“Music" retells the Oedipus story with minimal dialogue and sound

Reinterpreting the Oedipus myth, Greek writer/director Angela Schanelec’s “Music” unfolds through long silences, sparse dialogue, and, despite the title, only intermittent music. It helps to know this for here Oedipus is Jon, Jocasta is Iro, and Lucian is father Laius. In other significant changes, Jon will not gouge out his eyes and Iro, his prison warden, records music for him.

In opening scenes, Jon is abandoned as a baby, adopted by a farmer, and falls in love with Iro, all unfolding without dialogue for nearly half an hour. Continuing this approach, very few interactions involve words, most of the communication delivered via the ancillary, interpretive music. Similarly, the elusive meaning of each of the lengthy tableaus requires great patience, the appeal resting in the physical unfolding of the fateful tragedy. One connection to original Greek presentations is the platform boots actors wore on stage and featured in one scene here.

In press notes, Schanelec explains that she allows Jon, unlike Oedipus, to develop “the capacity of facing his fate, and that is singing.” Jon doesn’t learn of his guilt nor does he have anything to repress, “unaware of his past.” The interaction, and often lack thereof, progresses through silence, which Schanelec chose “finding images for incidents for which, in my opinion, there are no words.” It is dramatic music and singing that convey emotion, that almost alone breaking the silence throughout the elliptical unfolding of the narrative that reinforces incontestable fate. Schanelec says, “Omission doesn’t mean that something hasn’t occurred, it only means that it wasn’t seen.”

Devoid of conventional storytelling that relies on exposition and clear plots, “Music” places a considerable demand on the audience and requires an excess of patience. The reward is immersion in a flow of arresting visual compositions: gorgeous locations and a “focus on faces, bodies, and movement.” A candidate for what is now called “slow cinema” or, more aptly, “poetic cinema,” “Music” is unique, at times puzzling, and memorable. In English and Greek with English subtitles, “Music” screens at Webster University’s Winifred Moore auditorium Friday, September 6, through Sunday, September 8, at 7:30 each of those evenings. For more information, you may visit the film series website.