FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Pier Paolo Pasolini - Edipo Re 

It's never easy to describe Pasolini films, let alone evaluate them. It works like a holding pattern. Maybe next week I'll think Edipo Re is bad. Or maybe I'll decide it's one of the best films by this mysterious director? That's the way it is with this kind of auteur film of the 60s. You leave the cinema and at first you can't think of anything you've just seen. Would the elements of the film then flow together into an overall statement? Summarising the plot is never helpful. There are always political and social questions hidden behind the surface. Pasolini tells his stories in a spare, passive camera style. The music is thin, often eerie. His figures act as if in a trance. And then his films end, well, how? In fear and horror? Or joy? In any case, little Edipo is left to die in the desert (by his own father!) - found and raised like a king. The prophecy that he is chosen to kill his father and marry his mother terrifies him. He flees, colliding with an elderly stranger on the run, whom he kills in a duel.... Pasolini's Edipo is born in 1940s Italy and dies in the present - in 1960s Italy. This is exquisitely illustrated visually, abandoning the classic style of tragedy and telling the story in a more human way. And of course, Pasolini's Epido is a very pretty boy! Pasolini tells the story sparsely and coldly and his characters remain just as rigid. They never really catch fire in the Moroccan desert. And now?