Oedipus Rex

Oedipus Rex

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DVD Reviews of Oedipus Rex

DVD Review: Opulent, riveting, strangely autobiographical OEDIPUS REX
Summary: 5 Stars

The film draws great power comes from the completely naturalistic performances, ranging from the leads to the minor characters (Pasolini plays a High Priest). Silvana Mangano (Mrs. Dino De Laurentiis) is outstanding as Jocasta, Oedipus's enigmatic mother/wife. Her stone-like face suggests intense erotic heat with the microscopic wrinkling of a lip. My major reservation with the film is Franco Citti as Oedipus. He appeared in seven films for Pasolini (including the title role in Accatone), and was usually exceptional, but here he brings a too-consistent harsh tone to his role. Of course, Citti's monolithic resolve, as both Oedipus the boy (who cheats to win a discus match) and king, may be Pasolini's point. Namely, since Oedipus refuses to grow, to come to an integrated understanding of who he is and what his society needs him to be, he destroys himself by willful blindness.

Visually, Oedipus Rex draws enormous force from its vivid palette and use of the harsh Moroccan sunlight, not to mention its breathtaking, sometimes outrageous sense of style. Yet the literal clarity of the film does not obscure its dreamlike qualities. Pasolini wanted to film the myth as something which takes place in an authentic setting, yet which unfolds in a period outside of historical time. Even the eclectically multicultural soundtrack, with folk music from traditions as startlingly diverse as Japan and Rumania (and this was twenty years before the popularity of "world music"), helps achieve Pasolini's ambitious goal.

Intriguingly, the real protagonist of the film is Pasolini himself, who subtextually takes on Freud's (in)famous Oedipus Complex. As he said, "I wanted to make ... a kind of completely metaphoric - and therefore mythicized - autobiography; and ... to confront both the problems of psycho-analysis and the problem of the myth." (In the half hour documentary on Pasolini included on the DVD, one illuminating section is devoted to his views on Oedipus Rex.)

Revisionist Freudianism aside, this film succeeds in bringing both Oedipus and his world astonishingly to life. This Oedipus Rex is engrossing because it works simultaneously on so many different levels. For people new to Pasolini, this representative film is an excellent place to begin. In terms of its impact on film history, you can see its influence on pictures as diverse as Fellini Satyricon (1969), Norman Jewison's Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), and Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). It shows Pasolini grappling with some of the knottiest themes of his films, and of most people's lives, namely the relationship of men and women, of child and parents, and of one man to himself. And it is at once a work of outrageous design and deep feeling, a semi-camp epic with genuine mythic resonance.

The DVD is of very good quality, especially considering the film's age. However, the Pasolini Foundation in Rome, which controls the rights, insisted that the U.S. distributor release the DVD without any chapters (i.e., it's in one continuous track), to encourage people to watch the film in its entirety. Still, it's important to have this crucial part of Pasolini's filmography on DVD.

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