This visually stylish, adventurous film offers an impressionistic recreation of a lecture on Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Mondrian Kilroy (John Hurt) is convinced that the Ninth is overrated, and in order to prove it he conjures a snowy netherworld where a 19th-century music teacher named Anton Peters (Noah Taylor) is forced to defend the work to an eccentric group of villagers. Interspersed with Peters’ efforts are scenes in which Kilroy’s former students, including the lovely Marta (Leonor Watling), reminisce about their professor’s pedagogy. Covering topics including the Austrian music scene, Beethoven’s age and deafness, and in-depth discussions of the Ninth’s score, Lecture 21 confidently joins other innovative films about music such as The Red Violin (1998), Farinelli (1994) and 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993).

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Written by Alessandro Baricco. Photographed by Gherardo Gossi. With Noah Taylor, John Hurt, Leonor Watling, Clive Russell, Tim Barlow (92 min, in English).