Electra, My Love

 
Miklós Jancsó adapted the stageplay by L. Gyurkó, Szerelmem, Elektra, into the 1974 film Electra, My Love. The film is very watchable as cinema ... for some viewers (to judge by the Amazon.com reviews!). As a usage of classical mythology it is quite remarkable. Its 71 minutes constitute one of my best Netflix rentals in an active year.

The narrative adapts the Orestes myth to the milieu of Soviet-occupied, post-1956 Hungary so as to incite in the audience’s minds active emulation of classical role models who risked dire consequences to revolt against pervasive tyranny. When Gyurkó wrote the play in 1968, a little more than a decade had passed since the failed revolution of 1956, which the Russians quashed. In the film's present, it has been fifteen years since Clytemnestra murdered Agamemnon and now ten years since the queen herself passed away. Aegisthus rules a populace that proclaims felicity, and Aegisthus is a tyrant who willingly admits to Electra the necessity of bloody discipline: "Roads must be paved with skulls and walls plastered with cries. I don't like blood, Electra. But it buys order."

The film opens with an allusion to Sophocles' Electra. Chryosthemis urges Electra to forget and move on. Because Sophocles instituted the character of Chrysothemis, we expect the narrative to unfold along Sophoclean lines. The film, however, scarcely follows that anticipated path. For Sophocles' drama focuses on the psychology of a daughter who will kill her mother in the name of justice. Jancsó's telling has another directive to deliver. Revolution and regime-change are the message here, not the standard fare for an oresteia. Indeed, in Aeschylus' hands the message of the oresteia was all about reconciliation. With Gyurkó and Jancsó the last Tantalids are all about revolution. Neither sibling is actually capable of contriving tyrannicide alone; but, their dynamic combination achieves the necessary energy that eliminates Aegisthus and his cronies.

Cinematically, too, the film is remarkable. 71 minutes are covered by about one ten principle shots, each about as lengthy as a mid-70's film processing could manage. [See listing below.]  Jancsó opens this film with a remarkable "oner" 11-minute shot. It sets the cinematic tone for the film. Essentially, Jancsó shoots each section of each act in one shot. Like paragraph markings in a book, or scenery changes on a stage, the cuts mark strophes in this elaborate orchestration. A tremendous amount of orchestration has gone into every single shot. More like an analogue ballet than an edited film, the Jancsó’s visual narrative involves tremendously precise blocking from sometimes hundreds of actors and not a few dozen wild horses. It’s pretty stunning. The first very long sequence constitutes orchestration of several dozen actors, two glimpses at the setting sun, the wrangling of a herd of wild horses, the choreography of a lean swordsman, three dwarves with cymbals, and about 40 lines of dialogue between Electra, Aegisthus, and his deputy tyrannt. The opening sequence will leave no doubt in any viewer's mind: we are definitely not in Kansas here. This is an artsy film.

You can get an appreciation for this blocking in Richard Brody’s New Yorker online clip from 24 August 2010, which shows about half the opening shot. (See the link on my OGCMA slide.)

A ministrel with a folk guitar constantly crisscrosses the film. He is a balladeer with a song about Orestes' epic return. Mind you, the hero is not named in the song. But the foreboding arrival of the revolutionary is going to be as monumental as it is going to be epic.  The minstrel sings:

Though cornered, he stayed alive.

A master at this game. 

Lost warrriors greet him. 

Stones ask me, grass implores me

People come to me crying

and shatter the rock of my wanderings.

Fiery steeds stand before the sun and the moon. 

I'll take their manes

to make a scarlet cloak

Swallows shoot the dawn

By the time I get my freedom.

the gate I'll open wide,

And break the wagon of bondage. 

The stranger is familiar

yet we know him not. 

We knew from afar it was him.  

We know his horse's step.

Lost warriors greeet him. 

See him alone on the plain. 

The people await him. 

D'you hear his horse's steps?

It can only be him.

The people await him....

It can only be him.

     Elektra, My Love is all about justice. But it is also about the politics of revolution. Electra's alter-ego is an attractive brunette in the sheer blouse (Mária Bajcsay) who administers the message of the party's leaders. Kikiáltó, "the Herald", is this character's name in the film's credits. She enters the film with reports of Agamemnon's murder, fifteen years ago. In an orchestrated account of local political history she chants the story of Agamemnon's demise. "Since then the people are happy." And  nobody would deny it — not openly, at any rate, given the iron-fisted support she musters. Men crack whips and long lines of the people voice their support, after Kikiáltó reminds them of dire punishments that await those who resist. This is the annual feast day of Agamemnon's death and Aegisthus' rise to power. And she presents Electra to the assembled people at the moment where the regime expects her to recant. When Electra proclaims, instead, the full truth of her belief in the regime's corruption, they stop their ears. Today will bring change, Electra vows; but it will not transpire before we behold the regime's lies.

You may not feel like watching it, because there is a good deal of female nudity in it (and some male nudity, as well). The nudity makes the film unusable in a BYU context, but it needn’t render the film unwatchable for a discerning viewer. For, the film's use of nudity is largely de-eroticized. The disclosure of the human body — primarily female in Jancsó's treatement — illustrates the depravity of the regime that fosters it. When the tyrants themselves are compelled to dance naked, their weakness is most overtly manifest. Electra, on the other hand, is fully covered in a dark dress throughout the film, wrists to neckline clothed in a dark dress.

       The Herald's quasi-erotic affinity for the Chief (Vezér; played by Lajos Balázsovits), the handsome young man in the linen frock. Though nude women appear  frequently throughout this film, one fully nude male only appears. After the regime change and under the administration of Electra, the Chief is compelled to serve naked and dance with his Herald. The nudity they earlier inflicted upon countless others now symbolizes the humility to which Electra so dearly subjects them. Later Orestes clothes them before administering his form of justice. Whether the Herald is also killed is left unclear, but the Chief certainly falls.

The concluding scene is kind of weird. Every talks about it. Reminiscence of a Euripidean deus ex machina is certainly there, when a red helicopter intrudes upon the a-chronistic landscape the director has contrived for the audience. Only a handgun had broken the illusion, quite late in the film. Besides that ... and the helicopter! ... Electra's collision with Aegisthus has occured in a world altogether devoid of machinery. The ending is all a bit jarring. As the revolutionary protagonists, Electra and Orestes, rise in a symbolic resurrection and the people sing a hymn of the Phoenix bird, the prospects of Soviet-style socialists seem to wane. By the film's last frames, Electra and Orestes exude a confidence and optimism that suggests their audience might someday succeed in rising above the tyranny that has held them down for so long.

Electra, My Love is distributed on DVD by Facets Multimedia. I might expect Criterion to have picked it up first. The disc would benefit from the inclusion of such historical commentary as Criterion might arrange.

If you get a chance to see Electra, My Love (1974, Miklos Jancsó = Szerelmem, Elektra) is an astonishing usage of classical mythology. And the Hungarian play from which the film is adapted would seem to warrant an English translation. I have located German and French translations, but no English published translation of the Gyurkó play.
(OGCMA0771NOTOrestes_Jancso)

—— RTM

______________
The oners:

1-11:15
11:15 - 20:25
22:45 - 32:00
32:00-40:50
40:50 - 42:00 (electra smiles at the camera)
42:00 - 43:30 horses in twilight — regime change
43:30 - 46:25
46:30 - 54:00 the ballet of the Herald and the Chief, approach of the ball pushed by horses, discussion with Orestes, arrival and song of the minstrel
54:00 -  1:01    Begins with Aegisthus on a gigantic ball, execution, "This story is at an end", piano music, Orestes and Electra wander away from the camera zigzagging, numerous corpses strewn on the field, , Our story's just starting", starting each day anew, they are covered by a shroud,
1:01 - end epilogue: Orestes and Electra are up and walking, smiling, embracing, arrival of helicopter — discussion of the firebird and its fomenting of revolution

Orestes in San Diego: My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done

 

Matricides are creepy. Let me just throw that out there. My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (dir. W. Herzog; screenplay H. Golder and W. Herzog, 2009) is as disturbing a treatment of the Orestes-impulse as cinema can generate. That David Lynch, purveyor of cinematic wierdos, executive-produces this film may have significance for some readers.

Grace Zabriskie, Michael Shannon, Chloe Sevigny deal with pending
matricide over a disgusting gelatin dessert. A still from the film.

But those who allow an event so tragic may incur society’s frustrated scorn, even when they allowed matricide through mere passivity. For, we are no doubt programmed to blame anybody who permitted the impulse that makes a son murder his mother in cold blood? But why didn’t anybody stop it from happening? This film worries about the development of that impulse and about the stultifying failure of the murderer's associates before the most inexplicable crime. 

Three principal characters surrounding matricide Brad Macallam (Michael Shannon) cannot fathom the “strangeness” that overwhelms the man’s darkening existence. Mrs. Macallam (Grace Zibriskie) seems unable to quite figure out that she is in dire trouble. She also hasn’t figured out that her mismanagement of jello deserts and her son’s personal life have gotten her to this unfortunate place. His girlfriend Ingrid (Chloe Sevigny) does as little to check his stifling weirdness as, perhaps, a real person in such real circumstances might really, neither cajoling nor altering his onset tendency to enact the role of Orestes. And the disturbing passivity of Lee Meyers (Udo Keir), a black-box theater director utterly incapacitated by such clearly worded foreshadowing offered by the matricide himself as “A bird was the largest animal I ever killed, until I killed my mother.” Meyers makes note of that alarming confession several weeks after hearing it, and an hour or so after Mrs. Macallam has been killed by her son. Nobody saw this coming?

The murderer is clearly and patently crazy. Most of what we learn about him through the cinematic narrative comes through flashbacks. Macallam invents pseudo-scriptural commentary on the vile ostrich, quoting the Book of Job on the subject. He gives away all his possessions to a millennial frisbee player in Balboa Park. And he sets up his basketball in a sapling for some future NBA star who might someday come along. But he is first and foremost the brooding actor rehearsing the role of Orestes in a play-within-a-film. We meet this play throughout the film’s central exposition. Flashbacks take us to rehearsals of the play where Macallam’s failure to dissociate acting from role-playing foreshadow, for us, the horrific deed of matricide. We also meet the play in a workshop where the director explains the family curse of the House of Atreus, informing the cast that the mythological Tantalid curse is actually an explanation of the human condition. It affects us all. And a third vignette from that same play shows us a moment when Macallam and his mother together are in the audience of another production and he cannot keep from reciting Orestes’ lines. So deeply has he internalized the need to murder his mother. In the moment, his mother shyly smiles at her future killer’s quirkiness, and the audience judges him with their eyes alone. Why does nobody deal with his psychosis, his patently dangerous wierdness? That must be the point of this odd tale. Mental illness can lead to dangerous consequences, and these might be preventable if somebody does only intervenes.

Macallam’s role as Orestes is acted out literally in a performance of Aeschylus’ Oresteia. Critics of the film have missed this fine point. Reviews accessible through imdb.com seem to generalize the play-within-the-film as some Greek tragedy of Orestes, “the one where he kills his mother.”  None identifies Oresteia. The low point for me has been the Netflix description that says “Brad McCullum [sic] begins to have visions that make him believe he’s living in a Sophocles [!] play in this psychological thriller inspired by true events.” But, there are several less obvious identifiers to assure the viewer that the internal performance is certainly Aeschylus’ Oresteia. In his workshop, director Lee Myers mentions “this trilogy”. The lines rehearsed then performed in the vignettes within the film allign with passages in Choephori then Eumenides. And paracinematic material on the DVD, a dual interview with the co-screenwriters, reveals that Aeschylus was clearly in mind both during the writing of the screenplay and, more essentially, within the real-life events upon which this narrative is based.

A vignetted flashback to one rehearsal presents a chorus chanting ominously about “the cruel bitch of female passion,” of “the sword cutting deep, straight through the lungs,” and of a “child brought to the house to avenge the curse.” This sort of language impels a classicist-viewer to look toward Aeschylus and the Choephori (Libation Bearers) especially. And at Choe. 909 – 916 a little scrutiny shows that sure enough, the chorus is rehearsing Aeschylus. The arrival of the Libation Bearers in the film seal the fates, as it were, of Mrs. Macallam and her brooding son. The scene plays on, even though Macallam is unable to maintain a straightforward rehearsal — the ostensible reason for replaying this flashback.

Knowing the Aeschylean source text helps analysis. For, as that same vignetted rehearsal continues, Macallam misplays Orestes and skips “a hundred lines”. The director objects, walks onto the rehearsal stage and observes the gaffe. Much is wrong. “It makes more sense this way. It does,” says Macallam. What he skips, ever so blithely, is the onset of the Erinyes as acted in those omitted lines from Choerphori. A critical viewer may note that Macallam’s psychotic energy is allowing him to skip gently from the moment of matricide to the heroism of vindicated patriarchy, oresteian quid pro quo venegeance (Clytemnestra for Agamemnon) without those nasty retaliations. Clearly, the director fails to understand what is going on in his actor’s head. He just knows the play’s set narrative is being changed. Then, to compound a non sequitur onto the psychotic chaos, the actor indulges himself in a random anecdote about once shooting and missing a half-court basketball shot that failed.  The director, perplexed, shrugs it all off, and in a moment they are back at the rehearsal of the same scene, the rehearsed chorus chanting about bitches and swordsmiths of destiny and all that.

The director recalls in a police interview having once heard Macallam say, a month or more before the matricide, “A bird was the largest animal I ever killed before I killed my mother.” The vignette enters the cinematic narrative as one of the film’s flashbacks to the Aeschylaean context. In another, the director is workshopping the dramatic text with his cast and crew. 

Lee: [In workshop lecture.] Let me warn you straight out. These ancient Greeks were not just a bunch of philosophers and aesthetes pussy-footing around. They were into the real thing. So as I was saying before, we are dealing here with a trilogy. You know that the king comes home from Troy only to be killed by his wife. Then the son returns home to avenge him, to take his mother’s life. But there’s a history to this curse. The killing goes on for generations. Orestes is just the last link in a bloody chain. It all starts with Tantalus, the one who spends his eternity in Hell chained to a rock by the gods, starving for grapes just beyond his reach. He is the source of our word “tantalize.” He is at the root of our own curse, lusting for something we want but cannot have. He challenged the gods, this Tantalus. He challenged the gods, to see if they were real. So, he invited them for dinner. And just as a test, he served up his son in a stew. The gods puked up his flesh so he could still father more cannibals and killers. Like his own son Atreus who cooked the sons of his brother and then invited him for a feast. I’m saying: to understand Orestes and the curse you must feel the whole weight of this god-forsaken Tantalus house, a dynasty of ruthless kings and diabolical queens who eat each others flesh and ***** [seduce] each others’ wives century after century, generation after generation and only Orestes can lift that curse, but he has to murder his mother to do it. [Eye contact with Brad.] So, he is damned if he does; he is damned if he doesn’t. And doubly damned if he wavers."

Brad: “That’s it! Razzle Dazzle. Razzle them. Dazzle them."

Lee: “I’m the director, Brad. You do what I tell you.” // Brad: “Lee, some people act a role. Others play a part. [Brad grabs the sword. Lee swallows hard.] [Cut back to film's main time.] “You know one thing I could never get out of my mind. He clutched his sword and he said to me: ‘A bird was the largest animal I ever killed until I killed my mother. ‘”

Real-life matricide, Mark Yavorsky’s 1979 slaying of his own mother during the production of the Oresteia  (reported in the San Diego and national press), captured the creative attention of Boston University classics professor Herbert Golder. A press clipping from 12 June 1979 reported “The Elements of a Greek Tragedy? Brilliant UCSD Student Held in Slaying of Mother. Apparently the production was called “Orestes, Orestes”. Yavorsky played the role of the murderous son. At some point, Yavorsky walked out of the world of the play and killed his mother. The bitter irony of this tragic confluence, myth and reality merging, was not lost on a forensic psychologist who pointed Golder at the source narrative that was Yavorsky’s tragedy. Golder later worked with innovative cinematic director Werner Herzog to create a cinematic work with artistic tendencies of its own. In the creation of the screenplay, both Golder and Herzog concern, they were “not interested in making a documentary,” but striving to create a narrative based on fact, and poetically reinvented and stylized, true to both “the poetic core and the original context”.  (This information is shared in “Behind the Madness” interviews with Werner Herzog and  Herbert Golder on the DVD.)

Golder avers in his paracinematic interview that the impulse for MSMSWHYD is akin to Jules Dassin’s A Dream of Passion, a narrative of an actress playing Medea (Ellen Burstyn) coming to know a woman (Melina Mercouri) who murdered her own children.  “I was a student of the classics at the time I saw [A Dream of Passion]. It was the most powerful representation. I always had it in the back of my head,” before and during the creation of

            The formula for fascinating cinematic mythological reception is perfectly poised for brilliance in MSMSWHYD. A mythological narrative, real-life events, a quirky film — all elements deliver that brilliance to an arguable degree. Does it meet muster for consideration as an overt usage of classical mythology and (of real importance) further study? Absolutely.



OGCMA0771NOTOrestes_HerzogGolder
—RTM

APPENDIX:

Transcriptions from the film. Presumably the uncredited translations of Aeschylus are provided by Prof. Golder.

 rehearsal text of Aesch. Choe. 585 – 651 greatly truncated

Chorus of Libation Bearers:

Earth breeds many things,
begetting pain, terror and
horrors of suffering and
the depths of the sea teem
with murderous monsters.
And flaming comets stab down
through the sky and blast
creatures that fly. And creatures
that crawl. And things more
horrid still like the cradles of storms,
cradle of stoms, cradle of storms.
But who can describe the audacity
of man or the daring and passion
of women that stop
at nothing and lead to mortal ruin?
The cruel bitch of female passion
can break apart the yoke that
joins a pair and force apart
the dark embrace of beasts
and man alike. (585 – 600)
This sword cuts deep.
Straight through the lungs.
And justice is flouted and
stomped in the ground.
And the sword smith of destiny
hammers the weapon.
A child is brought to this house
to avenge to lift the seeping stain of
ancient blood. Brought by her, we
shudder to name the dark, brooding fury. (639 – 651)

πολλὰ μὲν γᾶ τρέφει
δεινὰ καὶ δειμάτων ἄχη,
πόντιαί τ᾽ ἀγκάλαι κνωδάλων
ἀνταίων βρύουσι:
πλάθουσι βλαστοῦσι καὶ πεδαίχμιοι
λαμπάδες πεδάοροι,
πτανά τε καὶ πεδοβά-
μονα κἀνεμοέντ᾽ ἂν
αἰγίδων φράσαι κότον.

ἀλλ᾽ ὑπέρτολμον ἀν-
δρὸς φρόνημα τίς λέγοι
καὶ γυναικῶν φρεσὶν τλαμόνων καὶ
παντόλμους ἔρωτας
ἄταισι συννόμους βροτῶν;
ξυζύγους δ᾽ ὁμαυλίας
θηλυκρατὴς ἀπέρω-
τος ἔρως παρανικᾷ
κνωδάλων τε καὶ βροτῶν.

... [omit strophe B thru antistrophe C]

τὸ δ᾽ ἄγχι πλευμόνων ξίφος
διανταίαν ὀξυπευκὲς οὐτᾷ
διαὶ Δίκας. τὸ μὴ θέμις γὰρ οὖν
λὰξ πέδοι πατούμενον, τὸ πᾶν Διὸς
σέβας παρεκβάντος οὐ θεμιστῶς.

Δίκας δ᾽ ἐρείδεται πυθμήν:
προχαλκεύει δ᾽ Αἶσα φασγανουργός:
τέκνον δ᾽ ἐπεισφέρει δόμοισιν
αἱμάτων παλαιτέρων τίνειν μύσος
χρόνῳ κλυτὰ βυσσόφρων Ἐρινύς.[1]

A Canadian production performance of Eumenides 245 ff. and then 588 ff. — when he’s in the audience with his uncomfortable mother. Udo comes and asks him to be quiet.

Leader and Furies: Like the hound on the trail of a wounded deer, we will track him down by the drip of blood.

I snort. Lungs bursting from long man-slaughtering toil ranging over every corner of this earth.

In pursuit without wings I have flown over oceans,

and now that this man is here,

somewhere, cowering.

The scent of human blood grins wide for me.

Look. Look. Look. Look. Look. Look. Everywhere.

Cast your eyes in every direction. Don’t let this mother-killer get away unscathed. (245 – 57)

Macallam joins in from audience, reciting with in unison with the actor onstage the following dialogue. His mother is clearly disturbed.

Orestes/Macallam: I now stand here. Made glad. Made mad with the blood, exulting, wailing, I slew her. (Eum. 594, sort of; it’s actually a telescopic reduction of lines 588 to 600)

I deny no word, heroes. Hear me, woven web that slew my father. This robe. She dyed it in the blood that ran around her lover’s sword.

Furies: Yes, you must tell the manner of your deed.

Orestes/Macallam: Drawn sword in hand, I lopped her head.

Furies: Who, and by craft of who, did urge you on? (607)

Orestes/Macallam: Fate and Necessity made me do it!

Lee intervenes, placing his hand on Macallam’s shoulder. His mother tries to grin in the withering embarrassment.

Lee: Brad don’t participate. You’re disturbing the play. Just be quiet.

Leader [on stage]: … and long dead draw from their killer’s blood to answer blood. 

εἶεν: τόδ᾽ ἐστὶ τἀνδρὸς ἐκφανὲς τέκμαρ.
ἕπου δὲ μηνυτῆρος ἀφθέγκτου φραδαῖς.
τετραυματισμένον γὰρ ὡς κύων νεβρὸν
πρὸς αἷμα καὶ σταλαγμὸν ἐκματεύομεν.
πολλοῖς δὲ μόχθοις ἀνδροκμῆσι φυσιᾷ
σπλάγχνον: χθονὸς γὰρ πᾶς πεποίμανται τόπος,
ὑπέρ τε πόντον ἀπτέροις ποτήμασιν
ἦλθον διώκουσ᾽, οὐδὲν ὑστέρα νεώς.
καὶ νῦν ὅδ᾽ ἐνθάδ᾽ ἐστί που καταπτακών.
ὀσμὴ βροτείων αἱμάτων με προσγελᾷ.

ὅρα ὅρα μάλ᾽ αὖ,
λεύσσετε πάντα, μὴ
λάθῃ φύγδα βὰς
ὁ ματροφόνος ἀτίτας.
ὁ δ᾽ αὖτέ γ᾽ οὖν ἀλκὰν ἔχων
περὶ βρέτει πλεχθεὶς θεᾶς ἀμβρότου
ὑπόδικος θέλει γενέσθαι χρεῶν.
τὸ δ᾽ οὐ πάρεστιν: αἷμα μητρῷον χαμαὶ
δυσαγκόμιστον, παπαῖ,
τὸ διερὸν πέδοι χύμενον οἴχεται.
ἀλλ᾽ ἀντιδοῦναι δεῖ σ᾽ ἀπὸ ζῶντος ῥοφεῖν
ἐρυθρὸν ἐκ μελέων πέλανον: ἀπὸ δὲ σοῦ
φεροίμαν βοσκὰν πώματος δυσπότου:
καὶ ζῶντά σ᾽ ἰσχνάνασ᾽ ἀπάξομαι κάτω,
ἀντίποιν᾽ ὡς τίνῃς ματροφόνου δύας.
ὄψει δὲ κεἴ τις ἄλλος ἤλιτεν βροτῶν
ἢ θεὸν ἢ ξένον
τιν᾽ ἀσεβῶν† ἢ τοκέας φίλους,
ἔχονθ᾽ ἕκαστον τῆς δίκης ἐπάξια.
μέγας γὰρ Ἅιδης ἐστὶν εὔθυνος βροτῶν
ἔνερθε χθονός,
δελτογράφῳ δὲ πάντ᾽ ἐπωπᾷ φρενί.[2]

cast:

Brad Macallam — Michael Shannon

Detective Havenhurst — Willem DaFoe

Ingrid Gudmundson — Chloe Sevigny

Lee Meyers [the director with the German accent] — Udo Kier

Mrs. Macallam — Grace Zabriskie

---

[1] The Greek text is the edition of H.W. Smyth, downloaded from Perseus: http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0085.tlg006.perseus-grc1:646-652 [accessed 24 Oct 2014].

[2]  Again, here the text is taken from H.W. Smyth, ed., Eumenides as included on Perseus: http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0085.tlg007.perseus-grc1:254-275