Pasolini & Callas: Medea Brutal and Beautiful

I first saw the Pasolini/Callas Medea in my teens and . . . well, I was was highly critical of it. I found it disappointing on almost all counts: terrible sound editing, cheap film stock, overly bright, washed-out, lighting, bizarre, amateurish acting styles, inadequately edited, etc. I became irritated even more by the extended murder scene of Glauce and Creon going seemingly on forever, and then . . . wait; what's this? It's seemed to be repeated all over again? Did someone get the wrong reel into the house?

Ten years went by before I watched it again, but this time something happened.  After that second viewing, I found myself emotionally drained, my jaw on the proverbial floor with the sudden realization I'd just finished a film that alternately horrified, fascinated and astonished me. I like when that happens. 

Medea is a grim, violent, film, minimally processed which only adds to its gruesome, wild rawness. This is Pasolini's Medea, not Euripedes and it easy viewing is is not. It's not a casual "night at the movies."  Medea is wild in a way that surprises (or can . . . should?) fans of  Hollywood cinema . . . or fans of traditional operatic ways of storytelling. 

A score seemingly steeped in African and Middle Eastern music, with the nasal bleating of women's voices in near pre-historic sounding rhythmic chant adds further to the element of being out there produced by this film.  This Medea is about as far away from popular cinema as one can get. Medea doesn't easily compare to films of any other style or genre; in fact, not even all that much with some of Pasolini's other work. There are reasons.  And yet, if one allows oneself to succumb to its hypnotic, mesmerizing pace - a pace simultaneously frenetic and static - we realize this is as about as close to a hallucinatory experience one can achieve without the use of an illegal substance. Of course, not everyone wants that experience.

As Medea, Callas is amazing. There is, quite simply, no other way to put it. And yet, oddly enough when the film came out, she was roundly criticized for not being able to transfer the magic she so naturally gave on stage onto the big screen. I strongly disagree. The more I watch this film - which has probably amounted to a few times a year for close to thirty years - the more amazed I become by it, and by her performance in it. Yes, I, too, had initially been critical of her almost languid weirdness, but have, over that time, grown to see her commitment to the role as formidable - total.  I find that I'm forever riveted by her almost painfully expressive mask as she inhabits completely this legendary character who is, quite literally, capable of, well, everything (and yes, everything is the correct word in this instance).

Where I was once critical of the lighting which seemed unusually bright, harsh, stripped of deeper colors, I've grown to realize (or think I do) why Pasolini did what he did and what he was hoping to capture.  To finally understand why he chose to film at the times of day he chose to shoot, and all of this resulting in a fascinating, brutal, and surreal luminosity that bathes the entire film with an almost palpable sense of visual texture. It took me years . . . and some think I'm crazy (which is not untrue . . . at least entirely), but it is stunning. It works. 

The landscapes Pasolini chose to film in are every bit as brutal . . .  and as vital as the characters of this grisly tale.  What is also quite remarkable is his near excision of all spoken text (the screenplay being nearly dialogue free) which brings us into a world that is both timeless yet ancient world . . . a universe where all may be understood without the use of verbal communication.

The savagely brutal, bloody rites of the sacrifices for fertility and harvest initially seem barbarous to us, but then become somehow . . . . beautiful . . .  fascinating. Sacred. They also make us cringe with the realization of how, not so long ago, this was us.

A remarkable, savage and beautiful film.