This modern adaptation of the Oedipus myth takes us from Greece to Berlin, from the 1980s to the present day. Abandoned at birth, Jon is found one stormy night in the Greek mountains and adopted. As an adult, he meets Iro, a warden at the prison where he is held after a tragic accident. Iro seems to seek out his presence; she looks after him and records music for him. Jon’s eyesight begins to fail. From now on, for every loss he suffers, he gains something in return and his life becomes richer.

The film elliptically circumnavigates the themes of birth, love, pain and healing, which are treated like musical motifs. Music is the film’s second most important element, most of it Baroque – Bach, Monteverdi and Pergolesi. The compositions speak to each other and to us, like a mediator of the question: »What can come from pain?« For Jon, music becomes a means of expression. Mastering it like a language enables him to survive, unlike Oedipus. The fact that the characters have hardly any dialogue amplifies the impact of the music. Schanelec’s performers play in highly formalistic manner against the rugged backdrop of the Peloponnese, in poetically composed tableaus. She draws on the Oedipus myth as the constituent building block of Western mainstream cinema. Since the trauma can no longer be traced back to the death of the mother, she reclaims the freedom of character development and releases her cinema from any psychoanalytical logic.

Guest: Agathe Bonitzer (actress)

Awards for ›Music‹
Silberner Bär Bestes Drehbuch – Berlinale 2023