The Cinematheque

Vancouver Premiere

“At once dreamy and formally dexterous, stark and lush, Music is a film that surprises and challenges without ever suggesting any individual element is situated anywhere but its exact, necessary place.”

Andréa Picard, TIFF

Robert Bresson’s cinema of austerity has been kept aflame by various torchbearers this century (Bruno Dumont, Michael Haneke, the Dardenne brothers, to name but three); none have followed the form to more poetic conclusions than Berlin School figurehead Angela Schanelec. Here, in her beguiling tenth feature, the German director distills the myth of Oedipus into a modern-day tragedy of two searching souls—an inmate (Aliocha Schneider) and a guard (Agathe Bonitzer)—bound by music and misfortune. Narratively oblique with only sparing use of dialogue, the film operates on a gestural and symbolically rich frequency, stirring emotions through carefully calibrated mise-en-scène, the imagined lives lived between elliptical cuts, and song—Schanelec’s instrument of catharsis. The script earned the auteur her second Silver Bear at Berlin; the first, for preceding picture I Was at Home, But…, was for direction.

In Greek and English with English subtitles

“The celebration of a vision Schanelec has meticulously honed over the past three decades, like a late sonata by a composer who has fully come into their voice.”

Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter

“A beguiling film, one whose steady, exquisitely crafted frames only amplify the strength of emotions thrumming just beneath them.”

Leonardo Goi, The Film Stage