Movie Review – Oedipus Rex

Oedipus Rex (1967)
Written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini

Pasolini had a deep interest in the mythic. In his early films, the mythic could be found among the peasant class that lived on the outskirts of post-war Rome as it was rebuilt into a modernized city, complete with mass consumerism. Despite being a very modern type of person – queer, atheist, communist – Pasolini was constantly returning to the past, especially to myths & fables where symbolism provided a mystical explanation for how the world came to be what it is. After experimenting with it in a short film, this was the director’s first feature-length color movie. The result is a picture where Pasolini pushes his filmmaking to new heights but still stumbles along the way.

Jocasta (Silvana Mangano) gives birth to her first & only child, Oedipus. The first time he opens his eyes, it’s while suckling his mother’s breast. He looks up at her face. The film immediately sets up the core theme of this story and the similarly named psychological complex developed by Freud. It should be noted that Pasolini was very close with his mother; he cast her as the elderly Virgin Mary in The Gospel According to St. Matthew. It wouldn’t be too stretch to say he understood the tension and connection between mothers and sons. There’s a brief moment when Jocasta looks down at her baby, and her smile fades. She seems to have realized something but then smiles again, letting the thought pass.

The expected turn happens when Laius, Oedipus’s father, tries to have sex with his wife shortly after her labor. She rejects him, and the king gets it in his head that the baby will be his downfall. The child is banished to the desert and taken by a servant who cannot let the baby die. Instead, he gives him to a kindly old man. He, in turn, brings the baby to the King and Queen of Corinth, who cannot have their own child. They name him, and he grows up believing he’s their biological son. Adult Oedipus (Franco Citti) becomes a victim of a cruel Fate. He was blissfully unaware of the complications that led him to his current state and now drifting down a path of inevitable destruction.

Pasolini referred to this film as containing “autobiographical anxiety,” referring to his own upbringing. His father was a military officer who joined Mussolini’s fascist regime, and the filmmaker’s mother was a teacher who nurtured her son. Pasolini said he was using mythic characters and themes to explore his own psychological landscape and that the film was a rebuke of the bourgeois Italy he was born into and cursed to live with. 

The film and the original story are also studies of Fate. Unlike the Judeo-Christian myths, where humanity is wholly blamed for their own suffering on Earth, this story posits that Fate is a neutral force. It does not take into account anything we do, good or bad. It simply unfolds a narrative of life that is predetermined and inevitable. Does Oedipus make the choice to kill the Sphinx, or is that something he is always going to do as part of setting events in motion? Oedipus is a man who walks through life oblivious to what the gods have in store for him. In many ways, he’s like the Biblical Job, for whom the Jewish God allows horrible things to befall him to prove some sort of point to Satan. 

As we look at our own world at the moment, we can’t help but feel similarly. What, if anything, can we as individuals do in the face of such significant global crises? Oedipus is a man of action, and the film contains very little dialogue. He does things, and there are reactions to what he does. If we go back to the start of the hero’s tale, we have to wonder how much agency he has in how things turn out. The violence is muted on screen, which draws our attention to the aspect of Fate that looms over the proceedings. 

Where Pasolini’s previous work felt somewhat inviting and humanistic, Oedipus Rex has an otherworldly feel. The landscapes (the film was shot in Morocco) feel alien. The wardrobe continues Pasolini’s trend of including anachronistic designs, refusing to adhere to historical accuracy. The filmmaker feels quite at home in the symbolic world, and several images here remind me of the work fellow Italian Sergio Leone employs in his spaghetti westerns. My biggest takeaway was how this skillfully treads the line between an art picture and a classic gladiator-type action movie.