Medea

Directed by Lars von Trier.
With Udo Kier, Kirsten Olesen, Henning Jensen.
Denmark, 1988, color, 76 min.
Danish with English subtitles.

Fifteen years ago, von Trier made a television adaptation of an unfilmed screenplay by one of the cinema’s greatest figures, Danish director Carl Th. Dreyer. Medea is a stark, compelling rendition of the classical Greek tragedy transposed to a pagan Danish setting. Aside from two brief, delirious blue-screen video epiphanies, von Trier subordinates his baroque, stylized signature to the simplicity and purity of Dreyer’s conception. The resulting tension and narrative economy confirm von Trier’s status as a master of visual design.

No results