Incredibly abstruse visualisation of the myth, allowing Pasolini to explore the conflict - a psychological and social conflict - between an older order of magic and the new order of reason and "civilisation". Jason needs Medea, repository of occult knowledge and superstitious practise, to help establish his rule; when he gets there, she is side-lined, and takes a terrible revenge. The storytelling here is oblique and elliptical, full of gorgeous images, sensual locations and sounds the like of which human ears rarely get to hear, full of ululations and Dionysian frenzy.
The most intriguing segments involve Jason's relationship with his mentor, the centaur, who appeared in his childhood as a horse-man and his adulthood in normal human form, but the horse-form remains as a mythic trace once childhood is departed.
The athlete Pasolini casts as Jason does well, physically scrumptious as he is and with the requisite banal arrogance; the casting of Maria Callas as Medea is more problematic - she's so obviously the product of the higher echelons of civilised culture that it is impossible to see her as a primitive force - her presence threatens to turn the film into a jaded millionairess' arty home movie. Still, if you try to ignore her patrician features and over-indulgent false-eyelashes, there's plenty of Pasolinian delights on display, and hardly anything in the film you would be able to see in anyone else's version of cinema.
The most intriguing segments involve Jason's relationship with his mentor, the centaur, who appeared in his childhood as a horse-man and his adulthood in normal human form, but the horse-form remains as a mythic trace once childhood is departed.
The athlete Pasolini casts as Jason does well, physically scrumptious as he is and with the requisite banal arrogance; the casting of Maria Callas as Medea is more problematic - she's so obviously the product of the higher echelons of civilised culture that it is impossible to see her as a primitive force - her presence threatens to turn the film into a jaded millionairess' arty home movie. Still, if you try to ignore her patrician features and over-indulgent false-eyelashes, there's plenty of Pasolinian delights on display, and hardly anything in the film you would be able to see in anyone else's version of cinema.