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From peacock plumage to mechanical phoenix, the essence of Euripides as the flow of upheaval. "I was born to disturb the peace of men," declares Electra (Mari Töröcsik) in the middle of Miklós Jancsó's whirl, discontent personified amid daisy-chains of candle-carrying maidens and cymbal-playing dwarfs. Fifteen years have passed since the murder of Agamemnon, Aegisthus (József Madaras) presides as a bald Stalinist who demands praise and understands the force of fear. "Guilty the ruler who burdens his subjects with freedom." An abandoned outpost summarizes the tyrannized nation, in the cacophony of drums and hooves the crack of whips is heard most sharply. The stream of consciousness approach from Red Psalm finally turns into dance—each extended take is sculpted with prodigies of movement, the prairie is one moment teeming with minstrels and horses and the next a vacant stage for a single figure twirling a saber at sundown. The messenger bearing news of the liberator's death is shot and promptly revived, he's Orestes (György Cserhalmi) back and ready to precipitate the most festive of Jancsó's reversals of power. The windswept, incantatory eye of the storm, Electra finds the serene smile of vengeance: "It's not you who needs destroying, but the system you've built up." The obscure tableaux of ancient tragedy, the crystalline here and now of Hungary under the Soviet Bloc, a continuum of renewals. A whole menagerie of falcons, oxen and doves have their marks to hit in the choreographed pageantry, an uprising's euphoria (a torture boulder becomes as light as a beach ball) and its dissolution (a pas de deux with pistols). "Blessed be your name, revolution." Aegisthus' demise is Attila's in Bertolucci's Novecento, the crimson whirlybird is a gag from Demy (Donkey Skin). Cinematography by János Kende.
--- Fernando F. Croce |