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Electra, My Love (Miklós Jancsó, 1974)
🕑 Added 2022-05-02 16:41:30 +0000 UTC
This appears to be the point at which Jancsó descends into silliness, but Electra, My Love is by no means without interest. Here Jancsó abjures the specifics of Hungarian history that usually anchor his films, and although Electra has all the pertinent political elements in place, it stages the classical myth with a style of theatrical pageantry that screams of the 1970s. The result is often a bit like a Straub / Hullet production tackled by Renaissance Fair participants, and yet for all this it does manage to hold our attention.
In fact, this Sophocles in the Park vibe gives Jancsó's choreography and ritualism a sort of breathing room that his more modern productions often lack. Since it's expected that we all know the basic story, Electra, My Love can avoid plot or characterization -- two of Jancsó's weak spots -- without it seeming like a formalist dodge. Our Electra (Mari Töröcsik) is a middle-aged depressive whose insistent connection to the past is seen by those around her as at best a drag, at worst a sign of insanity.
Nothing new there, of course, but seen in the context of Jancsó's overall project, Electra's obstinate memory is quite clearly allegorical for resistance to decadent ideology. Usurper-king Aegisthus (Jancsó regular József Madaras) and his minions speak to Electra with the language of overt demagoguery, noting that Agamemnon was a bad ruler because he burdened the masses with freedom and democracy, and that tyranny is comforting because it makes everyone's social role abundantly clear. During a "truth festival" celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of Aegisthus' murder of Agamemnon, the lines of peasants take turns praising their king in what can only be described as an early Trump rally. ("My money is worth twice what it was last year;" "I only have good dreams since you became our king," etc. Or in Trump's tweet-speak, "401k!")
The resonances with modern and even contemporary political reality are not hard to spot, and in fact they are not terribly enlightening. But Electra, My Love coasts quite well for about 45 minutes on the fundamental thrust of the myth itself. If The Red and the White represented a perfect match of form and content, this film inverts that relationship, using the Greek myth as a clothespeg for all of Jancsó's usual moves: lines of dancers in an open field, men on horseback, bare-chested women, and the like. Jancsó probably would have considered the music video for "The Safety Dance" to be some sort of platonic ideal of Pure Cinema, and despite its moderate virtues Electra, My Love finds a major director approaching his expiration date.
Comments
Kent M. Beeson
Just wanted to say I am (was?) completely ignorant of Jancsó but this series has made me *very* curious.
