Film

Medea

Name: Medea
Genre: Drama, TV Movie
Released: 1989
Cast: Udo Kier, Kirsten Olesen, Henning Jensen, Solbjørg Højfeldt, Preben Lerdorff Rye

Other titles called Medea: the 1969 film.

A 1989 Danish adaptation of Euripides' oldest surviving tragedy, stripping the myth to raw fury and betrayal. Udo Kier plays Jason with creeping weakness; Kirsten Olesen's Medea is a woman watching her life annihilated by a man's ambition. Seventy-six minutes of escalating, terrible inevitability. For viewers who want tragedy without sentiment.

TMDb rating

3.3

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you are drawn to stark, stylised retellings of myth, where the emotional force comes from ritual and close-up stillness rather than plot, and you don't mind a theatrical, cramped staging.

Skip it if you want warmth or a brisk narrative; this is slow, airless and punishing, with little relief and a deliberately artificial feel that some will find off-putting.

What it asks of you: Seventy-six minutes, but every one has to be sat through in close attention; the pace is deliberate and the mood stays dark from the first frame to the last.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Nil by Mouth1997

Gary Oldman's screenplay about working-class London brutality and family collapse. The same pitiless attention to how intimacy curdles into violence, how betrayal accumulates until something shatters.

But Relentlessly bleak and shot through with casual racism. The rawness is the point, but it can feel punishing rather than illuminating.

Thelma & Louise1991

Two women watching the world close around them, choosing destruction on their own terms rather than capitulation. The same axis of powerlessness and defiance, though Ridley Scott takes it toward exhilaration.

But The second half trades tragedy for action-movie momentum. If you're after uncompromising darkness, this veers toward mythmaking.

Dogville2003

Lars von Trier's three-hour experiment in staged brutality, watching grace weaponized into vengeance. The same collapse of faith in human goodness, the same final reclamation of agency through violence.

But Deliberately austere and confrontational. Trier's intellectual coldness can read as cruelty disguised as philosophy.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Medea

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Come and See1985

Both examine how catastrophe annihilates the person you were. Both trust the audience to sit with horror without looking away.

Elem Klimov's nightmarish chronicle of a boy soldier in WWII Belarus, watching his humanity burnt away by warfare. The same escalating collapse, the same refusal to soften or sentimentalize suffering and transformation into something merciless.

But Profoundly disturbing—graphic violence, graphic suffering, with no distance or comfort. This is endurance viewing, not entertainment.

Under the Skin2014

Jonathan Glazel's film of a woman luring men to their obliteration, shot through with the kind of mounting, inexplicable dread that Medea generates. Alien indifference as a form of power.

But Cryptic, slow, and deliberately opaque about meaning. If you need clarity, you'll spend two hours frustrated and cold.

The Killing2011

Sarah Lund's investigation of a girl's death while her own life fragments. Danish television at its best: methodical, moody, with violence treated as consequence rather than spectacle.

But Thirty hours across three seasons. The middle section sags, and the payoff divides viewers sharply on whether the journey justified itself.

Prometheus2012

Ridley Scott's study of ambition and abandonment in space. A man created beings he then discards; they return with the logic of Greek tragedy. Similar architecture of inescapable doom.

But The plot has more holes than Swiss cheese and characters make bewildering decisions. Thematic intelligence does not fix narrative dysfunction.

Three Colors: Red1994

Kieślowski's meditation on fate and interconnection, with a woman at its moral centre discovering she is not the author of her own life. Quieter than Medea but asking the same questions.

But Extremely slow and symbolic. If you prefer direct emotional address, you'll find it distant and mannered.

The Soft Kill1994

Udo Kier again, in a thriller about betrayal and violence. A chance to see the actor who played Jason in roles that let you trace the dimensions of his unsettling screen presence.

But A minor late-Cold-War espionage film with dated production values. Kier's interest cannot entirely carry it.

The Son2022

Both watch a household collapse from the inside, both insist that love and violence are not opposites but neighbours, both refuse easy catharsis.

Florian Zeller's study of a suicidal teenager and his parents' fracturing marriage. Not violent like Medea, but equally about the way one person's crisis detonates everyone around them, and the guilt that calcifies into something harder.

But Entirely interior and airless—no climax, no resolution, just the slow recognition of failure and the things you cannot fix. Some find it honest; others find it depressing without purpose.