Watching this makes me lament Trier. It's good work. It's more than that, in fact. Beautiful pictures are not uncommon in film. In fact, they are getting so banal, say a postcard-perfect sunset, that we (both viewers and makers) often actively seek ugliness, some imperfection that conveys flawed - human - intimacy. Trier has flitted between the two notions (his Dogme entirely devoted to the latter), mixing and matching in a variety of projects down to his recent Melancholia.
But there are really few makers who can consistently furnish the sunsets, and link between them, that reveal something of planets in their orbits. Tarkovsky is king of that close vision from faraway. Watching this makes me lament Trier, because he could have been our current Tarkovsky, much more than either Tarr or Kusturica, who both flirted with carrying the mantle of that cosmogonic art.
This one lacks that orbital vision in different narrative planes (we only have one thread), and is mostly, rapturously devoted to tone poetry of elemental intimacy. It was very early in Trier's career anyway, but it's still a better and more visual third film than most directors ever managed. It's beautiful, but not in the clean sense of a David Lean epic. I prefer it this way.
That is partly because he's working from a barebones story that is ancient myth as interpreted by Euripides (and written into a script by Carl Dreyer): Medea has fled to Corinth promised marriage by the Argonaut Jason, who reneges on that promise when offered the hand of the daughter of the local king. Medea together with her two children is banished from the city.
It is a simple story of injustice. You are going to anticipate every turn, including (probably) the most tragic finale. It is the conventional Medea of myth, betrayed mother, woman, vengeful enchantress of cthonic witchcraft.
But the visual bell boom of this Rublev stretches far and wide, as he rings into being a gauzy world of untime, last fires, and first voyages out to cloudy sea. If only he hadn't lost himself in anger and cynical pessimism.. Tarr has followed suit. I think about the only thing that can keep an intelligent mind sane, is finding rhyme and music in unreason.
