‘Music’: Berlin Review

Dir/scr: Angela Schanelec. Germany, France, Serbia. 2023. 119mins

The myth of Oedipus forms the basis of the latest picture from German director Angela Schanelec. But since Schanelec has always tended to be more drawn to the space around a story than the story itself, the approach here is teasingly elliptical. The tale (or the fragments that Schanelec chooses to show) is transposed to Greece and then present-day Germany, but timelines stretch and compress. Loaded silences – whole sequences play out without dialogue – invite in the clutter of sounds from beyond the frame. It’s a film that requires considerable investment from the audience, and one that rations its rewards even to those who fully commit to the experience. Still, Schanelec’s approach draws the audience in, even as it holds them at arm’s length; she is uncommonly fond of wide shots. It’s an oddly fascinating endeavour.

A pretty much archetypal film festival movie

Schanelec returns to the main competition of the Berlin program following her 2019 Silver Bear win with her previous picture, I Was At Home, But, which also won prizes at San Sebastian and Mar Del Plata, amid an extensive festival run. Like its predecessor, Music is a pretty much archetypal film festival movie and seems likely to enjoy a healthy run around the fest circuit. Distributors looking for pictures at the rarefied end of the arthouse spectrum, together with curated streaming platforms, may be tempted.

Oedipus, renamed Jon in this version of the story, is played by Canadian actor Aliocha Schneider. His father, Lucian (Laius in the myth) encounters his now adult son by a roadside. Feeling inexplicably drawn to Jon, he tries to kiss him. Jon pushes him away, accidentally killing his father when Lucian’s head strikes a rock. In prison, where some of the inmates wear cothurnes, the wooden platform shoes used in Ancient Greek dramas, Jon meets sympathetic prison warder Iro (Agathe Bonitzer), the film’s version of Jocasta.

On his release from jail, the pair become a couple and have a daughter together. Her realisation of the truth proves too much to endure and she kills herself. In a departure from the savagery of the original myth, Jon remains unaware of his birthright and of the true nature of his sins. Rather than gouge out his own eyes from guilt, he loses his sight naturally and gradually over time, finding a state of grace with his daughter, and with the music which offered him an escape from the spiritual starvation of prison life.

Schanelec’s work tends to ask questions, and has no problem with leaving those questions unanswered. It’s not clear, for example, what the myth of Oedipus, retooled to the present day, can actually tell us about the human condition as it stands. But by stripping back key elements of the picture – the dialogue predominantly, but also by omitting moments that might otherwise be considered major plot points – Schanelec encourages the audience to reframe their interaction with the film, focusing on its rhythms, symbolism and the physicality of the performances.

One thing that is never in question, meanwhile, is the transformative power of music. Compositions by the Canadian singer-songwriter Doug Tielli are employed, to heart-swelling effect, towards the end of the picture. The purity and beauty of the music is the one certainty that Schanelec permits us.