Measures for a Funeral
directed by Sofia Bohdanowicz
starring Deragh Campbell, María Dueñas, Melanie Scheiner, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Maxim Gaudette
Totem Films
Nearly a decade ago, director Sofia Bohdanowicz unveiled her cinematic stand-in, Audrey Benac, the emotionally enigmatic scholar akin to Arnaud Despechin’s alter ego, the struggling academic of three features, Paul Dédalus.
In 2016’s Never Eat Alone, Bohdanowicz’s hybrid-documentary feature debut, we first meet Audrey (the always brilliant Deragh Campbell), the granddaughter of the director’s real-life grandmother, Joan Benac, who recruits Audrey in a quest to find a recording of her former lover and television singing partner from decades before. The film is an impressive debut that introduces the research and archive excavation process that will become essential to her character as she delves into familial history that expands into larger statements on gender, memory, and the arts in successive Audrey Benac films.
The most open version of Audrey is present in Never Eat Alone: though we see her by herself at moments, she spends most of the film in warm and affectionate exchanges with her grandmother, whom she clearly adores. At this point, Audrey is not internally oppressed by the onerous demands associated with completing her self-imposed research work that would beset her character in later films, and most importantly, Never Eat Alone presents Audrey without the the grief of losing a loved one, the obligation to preserve a loved one’s memory, or the loss of self and attempts to recover it from the depths of family history as she would be in Bohdanowicz’s later films, 2019’s MS Slavic 7 (for which Lily interviewed the director), 2020’s Point and Line to Plane, and A Woman Escapes from 2022, which Bohdanowicz co-directed with filmmakers Burak Çevik and Blake Williams.
The composition of Audrey Benac in Bohdanowicz’s latest and most ambitious feature, Measures for a Funeral, which was co-written by Deragh Campbell, has its genesis in the director’s 2018 short, Veslemøy’s Song, where Audrey and her grandmother discover a book about the unquestionably talented, once famous, but mostly forgotten Canadian violin virtuoso, Kathleen Parlow, who mentored and taught Audrey’s (and Bohdanowicz’s real life) grandfather, Andrew Benac, himself a violinist for the Toronto Symphony. An examination of the book unearths a poem, typed by Andrew about Parlow, that was hidden away for years between the pages. Intrigued by Parlow and her relationship to her family, Audrey speaks to her uncle who shares his knowledge: how the famed violinist did tests with Edison as the inventor was developing the cylinder phonograph and how she had a 100 page concerto written for her by the Norwegian composer Johan Halvorsen that included an encore piece entitled “Veslemøy’s Song.” With her curiosity piqued, Audrey boards a plane and travels to the New York Public Library to listen to the only known recording of the piece.
The Audrey Benac of Measures for a Funeral is a transformation of the character from the aforementioned short film, as she is imbued with varying aspects of Audrey from both MS Slavic 7, where she uses her isolating research both as a coping mechanism to find her own purpose and as an opposition against her family, who sees her appointed title of literary executor as a threat to the estate of her deceased great-grandmother, and the distraught Audrey of A Woman Escapes, who chooses to mitigate her grief through video correspondences with two filmmakers while she takes shelter in the Parisian apartment of her recently deceased friend. Measures for a Funeral continues Audrey’s pursuit of the legacy of Kathleen Parlow that began in Veslemøy’s Song; however, what was once a curiosity based on the teacher-student connection between Parlow and Audrey’s grandfather has become a far larger fascination with the violinist, now the subject of Audrey’s much delayed Ph.D. thesis. Audrey can’t find the catalyst to bring all of her explorations into Parlow’s day books, photos, and letters together, and simultaneously, she cannot reconcile the reality of her existence, which is dominated by her terminally ill mother’s emotionally abusive barrage of regrets in deciding to raise Audrey instead of pursuing a career as a violinist, which her husband was able to accomplish successfully. Audrey’s father’s violin haunts her existence, standing as a complex relic of her mother’s bitterness and sacrifice and Audrey’s own consequent inability to connect with her father while he was alive. She inherited the violin upon her father’s passing, and it’s a physical and psychological albatross that she carries on her back. Furthermore, in expressing her final wishes given that she is soon to pass, Audrey’s mother demands that the violin be cremated with her, making the instrument an object of additional anguish and yet one that Audrey unwaveringly protects.
As in Veslemøy’s Song, Audrey’s quest through archives and diaries leads her to Johan Halvorsen’s composition of Opus 28, a violin concerto written for Parlow, dedicated to her when she was only seventeen, and performed only once publicly due to the negative response to the piece upon its premiere. Now, buoyed by this discovery, but under the duress of diminishing time and funding for her research to complete her thesis, Audrey closes the doors on her own personal life, including an unceremonious break up with her partner of multiple years, and opens herself as much as possible to the life of Kathleen Parlow by traveling to England where she stays at the home of her close friend Melanie (Melanie Scheiner) with the goal of visiting Parlow’s house in Meldreth.
Up until this point, Audrey exudes the aloof demeanor reminiscent of the Audrey of MS Slavic 7. As stated in interviews with Bohdanowicz, a key influence on Measures for a Funeral is the first entry of Kieślowski’s Three Colours Trilogy: Blue, which has as its protagonist, the withdrawn widow of a recently deceased composer, striving to detach herself from her past before deciding to confront it once an infidelity is discovered. The influence of Kieślowski’s film in terms of mood and character is especially evident in the first half of Measures for a Funeral as Audrey’s motivations for researching Parlow take on clearer personal significance when she gains greater distance from her mother and her life in Toronto.
This first leg of her travels provides one of the most cathartic moments for the Audrey Benac character when she is confronted by Melanie, who was left to tour the rest of Meldreth alone with a guide after Audrey abandons her shortly after the visit to Parlow’s former country home is completed. In a candlelit pub, Melanie expresses her frustration with Audrey’s refusal to speak about her personal life and her “obsessive blindness” to the people around her. Never has Audrey Benac become more cognizant of the ramifications of her pattern withdrawal than here in Measures for a Funeral, and for the first time in any of Bohdanowicz’s films centered on the character, we see Audrey speak about why she feels so lost, conflicted, and wounded. The scene between Audrey and Melanie transpires with kindness and understanding, and its effects impact her character in her treatment of others throughout the second half of the film while also propelling her with an idea suggested by Melanie — to restage Opus 28.
Audrey then heads to Norway, which provides the setting for a more lucid version of herself to visit the National Theater where Parlow performed Opus 28 and to meet with Misha (Maxim Gaudette), a teacher at the Oslo Conservatory of Music, and concert violinist Elisa (portrayed by real-life virtuoso Maria Dueñas), who plays exquisitely in their presence. When Audrey articulates her desire to stage a performance of the concerto, Misha offers his professional advice on the difficulty of staging such a piece, particularly one that was never revered during its era, prompting Audrey to build a case for the value of minor works and demonstrate her newfound determination further. All the more, when Misha explains that the violin she has been vigilantly guarding is in fact Parlow’s Guarnerius Del Gesù, the obstruction over Audrey’s sight and perception built by the pressures of her mother’s failures and sublimation of artistic dreams subsides, and Audrey can finally look at the violin not as an emblem of her familial pain and history and rather as an object that carries the talents and devotion of a world class violinist and, most importantly, serves the purest instrument of Parlow’s voice. Hence, the necessity to stage Opus 28 becomes the defined purpose that Audrey Benac has long sought, which finally brings her nearer to forming her own identity away from her family and encourages her to complete something outside of her long-term state of interiority.
Admirably and with great effect, the final segment of the film features a slightly edited down for time orchestral performance of Opus 28 by Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain under the baton of Yannick Nézet-Séguin with Elisa, filling in for Kathlen Parlow complete in a period-inspired gown, on lead violin. Sumptuously lensed by cinematographer Nikolay Michaylov, the breadth and depth of this concert as seen through the heartfelt reactions by Audrey are an understated yet powerful triumph of personal will to overcome the weight of familial history and expectations as well as the failings of past mistakes. With the final performance, Bohdanowicz gracefully brings Audrey Benac’s journey of self-discovery to a perfect logical and emotional end, and we can sense the director saying farewell to her signature character. It’s unlikely that we’ll see Audrey again, but we can peacefully say goodbye knowing that she’s headed towards a life of purpose in the world, not in archives alone.
Featured photo courtesy of Totem Films.
