| Medea Material |
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Masters’ Cinema: Anatoly Vassiliev Wed 12 December, 6pm Cinema Room Admission free Before the film Jolanta Góralczyk will read a Polish translation of Medea Material. 60’, premiere: 2002, director: Anatoly Vassiliev, actress: Valérie Dréville Performance in French The first versions of Medea Material based on the text by Heiner Muller date back to 2001; the final version was presented during the Avignon Festival in 2002. Upon entering the Chapel of Grey Penitents – where the show was staged – the audience were confronted with a huge screen suspended in the middle, marking the space like a Chinese folding screen, like a theatre curtain or a sail. There on the screen is the silent footage of the sea, its waves beating against the shore. You can feel the infinite horizon, the persistent oscillation of images, a slight dizziness; the insistent desire, the relentless tide of passion which echoes in all of us, so recognizable by that sea-sickness, by the nausea of going on a swing. An actress, Valerie Dreville, enters the space. She is wearing a dress with a simple geometric pattern of blue, yellow and green squares. The queen of Colchide. No magnificent belle, but a creature of an exquisite fragility. Light brown hair, pale skin, narrow wrists, weak limbs. She sits down in front of the screen, and launches into a long monologue addressed to the traitor, Jason. To the left we see a white enamel basin – one of those things that are so functional and frightening at the same time, things that we prefer not to see in real life – something that belongs in a surgery (in the anatomical “theatre”?) or in a dentist chair. A receptacle for all used bandages, all soiled tissues, all cotton swabs drenched in blood. To the right, there are glasses and boxes of a totally different kind – modern cosmetic bottles or, possibly, ancient phials and jars for oils and perfumes. Medea, who is sitting right in front of us, opens the lid, her quick fingers take some cream from the box and start to put it on her face, on her throat. A woman who hates getting older? One who tries to save the remnants of her fading beauty? Not quite. She applies the cream in a strange way, the layer is much too thick, much too uneven. It is not used as salutary unction but rather as layers of plaster, layers of whitewash that start to dry up on the skin. The monologue goes on, in the same relentless rhythm, to the same sound of a pounding hammer – like the beating of our own hearts, like the phallic energy of sexual union, like waves that keep on beating against the shore. “You owe me a brother”, she insists. A strange reproach, so unjust, so hard to bear. It wasn’t her, the queen of Colchide, who had killed the boy and carved up his body (the seagulls on the screen are still trying to find their prey in the waves). And later, after Apsyrtus, there was Pelius, to whom she promised eternal youth that can be attained through death: it’s not the first time she is going to use that knife. Now, slowly, she starts to unbutton her dress as she continues to speak, reproach, remember; finally she is sitting there completely naked with her legs forcibly opened by the last surge of passion. The dress is thrown in the enamel basin, the dry dress from which her hand squeezes water – down into the rubbish bin, into the dirty banana peels, down go the soiled fabrics of all broken habits and conventions, of all her past stories. Here is the flame that starts burning, here is the fire that will consume the last remnants of the broken ties and relationships. Out of the same magic box she takes little pieces of white gauze and puts them on her breasts, on her vulnerable, exposed belly: one can imagine a multitude of tiny wounds hidden under the torn bandages. The naked body as a map, a blueprint for all future cuts and transformations. The naked body as a mummy ready to be put into the sarcophagus, as a new, glistening body of a snake seen through the torn pieces of dead skin. Indeed, Medea was related to serpents – the protectors of underground waters. There is something that leaves a lasting impression on the audience, and it’s not the murder of the children (two little dolls filled with rice are torn apart and thrown into the fire), or the mad rage of an insulted woman, or the horrible revenge. Rather, it’s the archaic myth we confront, one that gradually evolves right in front of us. The sea on the screen has already turned grey, it’s covered with the ashes of burnt-out passions, but even its dull surface radiates a red glow coming from the inside. The sea has drunk too much blood, far too much do digest and dissolve. Medea is still there, fixing us with her eyes from under heavy serpentine lids; ready to slip into a new existence (she will continue to marry heroes, she will give birth to another son, she will even become a wife of Achilles in the kingdom of Hades). She carries on, she is unable to stop. Without shedding tears for the past, without fear. She has left her old skin behind; by burning down she her former self she has completed the rite of purification. She can say about herself, using Muller’s words: “I, neither animal nor human; I, neither a man nor a woman; I – Medea”. She has completely forgotten the past – but only after having passed through the flame. (Natasha Isaeva) |