The oracle predicted a terrible future for King Laius of Thebes: his son would kill him. The monarch was convinced that he could escape his fate and when he had his son he gave her to a shepherd to take to the forest and abandon him. This was done, but the creature was found and given for adoption to the kings of Corinth with whom he grew up under the name Oedipus.
Upon reaching puberty, Oedipus also went to visit the oracle, who predicted a terrible future: he would kill his father and marry his mother. Overwhelmed by the prediction, the young man tried to escape his fate. He left Corinth to get away from those he believed to be his parents and headed to Thebes. On the way he met Laius, they fought and he killed him.
The boy continued on his way and arrived at Thebes where an evil sphinx frightened the people. Oedipus managed to defeat her and as a reward married the queen, Jocasta, ignoring that she was his own mother. You cannot escape from destiny. The myth of Oedipus has occurred again and again in theater, literature, music and cinema.
Pier Paolo Pasolini directed Oedipus the King in 1967 with Silvana Mangano and Franco Citti in the roles of Jocasta and Oedipus. Now, German director Angela Schanelec recreates the myth again in Música, a film that won the award for best script at the 2023 Berlinale and which arrived in Spanish theaters this week.
Schanelec presents a group of young people traveling by car along the Greek coast. His camera moves slowly. The actors remain silent. Until a fight breaks out, one of them pushes another and he falls so badly that he breaks his neck and dies. The protagonist does not escape justice and ends up in jail. He also does not escape his fate.
In the prison, the boy meets one of the officials and falls in love with her. The couple enters a relationship and has a son. What the young lovers don’t know is that he is the child she gave up for adoption a few years ago.
Music, the umpteenth revision of the myth, starring Aliocha Schneider and Agathe Bonitzer, takes Oedipus towards modernity, although it stumbles due to its slowness and the confusion caused by the comings and goings of the narrative.
