| Much as the colour is all but drained from the desaturated video images that make up Lars von Trier’s Medea (Denmark, 1988), so is any trace of overt hysteria filtered out of this adaptation of Euripides’s classic tragedy.
In its place is a bleak mass of Nordic repression and misery, revealing that ancient Greek melodrama can make the trek north to medieval Denmark without sloughing off an ounce of gravitas. In fact, given that von Trier was working from a previously unfilmed script by the grand old master of Danish cinema, Carl Theodor Dreyer (1889-1968), it’s possible Medea’s burden has been rendered weightier than ever. Certainly, in its cheerlessness, Medea bears the stamp of Dreyer’s influence in every frame, as von Trier pays homage to such brooding, expressionist works as The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) and Vampyr (1932).
As a tale of self-destructive vengeance, Medea is also enough to make Dogville, von Trier’s latest pessimistic salvo against human nature, look like a lighthearted Hollywood comedy. Sometime in the last 15 years, von Trier at least developed a sense of irony, if not a sense of humour. But the climactic scenes in Medea are as unmitigated and distressing as anything in the rest of von Trier’s oeuvre – only Bjork’s neck-snapping gallows drop in Dancer in the Dark comes close to eclipsing the pathos here.
Kristin Oleson is remarkably restrained in her title role as the vindictive sorceress out to exact revenge against Jason (Udo Kier), deadbeat dad to her two young sons. Unaware of the fury that awaits him, Jason scorns the severely buttoned-down Medea in favour of nubile young Glauce (Ludmilla Glinska), giggly daughter of Creon (Henning Jensen), the ailing king who promises to make Jason his heir if he will marry the comely princess. To add insult to injury, Medea, perhaps unjustly feared, is then persecuted and driven from the kingdom, leading to what must be one of the more memorable climaxes in Danish television history.
Yes, Medea, now available on DVD, was made for TV in the same year that von Trier completed his second feature, the largely autobiographical (and extremely hard-to-find) Epidemic. Of course, Medea, as you might have guessed, is not your average TV movie of the week, and certain scenes would make its appearance on North American networks virtually unthinkable. For one thing, it is artfully constructed, with composite video images, rear projections and impressive location photography all working in service of an atmosphere of intense dread. When this gloomy mood reaches its apex against scenes of golden wheat fields blowing in the autumn wind, it’s a harbinger of the intricate emotional complexity to come in von Trier’s more recent work. Unforgettable. |
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