Medea doesn’t have it easy in cultural history. The ancient ancestor, of course a male fantasy, was still credited with an active role. She committed crimes for love. She stole the Golden Fleece from her own father because her coveted Argonaut Jason coveted the famous ram’s skin so much. Soon she was helping her lover’s grandfather, with cruel cunning, to kill a feared king who in turn had driven Jason’s father to his death. Despite all this, rejected by the unfaithful Jason, Medea went berserk, not only murdered her rival and her father, but also her own children. So everything about this sorceress was ambivalent. She embodied the myth itself, that inextricable chain of fate and guilt.
She had to put up with countless reinterpretations up to the feminist low point with Christa Wolf. Now Medea was the slandered one: a critic of patriarchy, ethically without any ambiguity, a pure victim whose children were slaughtered. So a saint. Above all, this woman was weak. An empty curse remained her sharpest weapon.
The woman as a raging fury
The youngest Medea, now a male fantasy again, is by British playwright Mike Bartlett. A decade ago he wrote the BBC series Doctor Foster, about a betrayed wife and mother who captures raging jealousy and anger: a plot-level, well-rated psychological thriller. And yet: A woman stamped as a victim who recognizes how mendacious the entire male world is before she herself becomes a hysterical fury, that, contrary to the obvious intention, should perhaps be called anti-feminist rather than feminist.
Under the direction of Alexander Dierbach, ARD has now reshot this series – initially the first season. The four-part instead of five-part screenplay by Britta Stöckle largely adheres to the template, even if the plot was moved from a small English town to the pretty seaside town of Husum and now a daughter (Tilda Wunderlich) instead of a son with the fears and increasing anger of the mother has to deal with.
The latter is a sensible change because it brings a little more complexity to the plot compared to the original: When daughter Lotta turns away from her mother in a very believable way (“You’re like a lunatic”), it’s not so easy to explain away with the stereotyped gender psychology that unfortunately also prevails here: lying, pathetic, instinct-driven men; Morally superior women who – except for Medea – come to terms with it: “It’s just sex, he’s having a mid-life crisis.”
The main actress makes up for weaknesses
The fact that you like to go along with all the predictable turns of the title character, the patent, very controlled doctor Jana Hansen – first victim, then fighter, finally Erinnye – is due to Petra Schmidt-Schaller’s nuanced acting. Her eyes, which just a little while ago were still glistening with tears, seem to light up when she has decided to fight back with all the weapons of a woman (so avuncular one has to say it here): With cunning, seductive power and power she not only spins her unsuspecting victim, the own husband – who also screwed up as a cocky real estate project developer; a zero in every respect – but also takes advantage of mutual friends.
Trailer
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“One step to the abyss”
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Video: ARD media library, image: ARD Degeto/Boris Laewen
Neighbor Frederick (Johann von Bülow), the couple’s tax advisor, is paying dearly for this. The practice employee Pari (Neda Rahmanian), who is intent on compensation, is also forced into the revenge campaign. The camera (Ian Blumers) is completely hypnotized by Petra Schmidt-Schaller. Only rarely is the heroine absent from the picture.
On the other hand, the cheating husband Christian, whose ram skin is being pulled over his ears, remains pale. Florian Stetter not only has little opportunity to play here, he has to cope with the under-challenging role of a man who bluntly denies his double life, including a second cell phone full of couple photos (without PIN!) even when his affair (Valerie Huber) is a child of his expected. Doctor Jana also diagnosed it.
Jana Hansen (Petra Schmidt-Schaller, left) examines Laura Andresen (Valerie Huber), her husband’s lover.
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Image: ARD Degeto/Boris Laewen
Christian’s father Jeppe (Hermann Beyer), a terminally ill captain on his cutter, considers the screenplay with cliché scenes. Jeppe knows everything and doesn’t hide anything, but also speaks as a man: “I know him. It’s up to you if you’re clever now.” All the scenes in which Jana pathetically quotes William Congreve’s drama “The Mourning Bride” (1697) from the off are entirely TV film kitsch: “Heaven knows no anger so powerful like love turned to hate”.
Some scenes are quite successful
Director Dierbach wants the woodcut-like secondary characters to be understood as a “chorus”, but that doesn’t make them any more interesting. Putting the whole Medea complex aside, even the most mundane subject – betrayal of love, separation – can become a captivating drama, and in small ways that is even the case. When the rivals fight their duels, it has an iridescent intensity. And running relentlessly towards the big bang is quite exciting.
This discharges itself in part in a scene worth seeing that is reminiscent of Thomas Vinterberg’s revelation scene in “The Festival”, even if it doesn’t quite reach its impact. For a whole second season, the British original dealt with the grueling war of separation and custody right up to the limit of suicide initiated in a medeal manner.
The German four-part ends openly. It can go on, but it doesn’t have to. Husum, which already let a Theodor Storm be unfaithful to his demons in favor of heart-poetic love of his homeland, this gray city by the sea could have soothed Medea’s anger a little.
All 4 episodes of One Step to the Abyss will air on April 1st at 8:15 p.m. on Das Erste.