Review: ‘Exit: Music,’ a documentary by James Murdoch

The documentary Exit: Music is well meaning, informative, well researched, and not much of a film. More suited to home viewing on public television than appointment viewing in a theatre, this passion project of The Royal Conservatory of Music feels like paying for a lengthy academic lecture on cultural history than a cinematic documentary. And yet, despite its modest aims as a film, I can’t say that I didn’t learn a lot from watching it. I feel far more comfortable commending Exit: Music as a studious and vital academic work than I do recommending it to paying audiences outside of those with a deeply passionate and vested interest in the subject matter. If one who didn’t fit those descriptors were to catch this down the road at home or at The Royal Conservatory, it would be shown in a much more appropriate setting.

There are two aims for the James Murdoch directed Exit: Music. Primarily, the film looks at how the rise of Nazism and Adolf Hitler in 1930s Germany changed the face of culture and music in the country; specifically focusing on the lost efforts of Jewish musicians and composers whose creativity was suppressed through anti-Semitic policies. One of the first things that Hitler came for in his rise to power and ultimate control was culture, almost immediately making it impossible for Jewish musicians and composers to perform live, conduct, write, or get heard on the radio.  This movement to suppress Jewish culture led to many pieces from noteworthy composers getting lost, destroyed, or unperformed for decades following the Nazi rise to power.

Historian and musician Simon Wynberg more or less hosts Exit: Music, lecturing at great length about the cultural significance of long feared lost Jewish produced composition, and specifically about the lives and struggles of five very different composers: Paul Ben-Haim (who would become one of Israel’s greatest composers), Erich Korngold (who would become one of Hollywood’s most sought after composers), Mieczyslaw Weinberg (who would flee to Russia, only to be imprisoned under the Stalin regime), Walter Braunfels (a half-Jew who lived in exile within the country), and Adolf Busch (who wasn’t Jewish, but who found himself somewhat guilty by association for refusing to perform in a Nazi run country).

Wynberg’s segments are lengthy, and mostly consist of the sort of “direct address to the camera” style that’s typical of a series being produced by a public broadcaster. These moments aren’t unwelcome, and they’re packed with great amounts of historical and cultural insight, but they leave Exit: Music feeling more than a little unambitious from a filmmaking perspective; ditto the litany of interviews with scholars, academics, historians, and musicians who seek to inform Wynberg’s work, thesis, and research. Wynberg has an authoritative and not unlikable tone, but it’s hard to shake the feeling of being in a classroom and being lectured to, which is the last thing anyone viewing a film in a cinema should feel, especially from a documentary.

I can’t argue the academic weight that such a well rounded text carries with it, though (although some segments feel curiously out of place from where they should be in the film, leading to some awkward passages and moments). The film is far more successful in its other major goal: to forward the work of The Royal Conservatory’s ARC Ensemble (of which Wynberg is the Artistic Director) in preserving and performing a lot of these lost works for generations to come. Once the history of these composers and pieces are in play, the performative aspects of the film (which are sadly fleeting in many cases) feel a lot more vibrant and exciting.

Exit: Music is a history lesson and a piece of longform advertising for the work being done at The Royal Conservatory. Neither is a bad thing, but neither is something that should be paid for by anyone outside of devout cultural or musical historians. It made me want to learn more about the ARC Ensemble and their efforts, but it didn’t make me think very much of the film once it was over.

Exit: Music opens at The Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema on Friday, February 10. Director James Murdoch and subject Simon Wynberg will be in attendance for Q&As following all screenings on February 10, 15, and 16, and if one does choose to see this in a theatre, they might be best served by going to one of those screenings, which I’m sure will be followed by a great amount of discussion.

Check out the trailer for Exit: Music: