Review: Medea

An apologia for all future Susan Smiths, Euripides’s filicidal classic Medea is a simple story.

Medea
Photo: Danmarks Radio

An apologia for all future Susan Smiths, Euripides’s filicidal classic Medea is a simple story. The titular woman of magic is scorned by Jason, her husband and the father of her two children, who leaves her to marry Glauce and become the son-in-law of Corinth’s king Kreon. Medea plots a revenge that will be the end of Jason, Glauce, Kreon and, most horrifyingly, her own children. Lars von Trier’s video adaptation (based on a script by the great Carl Theodor Dreyer) opens on Medea (Kirsten Olesen) before the wedding ceremony, hissing with anger and rejection and clutching the sand on the beach with her hands as the tide washes over her body. Von Trier, whose Dogma 95 stressed a rejection of all things artificial in cinema, is really nothing if not a willful stylist, mixing transcendence with the mundane, and color with flatness. For some, his cinematic fun and games hold interest only for so long, and the epic length of some of his most recent toy chests (especially the controversial Dancer in the Dark) probably lost as many as they converted. But Medea, produced for Danish television in 1987, is a remarkable, streamlined minimalist tone poem. Set in marshlands and a castle that looks more like a sewer, the overall emphasis is placed on Euripedes’s earthiness rather than his more cosmic implications. Unlike later von Trier heroines, Medea is far from a martyr. Her suffering might be tangible, but her actions and their outcomes are never beyond her vengeful control. When she offers the fateful gift (a wedding crown, tipped at the razor peaks with poison) that will cause a plague-like wave of death across the house of Kreon, her expression is that of blank professionalism. Her last stab at intimacy with Jason immediately before this moment sees Medea already coolly resigned to her status as a sexual also-ran. And it’s not only Medea who understands the tragic role of fate. When she’s preparing to string her children up to their deaths, the older son helps persuade the frightened younger one to go along with their mother, even if it means the end of their lives. Whether due to the implosive performances of the entire cast or the brief running time, Medea captures the encroaching dread of the inevitable like few films ever have.

Score: 
 Cast: Kirsten Olesen, Udo Kier, Henning Jensen, Baard Owe, Solbjørd Høfeldt, Preben Leidorff Rve, Ludmilla Glinska  Director: Lars von Trier  Screenwriter: Lars von Trier, Preben Thomsen, Carl Theodor Dreyer  Distributor: Danmarks Radio  Running Time: 76 min  Rating: NR  Year: 1987  Buy: Video

Eric Henderson

Eric Henderson is the web content manager for WCCO-TV. His writing has also appeared in City Pages.

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