Featured Audience Ratings

• Stefanie C

  
  This film is brilliantly set and cast. Pasolini, almost wordlessly, distinguishes between the ancient and mythical world and modern and rational realm. Medea is completely associated with the elemental, while by birthright, Jason seems to be a bridge between the two worlds.… More
  This film is brilliantly set and cast. Pasolini, almost wordlessly, distinguishes between the ancient and mythical world and modern and rational realm. Medea is completely associated with the elemental, while by birthright, Jason seems to be a bridge between the two worlds. Jason's denial of Medea severs the relationship to the past, never to be recaptured. This return to myth is a parabolic commentary on the then current state of Italian culture; by embracing American consumerism, values and the spiritual are negated - connection to the past is severed, forever unknown by modern man. We are the damned!

• Cassandra M

  
  Medea is an extraordinary film which some will find difficult. Telling the story of Jason and his quest for the Golden Fleece, this is not the stuff of Ray Harryhausen. Meeting the priestess of the Fleece, Medea, he falls in love with her and takes her home. Years later, after bearing… More
  Medea is an extraordinary film which some will find difficult. Telling the story of Jason and his quest for the Golden Fleece, this is not the stuff of Ray Harryhausen. Meeting the priestess of the Fleece, Medea, he falls in love with her and takes her home. Years later, after bearing him sons, she exacts a terrible revenge after he spurns her for a new love. Medea is also extraordinary in exhibiting Pasolini's demonstration of contrasts in plot development and framing. In the sequence in which we are introduced to Medea, we witness the mesmeric nature of a human sacrifice, which changes from the ecstatic to the horrific within the same sequence. This motif recurs throughout the film, and has prompted admiration from French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who mentions Pasolini in his treatise on the movement-image. Filmed with a mixture of professional and non-professional actors, Medea is a challenging and refreshing change from the usual, as it builds up to a frightening climax in an unconventional way. Often shown in 'World Cinema' slots late at night, it's a film worth staying up for, or recording, for those seeking an alternative to Hollywood pap.