Word: medea
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Medea is instead a powerful evocation of another era, albeit one which probably never existed. The film is prefaced with a centaur recounting to his four-year-old adopted son the true details of his ancestry as the child sits watching him. The centaur talks on, with many references to kings, captures, and so forth. "Do you understand?" he asks. Cutting back to the naked child, we see him gazing into the sky. "Oh well," the centaur continues. "It's a difficult story. It's so full of deeds, not thoughts...
...Medea too is full of event and very little overt thinking. The son, Jason, grows up--in the space of about three cuts--and goes to reclaim the usurped kingdom of Corinth from his uncle, King Creon. The uncle sends him off to Colchis, a land of magic, to win the Golden Fleece, and when Jason returns with it tells him that he doesn't feel like keeping his promise. Jason also brings back with him Medea, a daughter of the king of Colchis...
...Saint Matthew. He makes no attempt to explain why such things came about, but merely how they must have happened--and how they appear to the participants, not to a modern audience. Taking Christ's life, he worked with Romans and peasants, shepherds and carpenters. With the story of Medea, he must deal with centaurs and magic and frequent killings...
...Medea comes from Colchis and is something of a sorceress. In Corinth, she loses her powers although it is never quite clear exactly what they were. In the same way the Golden Fleece loses its meaning, as Jason ruefully admits to King Creon when he presents it to him. The earthly, naturalistic life in Colchis with its many bloody rituals is contrasted to the more civilized life of Corinth, where people live in houses and walk on tended lawns. Medea, more pagan than Jason, misses her old life, and Jason, who neglects her, is little comfort. Using what little magic...
...bowl of a sacrificed victim's blood--a documentary made by time-traveling anthropologists. Magic has its place in this society, but the common people are close to the land, to nature. The landscapes--mountains and deserts, blazing skies, sun-baked cliffs riddled with cave-dwellings--surround Medea until she returns with Jason to Corinth. Much time is spent in movement across the countryside--walking, sitting in horsecarts, pacing and filing in ritual order. The omnipresence of the land, and later, Medea's enclosure in palaces, rooms, buildings, gives much more of a feeling for the actual circumstances...