Electra, My Love

"Blessed be your name, 'revolution.'" This line appears in neither Sophocles nor Euripides--the Greek tragedians who immortalized the story of Electra, daughter of Agamemnon, the man who led the Achaeans in the Trojan War (to reclaim Helen, his brother Menelaus's wife, abducted by Paris) and returned home 10 years later only to be slain by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. As Miklos Jancsó's 1974 adaptation opens, Electra (Mari Töröcsik), 15 years later, is a bitter, anxious court fixture who does not hide her loathing for her usurping stepfather and secretly waits for her exiled brother Orestes (György Cserhalmi) to return, so that they may avenge the murder of their father. So far, so traditional. However, through Jancso's Hungarian-tinged experiential camera, the Electra story--originally a tale of revenge--metamorphoses into a political fable about the overthrow of a tyrannical oppressor--and not surprisingly so, given Hungary's status as a Soviet satellite under party puppet János Kádár from the late '50s through the '80s. Filmed on a stark Hungarian plain with--as the DVD jacket promises--"rituals of naked girls and galloping horsemen," Electra, My Love fills the screen with spectacle, captured in long, complexly choreographed single-shot takes, as the community docilely celebrates the anniversary of their former benevolent ruler Agamemnon's death, while mouthing obsequious, ridiculous platitudes ("I had only good dreams this year, thanks to you sire") to their oppressive new leader Aegisthus (József Madaras). Of course, things undergo a bit of a land-based sea change, as they say, once Orestes arrives and brother and sister combine forces against Aegisthus. Although the film feels somewhat dated today (occasionally looking as if Hair cast members with shorter locks had wandered into the proceedings), larger foreign cinema collections will certainly want to consider adding this imaginative political reworking of the Orestes legend. A strong optional purchase. (R. Pitman)