Review: Music
by Ola Salwa
- BERLINALE 2023: Angela Schanelec uses her trademark style to retell the Oedipus myth, but whether the experience is worth the energy and concentration it requires is debatable
A 2019 Silver Bear winner for her I Was at Home, but... [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Angela Schanelec
film profile], Angela Schanelec is back in the Berlinale’s main competition with Music [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. The film should satisfy fans of her previous works and her distinctive style; however, the rest of the audience may be harder to please. The elliptical narrative, the peculiar – or deliberate, if you like – way the actors move and are photographed, and the nuggets of information that are scattered around here and there are the main elements that make it difficult for the viewer to get attuned to Music.
The film opens with a long, still shot of mist or low clouds passing over a hill somewhere in Greece. It could be a metaphor for the Greek gods and their absolute power over humans (the film is a rendering of the Oedipus myth) or a slightly ironic message from the director: that the truth about the main protagonists as well as the connections between them will be veiled, to a certain extent. Those who know the Sophocles play that Schanelec draws on will at least be familiar with the key elements of the story.
After the mist vanishes, a wounded man and a pregnant woman come down from the mountaintop. A boy is born and left behind. When we meet him again, many years have passed, and he is now a grown-up called Jon (Aliocha Schneider) – the director kindly informs the audience that it’s the same person by showing the particular type of wounds on his feet then and now.
Jon commits manslaughter and is locked up in a correctional facility for a year. There, he meets Iro (Agathe Bonitzer), a female prison guard, who soon becomes his girlfriend. More time passes, and the sad fate of the couple soon catches up with them. Before that happens, though, Schanelec introduces another “character” in the story – the eponymous music, mainly comprising Baroque staples and opera pieces as well as contemporary indie songs. It adds new colour to the film and becomes a language that Jon uses to express his inner world; however, it’s difficult to determine what it brings to the story itself, apart from a certain pessimism, which was one of Baroque’s key features, next to its, well, Baroque style. All of the pieces in the puzzle are on screen, but it takes a lot of focus and will to piece them together. And the reward seems bleakly dubious. Watching Music feels like being a guest in someone else’s dream – the logic is there, but it’s a very strange and foreign one.
What this reviewer found most appealing about the movie was its meditation on fate. Unlike in the Sophocles version of the myth, here, a tragedy is not revealed to its key figure; he is a victim of malevolent forces and doesn’t understand why (at least not until the mysterious scene in the police station). In today’s culture, where control and influence – whether real or illusionary – are fetishised, Schanelec’s vision is refreshing, even though it is always clouded one way or another.
Music was produced by German outfit Faktura Film, and co-produced by France’s Les Films de l’Après-midi and Serbia’s dart.film. Shellac holds the international rights.
Photogallery 21/02/2023: Berlinale 2023 - Music
23 pictures available. Swipe left or right to see them all.
© 2023 Fabrizio de Gennaro for Cineuropa - fadege.it, @fadege.it
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