Medea (1970)

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Pasolini's MEDEA, boosting the household name Maria Callas' one-off celluloid bash, mesmerically sinks its teeth into the fecund soil of ancient Greek myth, story-wise, it welds together Jason and the Argonauts' quest of golden fleece with the play of Euripides, and takes liberty with Pasolini's trenchant interpretation about possession, betrayal and revenge. Exhibiting the sui-generis topography of Göreme in Turkey's Cappadocia Region, an immemorial mountainous area grandly preserved with its ancient architecture (caves, churches etc.) and scraggy outlook, the place itself is a marvel to behold, nevertheless, Pasolini makes great play of his unfettered imagination to limn the mythical tribe of Medea (Callas), a pageantry of madcap costumes and primitive implements, topping off by a head-rolling, blood-drinking human-sacrifice ritual in supplication of harvest, savagery and sanctity, like conjoined twins, forever mediating mankind's self-seeking turpitude. Catching sight of Jason (Gentile) for the first time, as if struck by coup-de-foudre, Medea, asks her brother Absyrtus (Tramonti) to steal the golden fleece, together they join Jason and the co., en route to Greece, Absyrtus is sacrificed in the hands of Medea (not unlike the boy killed earlier) in order to defer the pursing forces, executed with Pasolini's clinical philosophy, it has a discerning tang of disinterest countervailing the cockamamie action, and that is distinctive from Pasolini's treatment.The second half takes place in Jason's homeland, where Medea has borne two boys for him, but Jason is bent on marrying the Corinthian princess Glauce (Clémenti), which causes Medea and her sons in danger of exile. So, perdition is brewed in Medea's witchery, and Pasolini capriciously presents us two different approaches with the same denouement, but the crunch is the scandalous filicide served as the ultimate malice from a jilted lover, which would be plundered with bone-chilling assiduity in Joachim Lafosse's OUR CHILDREN (2012). Albeit its esoteric backstory and accompanied by a religious assortment of folkloric tuneage, MEDEA belongs to the more digestible bracket among Pasolini's corpus, and Callas is more than persuasive in imparting Medea's desperation and resolution, a concrete cause célèbre engraved with Pasolini's immense ambition and poetic pedagogy, MEDEA deserves a better reputation.

Incredibly abstruse visualisation of the myth, allowing Pasolini to explore the conflict - a psychological and social conflict - between an older order of magic and the new order of reason and "civilisation". Jason needs Medea, repository of occult knowledge and superstitious practise, to help establish his rule; when he gets there, she is side-lined, and takes a terrible revenge. The storytelling here is oblique and elliptical, full of gorgeous images, sensual locations and sounds the like of which human ears rarely get to hear, full of ululations and Dionysian frenzy.The most intriguing segments involve Jason's relationship with his mentor, the centaur, who appeared in his childhood as a horse-man and his adulthood in normal human form, but the horse-form remains as a mythic trace once childhood is departed.The athlete Pasolini casts as Jason does well, physically scrumptious as he is and with the requisite banal arrogance; the casting of Maria Callas as Medea is more problematic - she's so obviously the product of the higher echelons of civilised culture that it is impossible to see her as a primitive force - her presence threatens to turn the film into a jaded millionairess' arty home movie. Still, if you try to ignore her patrician features and over-indulgent false-eyelashes, there's plenty of Pasolinian delights on display, and hardly anything in the film you would be able to see in anyone else's version of cinema.

There are several directors that make "arty" films that are certainly not for everyone. Pasolini has also done films which can be more easily acceptable by wider audiences; yet this is not one of them. This is one of those films that can and will be liked by only a few people. Others will turn their head the other way or simply hate it...Well I like weird art & films, I like Pasolini, and I liked Medea in various interesting aspects. I suppose one should at least know the basics of Euripedes story to comprehend the story - Pasolini doesn't focus in the story so much, important facts are assumed by the viewer and the dialogues are scarce within the film. No narration exists.I think Pasolini here was more interested in presenting the cultural / ethnological / theological / religious stigma of the era - his usual interest on god and religion is also here, despite text is given few opportunities to breed context in this film. We have also the theme of ancient world VS the new world of logic and the new gods. This is one of the films, like, say, Hertzog's films, that are up to the viewer to comprehend, or a film critics would call a symbolic one. Needless to say one has to like to think while watching this one, not be spoon-fed.Last but not least, the soundtrack enhances this strongly visual experience a lot. A set of strange but intense folk/ethnic/avant guard/experimental songs make the viewing a unique experience for those who like 'hard' films....

This movie has to be one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Some people i guess would call it excellent for its "artsiness"... but as far as i could tell it was poorly filmed, poorly edited, terribly dubbed and poorly acted. It just didn't find any redeaming factors about it... other then the two main actors who play Jason and Medea made no other movies. Terrible.