Antigone

Daniele Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub's 1992 film brings Sophocles's play to the screen. Antigone demands that her murdered brother be buried; Creon forbids it and she defies the order and does it herself. The film is a reading rather than an adaptation. The performers speak the text from memory with almost no acting; there is no gesture, the intonation is flat and the camera does not move. The aim is not dramatic effect but making the text audible. It was shot in an ancient open-air theatre with natural sound; wind and the noise of aircraft remain in the recording. The text rests on Hölderlin's German translation and Brecht's arrangement. Who it's for: those who like the cinema of Straub and Huillet and text-centred experiment. Who it's not for: viewers expecting narrative cinema; the film deliberately refuses acting and editing.