Classical music is an intense environment — and one that makes for a rich cinematic setting. In the past few years alone, best picture lineups have featured movies that take place in this world, including Maestro and Tár. Measures for a Funeral explores some of these same themes — of sacrifice and devotion for the sake of art and the precision and passion required to be great in this high-pressure field — from a unique point of view, told not directly from the perspective of a conductor-composer but rather a thesis student who’s infatuated by one.

What Is ‘Measures for a Funeral’ About?
Image via TIFF

Sofia Bohdanowicz’s film finds its protagonist in the form of Audrey Benac (Deragh Campbell), an academic who comes from a family of musicians. Her absent father was a highly accomplished fiddler, while her mother was a less successful violinist, constantly telling Audrey that giving birth to her ruined her career. Their relationship is, predictably, complicated because of that, and the film sees Audrey running from her mom despite the fact she is in hospice and doesn’t have much time left.

But while Audrey is running away from her mother, she is running toward another woman: 20th-century violinist Kathleen Parlow (voiced by Mary Margaret O’Hara), who has been all but forgotten by time. She has a personal connection to this woman, as she served as her grandfather’s violin teacher, but even so, her interest in her borders on obsession — paralleling, in a way, Parlow’s own endlessly devoted relationship to music and music alone. Audrey travels from Toronto to London to Oslo to discover everything she can about her, reading her diaries, visiting her home, and even attempting to get an orchestra to stage concerto Opus 28, which was dedicated to Kathleen but thought to be burned out of existence decades ago after a poor reception, in order to hear her and gain a twisted kind of closure.

‘Measures for a Funeral’ Is a Visual and Musical Treat
Image via TIFF

Measures for a Funeral is predictably strong in the music department, the score infusing the film with a moody, ominous tone from the get-go. Extensive repetitive notes heighten the sense of tension and bring out the horror vibe lurking under the surface of the drama that’s constantly threatening to break free.

Visually, the film is stunning, too. The cinematography is crisp and consistent, defined by clean lines and symmetry that feels fitting for the formal and often stuffy setting it’s capturing. The color palette — somehow simultaneously cozy and disconcerting, vivid but dreary — enhances things as well. Some of the most intriguing shots give us insight into Audrey’s unwell state of mind, like when she mistakes a coffee spill for a pool of blood. On a craft level, Measures for a Funeral is remarkable. The entire film is a concert of sorts, and each shot is like looking at a breathtaking painting.

‘Measures for a Funeral’s Distance Makes It Difficult to Connect To
Image via TIFF

Unfortunately, the intentionally cold presentation makes it difficult to connect to Audrey. And while that’s the point — Audrey, after all, struggles to connect with the world around her, her emotions, and even her sense of self — the film can’t seem to overcome that hurdle and make us care about her another way. She’s not particularly likable or unlikable, sympathetic or unsympathetic. She’s just not that interesting at all. Campbell doesn’t give a bad performance, but the nature of the part demands that she stay an expressionless blank slate pretty much the whole time. Don’t kill me for the comparison, but it reminds me of Kristen Stewart in Twilight — they’re embodying the role well; it’s just a shame that the role itself reads bland onscreen.

That the film sits at nearly two-and-a-half hours doesn’t help matters. There’s nothing wrong with a long movie if it earns it, but Measures for a Funeral doesn’t really get started until about 70 minutes in, once Audrey becomes determined to stage the opus. The first hour plays out like a dry documentary with drawn-out, redundant monologues from Parlow’s letters and characters infodumping what they know about the woman to each other. At one point, we see an archivist teach Audrey about the history of sounds — something that’s fascinating in theory but plays out like a dull humanities lecture. At times, the film plays less like a feature and more like an audiobook of a biography about Parlow’s life, with a few visuals thrown in for good measure.

The characters never feel like real people, and that’s especially true with the dialogue, which is somehow overly pretentious and sophomorically direct. The characters often speak as they would in a Yorgos Lanthimos film but without the absurd creativity or wicked humor to make it effective. Themes of what it takes to be a genius — and society’s tendency to revere men who dominate their craft while disposing of women who excel — are timeless, but Measures for a Funeral’s discussions of this are frequently grating and eye-roll-inducing. The film takes itself too seriously and has an inflated sense of self-importance that’s off-putting and rings false.

It’s especially frustrating considering there is a compelling movie hiding in here if it would just allow itself to let loose by leaning into the psychological thriller elements it teases throughout but never fully commits to or cuts back on the overindulgent details that keep the pace at an agonizing crawl. Measures for a Funeral is brimming with style and painstakingly researched, but the fact Bohdanowicz seems to insist on showcasing every tiny detail she discovered at the sacrifice of making a leaner, more focused, and riveting story causes a dissonance that makes it feel dead on arrival.

Measures of a Funeral had its World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.