Jocasta Was a Cougar
Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975) was a poet and novelist who made films. The movies he made from 1961 until his premature death (a shocking murder that eliminated one of Italy's greatest filmmakers) glow with a poetic sensibility that make these works experiences unlike any others in cinema.
His sixth feature film, Edipo Re (Oedipus Rex), from 1967, has the usual Pasolini-style handheld camerawork; long distance, focusing in tightly on faces at times, moving along with characters, in all a human movement feel to the images, including subjective shots that wander about as if we're looking through someone's eyes. Early in the film, a baby looks at the surrounding tree line, the camera moving along nearly in 360 degrees, taking in the setting of the film's first part--a framing narrative about a husband and wife, their baby, the husband's jealousy of the newborn, this giving way to the ancient story given us by Sophocles, interpreted by Pasolini.
This all angles approach early in the movie represented by the long traveling shot of the tree line comes to settle into the character of Edipo (Franco Citti) in the ancient story occupying most of the film. Having been gotten rid of by his parents, King Laio and Queen Giocasta (the two of them fearful of a prophecy about their son someday killing them), little Edipo is found by a Corinthian man and taken to that country's King and Queen, there to be raised as a Prince and heir to the throne.
Edipo visits an Oracle and receives direct word from the Seer that he will kill his father and make love with his mother. The Seer cackles upon delivering this prophecy, which comes true. Edipo wanders, eventually meets a King on the road who offends him, kills the King (who turns out to be his father, Laio) and after dispatching the Sphinx marries the Queen, his mother, with whom he has children.
A familiar story. It's like watching Hamlet unfold, or Romeo and Juliet. Edipo's shock at his discovery of the truth leads him to stab his eyes and wander away blind. Pasolini cuts to the framing story, with a blind modern Franco Citti wandering about until he's guided to the place where as a baby he gazed at that tree line. Life ends as it begins, he remarks. This final place enclosed by trees is like a theater where this eternal drama has been acted out.
I like to think that Pasolini was drawn to this Sophoclean tragedy because it dramatizes how a person moves through life without knowing all of what's going on; without being aware of vitally important factors that can take effect in surprising, and even fatal ways. Pasolini himself, a gay man who spent many an evening in Rome and environs picking up young men to have sex with, was murdered by one of those young men.
Because of his frequently indulged habit, was Pasolini doomed to eventually cross paths with the wrong man?
Another aspect of the film and the play it's based on is the role of chance. Edipo gets into the habit in his wanderings of spinning around without looking and then walking in the direction he's facing when he stops spinning. Thus, he ends up face to face with the man he doesn't realize is his father. He later spins himself in the direction of his father's kingdom, heading towards his first home, the place that rejected him long ago.
In life, random occurrences often lead to meaningful encounters. You end up going to a bar you hadn't planned on going to and there you meet someone you eventually marry. I know someone to whom this happened. His marriage, his child, were based on chance, but the ancient Greeks threw fate into the occasion. Edipo is meant to return home to his mother. His parents threw him away, and fate coughed him back up into their lives. What follows is a gradual understanding, a seeking of truth by Edipo, increasingly haunted by what he's done.
The standout performance in the film is by Franco Citti (1935-2016). Starting with his affecting performance as the title character in Pasolini's debut film, Accattone, Citti appeared in seven of the director's films. As Edipo, his expressions of rage, anguish, bewilderment, and shock are painful to watch and hear, especially during his climactic horrified back and forth with his mother/wife. As with Pasolini's Medea, the final minutes of Edipo Re had me leaning forward in my chair, mesmerized by the struggles of the protagonist and also stimulated by the beauty of the filmmaker's images and command of emotional tones, adding up to Pasolini's greatness as a poetic director, someone capable of illustrating feelings on film, with camera movements, editing, sound, light; using the technical equipment of modern filmmaking to write visual poetry with a lens for a pen.
Vic Neptune
Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975) was a poet and novelist who made films. The movies he made from 1961 until his premature death (a shocking murder that eliminated one of Italy's greatest filmmakers) glow with a poetic sensibility that make these works experiences unlike any others in cinema.
His sixth feature film, Edipo Re (Oedipus Rex), from 1967, has the usual Pasolini-style handheld camerawork; long distance, focusing in tightly on faces at times, moving along with characters, in all a human movement feel to the images, including subjective shots that wander about as if we're looking through someone's eyes. Early in the film, a baby looks at the surrounding tree line, the camera moving along nearly in 360 degrees, taking in the setting of the film's first part--a framing narrative about a husband and wife, their baby, the husband's jealousy of the newborn, this giving way to the ancient story given us by Sophocles, interpreted by Pasolini.
This all angles approach early in the movie represented by the long traveling shot of the tree line comes to settle into the character of Edipo (Franco Citti) in the ancient story occupying most of the film. Having been gotten rid of by his parents, King Laio and Queen Giocasta (the two of them fearful of a prophecy about their son someday killing them), little Edipo is found by a Corinthian man and taken to that country's King and Queen, there to be raised as a Prince and heir to the throne.
Edipo visits an Oracle and receives direct word from the Seer that he will kill his father and make love with his mother. The Seer cackles upon delivering this prophecy, which comes true. Edipo wanders, eventually meets a King on the road who offends him, kills the King (who turns out to be his father, Laio) and after dispatching the Sphinx marries the Queen, his mother, with whom he has children.
A familiar story. It's like watching Hamlet unfold, or Romeo and Juliet. Edipo's shock at his discovery of the truth leads him to stab his eyes and wander away blind. Pasolini cuts to the framing story, with a blind modern Franco Citti wandering about until he's guided to the place where as a baby he gazed at that tree line. Life ends as it begins, he remarks. This final place enclosed by trees is like a theater where this eternal drama has been acted out.
I like to think that Pasolini was drawn to this Sophoclean tragedy because it dramatizes how a person moves through life without knowing all of what's going on; without being aware of vitally important factors that can take effect in surprising, and even fatal ways. Pasolini himself, a gay man who spent many an evening in Rome and environs picking up young men to have sex with, was murdered by one of those young men.
Because of his frequently indulged habit, was Pasolini doomed to eventually cross paths with the wrong man?
Another aspect of the film and the play it's based on is the role of chance. Edipo gets into the habit in his wanderings of spinning around without looking and then walking in the direction he's facing when he stops spinning. Thus, he ends up face to face with the man he doesn't realize is his father. He later spins himself in the direction of his father's kingdom, heading towards his first home, the place that rejected him long ago.
In life, random occurrences often lead to meaningful encounters. You end up going to a bar you hadn't planned on going to and there you meet someone you eventually marry. I know someone to whom this happened. His marriage, his child, were based on chance, but the ancient Greeks threw fate into the occasion. Edipo is meant to return home to his mother. His parents threw him away, and fate coughed him back up into their lives. What follows is a gradual understanding, a seeking of truth by Edipo, increasingly haunted by what he's done.
The standout performance in the film is by Franco Citti (1935-2016). Starting with his affecting performance as the title character in Pasolini's debut film, Accattone, Citti appeared in seven of the director's films. As Edipo, his expressions of rage, anguish, bewilderment, and shock are painful to watch and hear, especially during his climactic horrified back and forth with his mother/wife. As with Pasolini's Medea, the final minutes of Edipo Re had me leaning forward in my chair, mesmerized by the struggles of the protagonist and also stimulated by the beauty of the filmmaker's images and command of emotional tones, adding up to Pasolini's greatness as a poetic director, someone capable of illustrating feelings on film, with camera movements, editing, sound, light; using the technical equipment of modern filmmaking to write visual poetry with a lens for a pen.
Vic Neptune
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