move faster. I suspect part of the issue is that there are long stretches without much dialogue, especially near the beginning with the introduction of Medea and her life in Colchis. Who she is, her relations to other people around her, and the actual series of events around Jason are so opaque while Pasolini takes so much time to lay it out at the same time. Pasolini proved that he could be really good with wordless passages in his films, in particular the opening to Oedipus Rex, but the extended sections in Medea feel less immediate and more ambling than some of Pasolini's previous efforts at similarly delivered material.
The meat of the film is, much like Pasolini's adaptation of Oedipus Rex, in the back half of the film, the part that actually adapted the Greek play by Euripides. It's also the talkier side of things in general (excluding the scenes with Chiron who is a stream of background information to start the film), and it's where Callas has her time to shine as the eponymous character. She emotes well, Pasolini using the opera star in her film debut effectively while filming her lovingly as her world comes crashing down around her while her husband abandons her for a young woman who will bring him great wealth. Her descent into madness, including the burning of her own children , is a bit confusing (it seems like she has a vision of giving a poisoned gown to Glauce that ends in flames that gets moved on from, with the events largely replaying without the flaming gown, though I'm honestly not sure if it actually happens and people are just happy that Medea is giving another gift to Glauce, which would make no sense and calls into question the effort to spend so much time on a mere vision which has a first half that largely plays out the same way minutes later, another example of this film just dragging).
The apocalyptic vision of Medea lording over Jason as she gets consumed with flames is great, though.
So, I'm mixed. Pasolini once again proves that he can capture great images with his camera. The story of Medea is reasonably well told, though it just drags and underexplains, especially in the beginning. The performances are very good, especially Callas, though I want to single out the only real non-professional actor in the whole thing, Giuseppe Gentile, who was an Olympic athlete that Pasolini felt just fit the Jason role and comes across very well in his performance.
I think I slightly prefer Pigsty for its arch approach to its broad point, but Medea is largely serviceable even if I feel like it misses the mark slightly. Seriously, twenty minutes or so on the cutting room floor, and I think Pasolini has a well assembled retelling of the ancient story. At this length, though? It just doesn't quite do what it needs to.