HopkinsCinemAddicts

And My Nominees for Best Sound Editing Are…

    Jorma Taccone's MacGruber:  This movie is grossly underappreciated in so many categories of filmmaking, but maybe most of all for its soundtrack.  As MacGruber (a mulleted Will Forte) loads his beloved Benji-box portable car radio into his red Miata, he changes the station from Rock 98.1 to Soft 87.3.  A most halting transition ensues, switching from "Heavy Soul" by The Black Keys (film and television's premiere band for he's-just-too-damn-cool songs) to the desperate vocal straining of Toto's satisfyingly atrocious "Rosanna" and then to the exclamatory saxophone riff in Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street."  This trifecta runs the risk of making the audience laugh too loudly to hear anything for the next thirty seconds of the film.  Sound Editor: Sean Garnhart

    Greg Mottola's Superbad:  If you ever DJ'd a party with your iPod in high school, this film will put your fancy feet playlist to irreparable shame.  Never has a party seemed more appealing than when my personal favorite, "I'm Your Boogie Man" by KC & The Sunshine Band, comes on and every kid on the living room (dance)floor begins to get real funky.  Only slightly less appealing is the one-man party that usurps it, thrown by Officer Slater (Bill Hader) after he and his partner evacuate the living room in response to a noise complaint.  "Don't trust the police/ No justice no peace/ They got me/ Face down in the middle of the street," The Coup raps as Slater pops and locks to the anti-cop anthem "Pork and Beef."  Sound Editor: George Anderson

    Sam Mendes's American Beauty:  Composer Thomas Newman is a genius.  The man can do no wrong in my book.  (His association with Jarhead gives it so much credibility that I often forget the trailer was actually better than the film.)  His soundtrack for American Beauty rivals the eerie softness of David Shire's for The Conversation and the pretty self-referentiality of Cliff Martinez's for Drive, but his surpasses both of these because it is ultimately so heartbreaking, just like the film it supports.  For other sonic standouts from Thomas Newman, see: Road to Perdition, Finding Nemo, Erin Brockovich, The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile (a risky move, setting more scenes of a prison to more Thomas Newman compositions only five years after Shawshank's release--but director Frank Darabont's formula certainly works).  Sound Editor: Scott Martin Gershin

    David LaChapelle's Rize:  West coast "indie rap" phenom Flii Stylz recorded some of the most rousing and threatening hip hop ever rapped for this gorgeous documentary.  With track titles like "Break It On Down (Battlezone)," "Beaztly" and "Ready to Brawl" accompanying the film's furious and beautiful non-choreographed dances, how could you not want this soundtrack?  Every time I listen to "Get Krumped"--which is often--I replay the entire dance "battle" between Tight Eyez, Lil C and Dragon in my head and wish that a) teaching myself to krump had worked, and b) I could marry Tight Eyez.  Sound Editor: Christopher S. Aud

    Community, "Epidemiology" (Season 2, Episode 6): This episode continues a groundbreaking trend pioneered by Shaun of the Dead: zombie fights accompanied by bad 70's pop that is all the more hilarious because it is diegetic, accidentally lending goofy dance beats to scenes of violent commotion. What I wouldn't give to act out my own heroic scene of pugilism with classmates who've contracted an aggressive strain of Rabies from the toxic Army surplus taco meat served at the college Halloween party, provided I get to listen to "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" while I fight.  That's the power of ABBA.  Sound Editor: Ryan Young

    Very Honorable Mention for The O.C., "The Perfect Couple" (Season 1, Episode 10):  If I had had a makeout soundtrack as sultry yet lighthearted as this in high school... forget it, I still wouldn't have found a boyfriend.  This, my favorite episode of one of my favorite shows, is bookended by scenes of pretty adorable romance, beginning with Aqualung's "Strange & Beautiful" and ending triumphantly with "Breathe" by Leaves.  My affair with this episode started at 9 PM on Wednesday, November 12th 2003 and has been going strong ever since.  Sound Editor: Jeremy J. Gordon

 

Many thanks to Creative Commons for the above image.

Music and Mise en Scene: Jewish/Arab Relations in The Band’s Visit

In The Band’s Visit, the dashingly handsome Haled has a rather unusual pick-up line. The young Arab man repeatedly approaches attractive, unassuming Israeli women and says: “Do you like Chet Baker?” Smiling and looking seductive, Haled usually responds to the women’s confused expressions by introducing himself. “I play violin in orchestra,” he says. “But I play trumpet also.”

            Haled’s shameless flirtations with Israeli women suggest that political and religious differences don’t prevent all Arabs and Jews from interacting with one another. In fact, The Band’s Visit reveals just how much Jews and Arabs – and all people, for that matter – have in common. Eran Kolirin’s 2007 Israeli film follows an Egyptian police band as it heads to Israel to play at the opening of an Arab cultural center. A mishap involving the spelling of their destination leads the Egyptian musicians to a tiny, remote town far from where they’ll be performing. The band’s interactions with the Israelis who take them in reveal how both sides of the Arab/Israeli conflict experience love and loss (and music).

            While the film’s plot sounds simple enough, The Band’s Visit offers sharp and thoughtful dialogue, refreshing comedic touches and authentic performances that make the movie anything but hokey. And as if those weren’t enough reasons for me to like the film, the character Tawfiq (Sasson Gabei) has the most righteous, take-no-prisoners nose I have ever seen in my life. It frankly deserves a movie of its own.

            That said, the use of music and aspects of mise en scene are what make this movie an especially noteworthy study of Jewish/Arab relations. The melodramatic piano theme that plays as the Egyptian band arrives at the airport at the start of the film is a very smart, ironic touch. These men look so serious and put-together in their matching, powder blue, highly-decorated police uniforms. The sappy, simplistic piano melody in the background makes the band members seem over-dressed and out of place.

The next instance when sound becomes particularly important is when the musicians get off the bus at Beit Hatikva (not Petah Tikva). The wheels of their luggage roll loudly (and obnoxiously) against the sand and dirt as they approach the small town. The extreme long shot of the men walking on sand adds insult to injury – they’re in the middle of nowhere and the camera is rubbing it in. The way the men fill the frame in this scene is also significant. They walk in a straight line in the center of the frame, an ironic touch since the no-man’s-land of Beit Hatikva is a far cry from the rules and regulations that dominate their police force in Alexandria. 

            Music is used for the first time as a unifying device – and not for mocking purposes – when Egyptian musician Simon plays his clarinet outside of the Beit Hativka café. Simon’s haunting melody plays out over a shot/reverse/shot pattern of the Egyptian man producing music as a Jewish man, Itzik, watches in awe. The medium shot of the two men after the impromptu performance reveals that music is a shared passion for these lonely souls. Music becomes an especially strong unifying force during an awkward dinner table scene in which a few of the Egyptian musicians dine with Itzik’s family on his wife’s birthday. Silence and scattered conversations in Arabic and Hebrew fill the scene until one of the men starts humming and the other men slowly join in him song. Medium close-ups ensue as each man gains the courage to belt out the tune. The close proximity between the camera and the men’s faces reflects how the men are becoming closer with one another.

            Costuming plays an important role throughout The Band’s Visit. The way Dina (Ronit Elkabetz) is dressed reveals a lot about her level of interest in the Egyptian men. At the start of the film, Dina’s loose, blue sweater, cut-off jeans and tennis shoes suggest the spinster is more concerned with comfort than style. Dina wears this outfit as she cuts open a huge watermelon in front of Haled and Tawfiq. As the Israeli woman skillfully uses an enormous knife, a reaction shot of the two men prove they are impressed and possibly a bit scared. These aspects of mise en scene emphasize Dina’s courage and determination. However, the red evening dress Dina wears to show Tawfiq the town reveals her sexy side. The form-fitting dress clearly catches Tawfiq’s eye, stressing that Arabs and Jews can be attracted to each other despite the many issues that may separate them. That the uptight, conservative Tawfiq admits Dina looks “very fine indeed” is evidence that Arabs and Jews may not be so divided after all.

            A significant use of music happens while Dina and Tawfiq are eating out. After they discuss how other patrons have been staring at them, Dina decides to play an Arabic love song on the jukebox. Because Dina and Tawfiq have been speaking English to each other throughout the film, the woman’s choice of an Arabic song showcases her willingness to understand his culture. As the female singer clearly calls out to a lover, Dina dances in front of Tawfiq. Without his hat – which Dina forced him to leave behind – Tawfiq looks much more at ease and receptive to her advances.

            A final powerful musical moment occurs when Haled plays a trumpet solo for Tawfiq and Dina. The close-ups on their faces as Haled plays his sultry trumpet solo emphasize the feelings of sexual desire that consume Dina and Tawfiq. However, Haled’s position at the table – sitting directly between Dina and Tawfiq – suggests that Dina may not be spending the night with Tawfiq after all. Even without his stiff hat, Tawfiq is no match for Haled’s charm.

Appropriating the Artist: One + One/Sympathy for the Devil

Looking as though it were finger-painted, the opening intertitle of Godard’s One + One/Sympathy for the Devil reads, “The Stones Rolling;” already Godard has begun to play with language.  The letters E-O-N-E-O-N, or O-N-E-O-N-E in the correct ordering of the band’s name, are highlighted in red.  One + One.  For Godard here One + One is never unified into the end result, the final product.  Instead, One + One is just that, one and one; two individual, separate pieces, together.  In many ways, this will come to define the film, as Godard presents us with two worlds, two separate realities.  The first is a world beyond Godard’s control, the world of the Rolling Stones, as he documents their process of writing and recording their song “Sympathy for the Devil.”   The second is a world the filmmaker does control, the world of film, a sphere of fragmented narratives whose figures act as his ideological mouthpieces.  He doesn’t present us with a single message, a unified ideological, social, or political critique.  Instead, these sections are meant to conflict and clash, to raise more questions than they answer, and, ultimately, to alter and shape how we view the Stones at work. 

In the opening shot, Mick Jagger and Brian Jones sit on the studio floor, guitars in hand, the camera hovering around them slowly (as it does throughout the film).  The song has yet to take shape; it is the creative process in its beginning stage, in its rawest form. Following the rhythm of the guitar, Jagger sing-speaks variations of the same few words of jumbled, even baby-like, rambling.  There are no words, just gibberish.  Language is secondary here (at least at first); we are introduced, first, to sound; pure sound, before there is any meaning assigned to it.  Whereas Godard has too much to say throughout the film, overwhelming us with multiple and conflicting voices and sounds that overlap one another into an incomprehensible noise, Jagger here speaks only gibberish.

Godard cuts from the studio to a London hotel room, where Wiazemsky (who plays Eve Democracy later on in the film) spray paints the words “Hilton” and “Stalin” onto the hotel window, crossing the two at the “t.”  It is a mixing of terms and ideologies that we will see throughout the film.  “Sovietcong.”  “Cinemarxism.”  “Freudemocracy.”  All of them are One + One; conceptual and ideological combinations he never explores specifically, only mentioning them on the walls and streets in spray paint, inviting questions and provoking questions, but ultimately offering no answers.  Over the image, the narrator begins telling us that he’s a Bolivian hiding in a London toilet to escape from the police.  He reads from a pornographic novel (which he calls a “political novel”), replacing the names of the characters with political figures and cultural icons, mixing politics, pornography and pop culture into one philosophical mess.  We are never fully sure what their connection is.  “Raising the toilet lid I could see Elizabeth’s fat white behind on which Lyndon Johnson was projecting an Andy Warhol movie,” the narrator tells us.  Like Jagger’s singing in the beginning, it is gibberish to us.  The narration will continue throughout the film, running over the image of the Stones in the studio.  What is their role in this political, cultural, and pornographic mess?  Could we just as easily substitute Jagger’s name or Richard’s for Johnson’s and Warhol’s?

“Outside Black Novel” reads the second intertitle in red, the acronym “love” spelled out this time in black.  A Black militant sits in a wheel barrel in a junkyard, reading to us about the history of the blues, its roots, its development, and ultimately its appropriation by young Whites and popular culture for White consumption. “Any group of middle class White boys who need a haircut and male hormones can be a pop group.  That’s what pop means,” he tells us.  We cannot help but think of the Stones in the studio from the scene before, and this is Godard’s intention. Originally starting as a skiffle band (a popular but now-neglected subgenre of music popular in Britain in the 1950s, combining blues, roots, and country), drawing on the styles of Chuck Berry and Howlin’ Wolf, the Stones exemplify this appropriation of “Black music” by the White youth culture.

The camera is the unifying force in the film.  It is what connects these fragmented sections together: the Stones, the Black militant group, Eve Democracy, and even the seedy fascist bookstore later on.  It remains consistent in its style throughout, always slow and controlled in its movement, always moving laterally, always circulating back to where it started.  We watch as it hovers throughout the studio, never intruding on the band as they work, drifting around them as an observer (embodying the perspective of the filmmaker himself), capturing the artist and the creative process at work.  We watch as the song evolves from the simple strumming of Jones and primitive mumbling of Jagger into a complex and layered work.  The lyrics begin to take shape, and the guitars from the beginning disappear and are replaced by maracas, congas, and a chorus group.  We watch in real time as the band starts and stops repeatedly, tweaking different sections each time. The song is never the same twice; the instrumentation, rhythm, beat, speed, and Jagger’s lyrics and inflection change each time.  What is significant here, though, is that unlike the other figures and scenes in the film, the Stones, their process and their output, are outside Godard’s control.  The filmmaker here has no real power over them; they are not a mouthpiece for him to convey his ideological questions and theories, at least not directly.  Nor is this necessarily his intention.  Instead, he works to control everything around them, to place them within a context that he creates.

In filming the artist at work, the artist and his or her creative process come to serve different functions for this filmmaker.  For Clouzot and Parreno and Gordon, the artist is a mystery to be unraveled, a hieroglyphic to be deciphered, and yet in filming them we inevitably realize we can’t ever fully know what drives them creatively.  What, though, is Godard’s interest in capturing the Stones at work here?  What does he hope to learn from filming them?  The song itself would seemingly fit with Godard’s own political position; it is an anti-establishment statement that would come to define 60s youth, highlighting atrocities of the past and present (the Holocaust, the Kennedy assassinations, and the 100 years war) as a way to signify their own break with the generations before them.  And yet Godard here is not interested in (or at least he’s not focused on) that.  His interest instead lies in what the Stones represent and to what their creative process tends. This is a study in control: in its creation and its limits.  The limit of creative control, Godard seems to suggest, is at base in its commerciality.  Although “Sympathy for the Devil” became an anthem of the 1960s counterculture, it is also simultaneously a cultural product that is to be commodified and commercialized, bought and sold by record companies and corporations to the masses.  By placing them in the context of the Black Panthers and Eve Democracy, juxtaposing scenes of the Stones in the studio with these other fragmented narratives, we are forced to understand The Stones in a different way.  We must re-examine and re-contextualize them within a larger social, economic, and cultural frame; and in doing so, Godard is questioning not the art itself, not its content, but instead what the art and the artist are used for, how they are to be packaged and consumed.  We come to view them less as artists and more as appropriators and as tools and products.  And by placing them within this context, Godard ultimately exerts his authority as the filmmaker over the band, seizing control from them and placing it back into his hands.

Havana, Lisbon and Wim Wenders

It is in an incredible risk to create a film about the struggle of making a film.  A movie partly devoted to the study of sound, not only the production of music by trained vocalists and musicians, but the accumulation of everyday noises by a man with a boom mic seems equally ambitious.  For anyone else, the results might be forced and superficial, but Wim Wenders' products are at once astounding and spontaneous.  Both in Lisbon Story and Buena Vista Social Club, Wenders seamlessly integrates the passionate, fatal and trivial aspects of cinema and musical performance.  Whether staged or improvised his narratives never veer into the dreadful realm of predictability.  It is through his profound sensitivity to place, reflected in the local musical and chromatic vibrancy of Cuba in Buena Vista, and the hybrid medieval-industrialized Lisbon basking in Mediterranean light, that the questions of art, music and cinema are raised.  He grounds the two films so authentically in their locales that we eagerly embrace the topics of music and movie-making.

Wenders is not interested in strictly replicating the structure, lighting, energy and mood of the two respective cities, though he masterfully captures the form and atmosphere of each urban place.  He goes beyond simply conveying the essence of a city as an entity: he suggests the emotional sentiments a city might elicit and characterizes the bond between his characters and their environments.  The crosscut is used particularly effectively in Buena Vista to create a coherent portrait of an intimate cast of characters who retain their mannerisms, humor, technical skill, wit and dignity whether at home or on the stage, whether in Cuba, Amsterdam, or New York.  A specific building, street, figure or piece of debris might trigger the memory of another place or time, but Wenders plays visually with nostalgia in such a way that he avoids overt sentimentalism. 

 

Guitarist Ochoa Bustamante (left) and vocalist/guitarist Compay Segundo. Creative Commons, by Hiabba (2008). http://search.creativecommons.org/

Most of the emotional responses and dynamics between character and place are sufficiently subtle to require full attention and multiple viewings.  In Buena Vista, a group of elderly Cuban male musicians and one female vocalist come together to record and perform the nation's provincial and popular music.  They are musicians who have been forgotten or fazed out -- some had abandoned their instruments for a decade or more -- but performers endowed with a striking vitality, humanity and appreciation for their Caribbean culture.  Working with Ry Cooder, Wenders captures the centrality of music to their lives: in the studio, on the streets, in ornate pre-Revolution gambling houses and in abandoned bars.  Rhythm is inescapable, permeating all aspects of life.  Wenders recognizes that the discovery of a culture and locale so inherently bound to music constitutes something refreshing and unique.  Particularly from the European or American perspective, he acknowledged in the commentary, we tend to think of music as a separate entity, something we listen to for a duration and then set aside.  We occasionally go to concerts, listen to the radio or improvise, but these are less integral elements in the fabric of life than they are exceptional circumstances.  In contrast, Cubans constantly discover, produce and collaborate in formal and informal musical exchanges. 

 

Extreme Right: Trumpet player Manuel Mirabal Vázquez. Creative Commons, by Moyo Taxiguerrilla (2006).

One of the film's most revealing sequences occurs when singer Omara Portuondo, clad in a bold print dress, strolls down the street of her old neighborhood amid residents standing on the curbs and in front of dilapidated buildings.  As she wanders through the street, Portuondo sings, partly to herself and partly offering an impromptu performance to the audience that has gathered for her.  One woman of African descent joins her in song, invoking their common career experience and suggesting Cuba's ethnoracial heterogeneity.  During the commentary, Wenders emphasized that the neighborhood promenade scene unfolded spontaneously, a fact that is at first difficult to believe.  The individuals who gather to hear Portuondo balance reverence with anonymity.  They convey interest and desire to hear her voice, yet maintain relative nonchalance and refrain from pressuring or bombarding their locale celebrity.  Their expressions also appear unaffected by the presence of the camera.  The audience embodies civility and appreciation, without the self-consciousness or egotism that often accompanies the presence of a camera.  Indeed, as Wenders asserted, there is nothing "fake" about the people of Cuba. 

Interestingly, the concept of cinematic authenticity is a motif that recurs in Lisbon Story.  Towards the conclusion of the film, the mysterious German filmmaker Frederick challenges the very act of movie-making.  In his diatribe with his sound recorder he equates "Pointing a camera" with "pointing a weapon" and reflects, "...Every time I pointed at something, I had the feeling of depriving things of their life."  The very presence of the camera changes the subject, and the very eye of the cinematographer distorts it even further.  That is Frederick's unhappy conclusion, anyway.  The only way to escape these limitations is to capture figures without their knowledge or consent and without the corrupting influence of the filmmaker's own eye.  Frederick fashions plastic shopping bags, small backpacks and garbage cans into vessels for hidden cameras.  The flimsy blue plastic shopping bag seems appropriated directly from Buena Vista, where it also functioned as a vehicle, but one holding sacred visual elements from the past, rather than illicitly capturing unknown moments in the present. Cuban pianist Rubén González's uses a blue plastic bag to transport photographs of himself and other musicians at the height of their careers.  Against his characteristic orange zigzag button down, Rubén's insubstantial bag of treasured images intimates the pervasiveness of Cuban poverty, but also visually encapsulates Cuban values of relationships, authenticity and meaning in images and lyrics.  Armed only with a minimal plastic shopping bag, Rubén manages to protect the photographs from any blemish, indentation or tear.

 

Bassist Orland Lopez "Cachaito." Creative Commons, by Volume12 (2008).

Visual parallels between the two films run far more deeply than mere recurrent props.  In fact, Wenders captures environmental structures and geographies with suggestive doubles in Havana and Lisbon.  Train tracks function as one structural motif and symbol of transport, change, interconnectedness and, paradoxically, divisiveness.  In Buena Vista Social Club, Ochoa Bustamante sings and plays his guitar with a provincial folksiness as he walks towards the steady cam, following the tracks.  In Lisbon, the pace of life around the tracks is slightly more frantic and mechanized.  Trolley tracks in Lisbon Story help propel the protagonist Winter towards the mysterious child employed by Frederick.  Other analogues to the Lisbon trolleys are the putrid green and pink buses imported from the Soviet Union, seeming anachronisms that are actually critical to Havana's contemporary transport infrastructure.   

Wenders grapples with the environmental opposition between old and new in both films, and plays extensively with boundaries.  Boundaries may be physical thresholds, such as the coastal waters crashing against Havana's highways, or may exist in space and time, as with the cross cuts between the group's performance in Amsterdam and their work in the Cuban recording studio weeks earlier.  Diegetic sound bridges across these cuts (Silencio, sung by Ibrahim Ferrer and Omara Portuondo) lend a sense of continuity to an editing technique that might otherwise create temporal confusion. 

In both films, cinematography works to suggest navigation and exploration.  It evokes another breed of tension, this time between familiarity and newness.  The mobile camera ventures through the streets of Havana and Lisbon in a series of long takes that capture not only the neighborhood architecture and lighting, but the residents' attitudes and body language.  Wenders relied fully on the mobile cam and two heavier cameras with tripods (no tracking or dolleying), and the subtle irregularities in camera stability humanize the framing.  We are somewhat conscious of the street venturer recording the sights.  He is not a blatant tourist, but rather a selective observer, an outsider who also experiences a sense of connection with the new city.  In Lisbon Story, Winter embodies that "outsider."  En route to Lisbon, he listens to a Portuguese language cassette and struggles to replicate comical phrases.  Yet, although certain cultural and linguistic aspects of life in Lisbon are quite foreign, other elements -- like the exotic voice of Madredeus (Teresa Salgueiro) -- exist independent of national bounds and deeply resound with Winter.  A similar tension arises in Buena Vista Social Club, when the members of the band arrive in New York City for the first time.  In souvenir shops, the musicians recognize certain bobble-heads (Charlie Chaplin, for instance), but struggle and fail to name others (Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy).  By including such sequences detailing cultural connections and deviations, the director reveals something about himself.  Wenders has thoroughly established himself as an international figure in cinema.  Yet, he too must experience the strange, exciting imbalance that comes from traveling: the alien and unsettling juxtaposed with the familiar and universal.  And this opposition is what makes his local environments so vivid, so authentic and so approachable, regardless of a viewer's experiences or background.

Coulais' Soundscape in Coraline

Why is it so difficult to remain attentive to sound while watching a film?  And why is it so rare that we fully appreciate and internalize a musical score?  In a culture that bombards us with visual emblems, cues and representations, image frequently subverts sound, particularly in retrospective analysis.  We subconsciously relegate the musical score to the background, assuming it is more of an embellishment than a fundamental structural component.  Yet, a soundtrack can elicit intense emotional responses and deserves independent analytic and artistic investigation. 

The mise-en-scene acquires a notably warmer pallet in the alternate universe; costumes, props and visible light sources furnish a deceptively enticing fantasy world. Coraline. Creative Commons.¹

The challenge of formulating a non-verbal audio accompaniment to a narrative cannot be overstated.  In constructing an audio landscape, directors risk imposing a generic emotional atmosphere.  Such moods are frequently sentimental or melodramatic.  Exploiting sound to elicit calculated audience responses is highly problematic: a musical score that reduces the climate to shallow, one-dimensional emotions undermines the audience.  Characters and environments tend to lose their originality under the oppressive weight of music that “tells” viewers how to feel.  In turn, audiences habituated to overt musical scores lose the ability to formulate original thoughts about characters, relationships and environments.  A score might inspire angst, pity, joy or elation, but one-to-one equivocations between musical styles and emotions are rarely interesting.  When music is manipulated to induce a calculated response, it fosters complacency among viewers and dulls their capacity to think critically about the music in relation to the mise-en-scene, framing and characters. 

Last weekend, I ventured into Muvico 24 to see Henry Selicks’s acclaimed stop-action film Coraline in 3D.  Until then, I never had a reason to visit Arundel Mills.  But after seeing the film in 2D at The Charles, a trek down to the Mills was my only option if I wanted to see Coraline in all its stereoscopic glory.  The first thing you notice as you enter Arundel Mills is the ridiculous scale of things.  The whole mall is divided into "neighborhoods," each complete with streets and massive cafes facing massive stores selling computers and televisions.  It’s like an airport, only exponentially larger.  During the trailers, the sound was overwhelming and obtrusive, functioning only to amplify the impact of mass destruction, mechanical failure or human brutality.  In a way, the trailers' sound quality and volume conformed to the grotesque scale of the theater and mall.  I consider this type of sound to be exploitative because it obstructs our sense of cinema's visual language and fails to illuminate subtle connections between sound and imagery.

A successful sound universe generally develops an environment's complexity, widening the number of possible associations and interpretations, rather than confining a scene to one monolithic mood (i.e. "melancholy" or "happiness").  Part of what makes Coraline such an intriguing piece of art is the musical score's capacity to evoke new sentiments with multiple viewings.  Instrumental details and subtle shifts in tonality, volume and timbre are integrated with a level of craftsmanship that merits the meticulous language of stop-action animation.  My emotional response is never identical or formulaic.  Rather, I experience conflicting senses of familiarity and refreshing newness each time I listen to the score.  Moreover, within the context of each investigation, it is possible to discern conflicting elements: desire and repulsion, harmony and discord.

It would be a disservice to the film to try to analyze the extensive array of technically brilliant elements, including the interiors and landscapes, the characters' physical forms and movements (angular or wobbly, and often "twitchy," according to Selicks) and the lighting (cool/diffused versus warm/hard).  Instead, I hope to analyze three realms – Coraline's ordinary home, the art deco theater, Bobinsky's circus tent and the other-worldly garden – to investigate how the musical score and mise-en-scene interact to reveal parallels between characters and their micro-environments.  

Bruno Coulais is the film's French composer.  He is also well-known in the U.S. for his compositions in Les Choristes, a film that ardently asserts the power of music to counter repressive regimes.  The presence of youthful singers from Nice in Coraline identifies the musical score as Coulais'.  His work is original and inventive, oscillating between contemplation and agitation.  Perhaps the most challenging aspect of writing a film score is to ensure it is unified without being redundant.  Coulais achieves such a sense of unity by relying on a core group of instruments: horns and oboes, harps, vocals, piano and percussion instruments, along with synthesizers and bells.  He avoids the typical musical motif, instead opting to use certain melodies, rhythms and tones to color specific characters.  Thus, individuals and their environments acquire musical personalities that complement their visual impact. 

Neutral tones, cool accents and diffused lighting predominate Coraline's ordinary domestic existence. A raked stage intensifies the sense of confinement in the drab interior. Coraline. Creative Commons.²

In Coraline's home, a neutral dinginess pervades the dining room.  The accumulation of cool neutral elements - tiles, chipped cabinetry, fogged windows, metallic chairs, kettles and cutlery - cement the sense of ordinary.  Her parents are so embedded in the minutia of domesticity that they seem to become human appendages of the monotonous environment.  In the office, her father's gaunt, hunched body is echoed by precariously piled boxes and canted camera angles.  Coraline's restless form reflected in his computer poignantly encapsulates the gap between her boredom and his frustrations over work.  When he sends her on a mission to list the doors, windows and "everything that's blue," Coraline conveys curiosity, insight, independence and slight brooding.  Her quest is accompanied by Coulais' "Exploration," a light ballad performed with the Hungarian Symphony Orchestra.  A single angelic voice and accompanying harps and piano endow Coraline's childhood with a balance of beautiful innocence and potential darkness.  Using the synthesizer, Coulais compiles harmonies (from the solo vocalist) to create an illusion of multiple intertwined voices.  The result is a sound metaphor for the paradigm of the only child, who relies on her imagination for companionship. 

Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, retired British theater performers. Coraline. Creative Commons.³

Within the universe constructed by the "other mother," one of three luxuries used to entice Coraline is an elaborate art deco theater.  There, imitations of Coraline's two elderly neighbors, Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, perform an opera complete with intricate costumes, two-dimensional sets and an elaborate pulley system for hoisting figures.  It is a testament to the convincing characterization and deft manipulation of the puppets that we perceive the scenario to be authentic.  Suspended in the world of Coulais' musical composition and Selicks' animation, we embrace the notion of sculpted characters consciously performing against their own two-dimensional mise-en-scene!  Spink's fleshy body is firmly encased in a fish tail and Forcible's voluptuous form is scantily clad in sequins. Rarely in popular cinema is the elderly female body so brazenly displayed, and in this sense, Selicks departs from conventional Western constructs of feminine beauty.  However, Coulais' musical score grounds the scenario in a performance culture, where such absurdity seems natural. The music is highly dramatized and full of affectations.  And perhaps because the sequence is so flamboyant and unexpected, the lyrics assume a greater weight, even a sense of urgency.  It is difficult to ascribe a particular meaning to the opera's narrative, yet the warnings to sailors hint at an ominous future.

Music plays an equally critical role in the faux Bobinsky's circus tent.  It lends a sense of magical-realism through vaguely Eastern European melodies and frantic orchestral maneuvers.  There is a childish quality to the music, which seems to oscillate and glimmer alongside the synchronized mice.  Small bells, cymbals, percussion and fluttering high-pitched brass instruments give the sequence a ephemeral, dreamy aura.  But the music also echoes the eerie oboes, horns and chimes earlier associated with the authentic Bobinsky, blurring the threshold between the two parallel worlds.

The final other-worldly wonder is the Fantastic Garden, endowed with luminescent crocuses, tickling ivy and swarms of hummingbirds.  The garden brims with color, warmth and movement - pulsing with the vitality of an intricate ecosystem.  The visual elements are built up gradually, each striking component giving way to another, until the entire garden is viewed from above to reveal a fauna mosaic Coraline head.  The music develops in parallel fashion: what starts as a few lone violins culminates in a jazzy conglomeration of percussion, cymbals, bells, horns and strings.

After viewing the film in 2D and 3D, I have to say that the 3D format undermines the potent textural impact of Bruno Coulais' musical score.  Although it certainly adds a technically impressive element to the opening sequence, in which needle-thin metallic fingers deconstruct the fibers, fillings and hair of a doll, it deprives the movie of its cinematic essence, giving it the feel of a video game.  Coulais' music, influenced by the French pianist Eric Satie, renders the animation deeply emotional, at once delightful and disconcerting.  Coulais' sound scheme renders Selick's work more vivid, immediate and lasting.  His impact far exceeds anything stereoscopic effects can achieve.

In an interview regarding the film's fastidious attention to detail and craft, Henry Selicks asserted that his main job was "to keep the beauty under control...to knock down the beauty."  Excess beauty is a very real risk when a project involves so many talented people, each engaged in one small component of the whole.  But Selicks, through figure twitches and grit, successfully combats perfection.  He relies on visual language to convey characters' behaviors and mannerisms, and trusts Coulais' music to inform their deeper emotional complexities.  For this he should be commended. 

 

Image Credits:

1. "Pic by Focus Features." Creative Commons. Joanneteh_32. January 30, 2009.

2. "Coraline's Normal Life." Creative Commons. Joanneteh_32. January 30, 2009.

3. "Miss Forcible and Spink." Creative Commons. Joanneteh_32. January 30, 2009.

 

 

A Brief Discourse on the Importance of Music in Film

Perhaps it is my background in music that makes me prone to picking up so intensely on a film’s soundtrack, but I believe that a movie’s music is one of its most important aspects; a characteristic that is often taken for granted.  A film can reveal so much within its music.  Beyond the creepy background music of thrillers that tells you the killer is around the corner, music has the ability to expose characters’ feelings, actions, and a film’s tensions.

Just as directors carefully choose their shots, they also spend a great deal of time selecting their soundtrack.  Take acclaimed director Martin Scorsese for example.  Though Scorsese is an Oscar-winning director, he is also known for his impeccable use of music in his films.  He has directed a few documentaries on bands, including No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005), The Last Waltz (1978), and Shine a Light (2008); but Scorsese’s music in his feature films sticks out the most.  From The Rolling Stone’s “Gimme Shelter,” which has become a Scorsese trademark (played in three of his most famous films), to The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby,” the music picked has a reason for being there.  When “Monkey Man,” by The Rolling Stones, is played at the end of Goodfellas (when Henry Hill goes crazy because of his cocaine addiction), it is no coincidence.  The song isn’t arbitrarily placed there because it sounds good aesthetically, but because its lyrics reflect something in Henry’s psyche.  It is no accident that the lyrics, “I’m a sack of broken eggs/I always have an unmade bed,” encapsulate Henry precisely.

In a 2007 interview with Craig McLean from The Observer, Scorsese said that it is “not just the songs I use in the film. No, it's about the tone and the mood of their music, their attitude. The music itself.”  Referring specifically to The Rolling Stone’s songs (which he was willing to spend $30,000 of a $750,000 budget on), Scorsese puts an emphasis on the energy music can add to a film. 

In Todd Solondz’ Welcome to the Doll House (1995), powerful base-heavy music is played whenever the main character, Dawn, gets angry and wants to rebel.  It may be obvious that Dawn’s vexed, but the song accentuates the atmosphere and her aggression.  The beat is repeated throughout the film and becomes a motif that is symbolic of Dawn’s disconsolate life and even of the whole movie.  Similarly, if the climax of The Departed (2006) lacked music, it would just be another scene, with less importance and hardly any energy.  But The Dropkick Murphy’s punk-rock song “I’m Shipping Up to Boston” plays loudly, the scene becomes quite intense, and the audience is automatically engaged in the film and aware that something important is going to happen. 

Such as The Dropkick Murphy’s song gained huge popularity after being in The Departed, many movies procure esteem because of their soundtracks.  Garden State (2004) is known for it’s popular soundtrack, and often times its viewers come away from the film deeply moved solely because of the music’s emotional collaboration with the film’s content.  Some films that receive such acclaims due to their soundtracks are often movies about musicians (I’m Not There, 2007) or revolve solely on music for its content (Across the Universe, 2007), but music can be more than just a plot device.

Director Quentin Tarantino, another celebrated maestro of music in film, manipulates music as a sort of “magic object” through which his characters and events are tied together. In Reservoir Dogs (1992), music transports characters through different scenes and situations.  Whenever in a car, the radio plays “K-BILLY'S: ‘Super Sounds of the Seventies’ weekend” show.  In separate cars different characters, all in contrasting situations, seem to converge because of this unifying music on the radio.  Music plays an important role even at the beginning of this film.  Characters are introduced in the opening scene through the discussion of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.”  Though the song isn’t actually playing, its placement works to reveal attributes of the characters: who is more vulgar, who is more sensitive, who doesn’t even like music, etc.  The concept of using music to illuminate characters’ qualities is maybe the most overlooked, but one of the most important roles music can play. 

Mary Harron’s American Psycho (2000) utilizes music both to reveal the deep mental derangement of the protagonist, Patrick Bateman, and to explicitly place the film in a time period.  Bateman can give a litany of seemingly unimportant facts about pop music, analyzing the minutest details of Phil Collins, Huey Lewis & the News, and Whitney Houston.  His obsession with analyzing and playing such music is a reflection of his inner ruthless behaviors.  Bateman explains that the song “Hip to be Square,” by Huey Lewis & the News, a smash-hit, isn’t “just about the pleasures of conformity and the importance of trends. It's a personal statement about the band itself.”  A band that Bateman believes has a “bitter, cynical sense of humor.”  Bateman’s close reading of the song and the band are important because they explain some of his sadistic behaviors.  Bateman repeats this musical examination again, explaining Phil Collins’ music’s “intangibility” and Whitney Houston’s “self-preservation and dignity.”  All of the things he touches upon are actually important aspects of himself, characteristics that are only implicitly exposed within the music.  Not only does the music (always juxtaposed with one of his violent acts) explain the inner workings of Bateman, but it also places the audience directly in the time period of the film, 1987.  If the clothing styles weren’t enough, the music successfully transports audiences into the 80s.  Though music does have this innate capability of recreating a cultural and historical time, it does not necessarily have to be reflective of the time to be effective.

The soundtrack to Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men (2006) imitates the tensions and desperation within the film.  Though the film is sent in 2027, scenes are reflective of World War II concentration camps, reminiscent of the 2004 Abu Ghraib prisoner scandal, and hold the general, indignant attitude of the public during the Vietnam War.  The movie culminates in a world that has not learned from its past.  Children of Men’s music transcends time to seamlessly make relevant these feelings, to make the images more poignant. The song “Arbeit Macht Frei” by The Libertines, mimics a German phrase (in English: “work will set you free”) that prisoners of concentration camps believed would free them, and plays alongside images that imitate these camps.  The music not only exemplifies these tones, but also reflects the overall despair of the film by including songs such as The Rolling Stone’s “Ruby Tuesday,” whose lyrics read: “Cash your dreams before they slip away/Dying all the time/Lose your dreams and you/Will lose your mind/Ain't life unkind.”  The inclusion of such songs, along with the general themes of the film, are Cuarón’s warning that not learning from a world’s past can only end in hopelessness. 

Everywhere we go music follows us, making us desensitized to it.  Our habituation to music means we easily overlook music’s role in our lives, and even more so in film.  Music’s function is deeper than simply background music.  Focus on the songs the director chooses and you will have a much greater understanding of a film, you’ll learn and experience a good deal more.