The Matrix Score, Don Davis
A little while ago, my lovely wife and I made a movie-watching deal with each other. She wants me to watch the 6 hour BBC version of Pride and Prejudice; I’m not opposed to watching it, but since it’s such a feat I thought I’d make a deal out of it. So the deal is that I’d watch Pride and Prejudice with her if she would watch the Matrix trilogy with me. (She had seen the first one and parts of the second one before.) Last week we watched the original Matrix film to start off the deal.
I was reminded why The Matrix is my favorite movie of all time. Great story, brilliant symbolism, great casting/performances, innovative special effects, killer action scenes, trenchcoats and sunglasses. And a stunning score. The composer is Don Davis, who scored all three Matrix movies and The Animatrix, but otherwise nothing too significant. After listening to the score again, though, I’m not sure why. The score is just as brilliant and innovative as the rest of the film, and is a perfect counterpart.
The main motif of the movie, which most people would immediately associate with the Matrix score, is swelling brass chords in alternating octaves. You can hear them in the opening moments of the movie, over the Warner Bros. and Village Pictures logos, and throughout the movie, usually at points where something particularly unbelievable has happened in the Matrix (Trinity’s leap between two buildings in the opening sequence, for example). On the Amazon product page you can hear them in track 8, “Bullet-Time;” if you watch the movie, listen for them as a recurring motif throughout.
The score also makes effective use of a wordless choir to evoke the otherworldliness and horror of the human fields (which you can hear in track 3, “The Power Plant”). The choir enters in very close intervals, creating clusters of notes that grow with the addition of brass clusters and other elements to create a big dissonant soundscape that corresponds with the emotions that the visuals create. Another effective use of vocals in the score is the wordless boy soprano, who sings a simple alternating melody over the montage of Neo’s awakening in the real world and being restored to health. In a similar manner as the choir, the wordless voice creates an otherworldly effect that corresponds to the literal other world that Neo is experiencing.
If you haven’t seen The Matrix in a while, or if you’ve never seen it, give it a watch and let me know what you think. Were there any other aspects of the score that you noticed, liked, or disliked? What stood out to you?
La Moustache Score
A few nights ago my lovely wife and I watched La Moustache, a French movie with English subtitles that she had heard about somewhere. It’s a story about a man who shaves his mustache on a whim, but is then baffled when his wife and friends don’t notice–and then is more baffled still when they insist he’s never had a mustache. We weren’t sure whether it was a comedy or a drama–since it seems like that premise could go either way–but it turned out to be a mysterious drama which was kind of frustrating because it never explained all the weird happenings in the movie. I don’t mind ambiguous endings, in general, but it never even tried to explain the increasingly strange things that kept happening. And the hilarious part was that in the special features, even the lead actress admitted she had no idea what was happening in “the mustache story,” and even the director himself said he didn’t really know what was going on. Weird.
But in any case, the music for the film was interesting. There was really only one piece that was used throughout the film, and really only two sections of the piece. The main part that was used consisted of repeated chords and arpeggiated figures in the strings. It had a haunting, ominous quality to it, so it was used effectively in situations that required that feeling; but it seemed a little repetitive by the end. As we watched the credits, I discovered that the piece was the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra by Philip Glass, one of the most successful modern American composers. The piece is from 1987 and is a good example of his tonal, repetitive, and minimal style. And it worked, more or less, as the only score in La Moustache.
You can listen to clips of Concerto for Violin and Orchestra by clicking here and then clicking the “listen/watch” button on the left side of the page. Then click on “Violin Concerto” in the second list that pops up.
P.S. I’m sure most, if not all of my TLB readers have heard this news through other channels (email, website, Facebook, Twitter…), but just in case you haven’t: I’m going to be releasing a new recording of an original Christmas song, called “Paradoxology,” this Christmas Eve 12/24/2009. It’ll be my first released recording in four years–the first since my album Following A Star was finished, on Christmas Eve of 2005. You’ll be able to download “Paradoxology” from my website, for free, next Thursday. So check it out! http://www.ajharbison.com
Also Sprach Zarathustra in Movie Previews
This past weekend, my lovely wife and I went to see Up, Pixar’s latest movie (I know, you don’t have to tell me how far behind I am in seeing it…). It was really awesome, by the way–probably the most emotionally powerful and best-looking animated movie I’ve ever seen. But before the movie started, we were watching the previews, and I noticed that two of them in a row used the exact same music in their trailers. (One was Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, but I can’t remember what the other one was.) The music was the opening to Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss, perhaps best known as the theme to the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. (I guarantee you know this theme; if that doesn’t sound familiar, watch the YouTube clip below.)
This piece has been used bazillions of times in movies, commercials, previews, etc.; in these two trailers, it was being used as a parody of itself–a monumental, epic theme played humorously against animated films. But it struck me as pretty ridiculous that two animated previews in a row used the exact same music for the exact same purpose. Doesn’t anyone have any original ideas for music anymore? Why don’t they get a young up-and-coming composer of rocking music to write a new theme for them?
Sideways Score, Rolfe Kent
My lovely wife and I watched the movie Sideways for the first time last night (and drank a 2007 Robert Mondavi pinot noir to commemorate the occasion). The movie is about two middle-aged men who take a trip through Napa Valley wine country the week before one of them gets married; along the way, as the movie’s tagline states, they’re “In search of wine. In search of women. In search of themselves.” It was an enjoyable movie; it’s billed as a comedy, and the first half was quite fun and had a lot to do with wine (which of course I enjoyed). The second half, however, was much more of a drama, and had much less to do with wine (and I was a little disappointed). But overall it was quite a good movie.
The score was written by Rolfe Kent, who has written music for many of director Alexander Payne’s movies (including About Schmidt and Election) as well as other popular movies such as Wedding Crashers, Thank You For Smoking and Legally Blonde. It was a jazzy, piano-driven pop-music score–reminiscent in my mind of the style of Hitch’s score by George Fenton. There was a lot of music in the film, probably because the movie covers the period of an entire week and thus there are a lot of short scenes and transitions that the music helps along, and the upbeat, poppy music definitely kept the atmosphere light and kept things moving. I was especially fond of the theme that plays on the DVD menu (you can hear samples on the score’s Amazon page; that particular theme can be found in a more subdued version in “Los Olivos,” track 8). But there was also some melancholy piano solo music that helped set the tone of the second half of the movie as well, that followed a common bass line progression: G minor – F# augmented – B-flat major over F – C major 9 over E – etc. (You can hear this theme in track 11 on the Amazon page, “Abandoning The Wedding.”)
We watched the movie all the way through the end credits, as we always do, and it was interesting to note that through most of the credits the music was the jazzy, upbeat style of the first half of the movie; but the very last part of the score at the end returned to the doleful piano theme and ended on that. I wonder if it was an intentional statement by the filmmakers that although there are happy and upbeat times in life, the underlying theme (or perhaps the final theme) is melancholy. It certainly did seem that way for the characters in the film.
Before Sunrise
At the recommendation of my brother, my lovely wife and I watched Before Sunrise this past week. Ethan Hawke stars as an American traveler in Europe who meets a lovely French girl on the train, and invites her to spend the night with him walking the streets of Vienna before he flies home in the morning. It was written and directed by Richard Linklater, and it’s a very unique film. There are no major characters apart from the two protagonists (possibly not even any other named characters), and there’s very little action; the film focuses entirely on their developing relationship, primarily through dialogue, but it’s well-written enough that it doesn’t get boring and seems strikingly realistic.
The music was very minimal, and, interestingly enough, except for the very beginning and the very end of the movie, all of the music was source music. Source music (or, more technically, diegetic music) is music that has an on-screen or inferred source within the film, which the characters can hear (for example, a singer-songwriter playing in a bar or a man playing a harpsichord in his basement as the characters pass by). The only non-source or non-diegetic music in the film is a string orchestra playing at the beginning over a progression of shots of the train and its travels, and a similar piece at the end after the two part ways. (I wasn’t able to find definitive information on what the piece at the end was, although the beginning was the overture to Dido and Aeneas by the English Baroque composer Henry Purcell.)
The choice to use little or no music in a movie, or at least little or no non-source music, is always an interesting one. The example that came to mind for me was No Country For Old Men, the Best Picture Oscar winner from 2008 (and obviously worlds apart from Before Sunrise). In that movie, the lack of music created an eerie, too-quiet feeling of vulnerability–too much silence (or quiet) is often discomfiting. But in Before Sunrise, the lack of music has a very different effect. Like many other elements in the film, the music is stripped away in order to direct all the focus upon the two characters, and also creates a more viable environment of realism (since obviously real life isn’t accompanied by a non-diegetic score). Adding music would also create the dangerous likelihood of the film descending into sentimentality–only an especially talented composer, I think, could avoid that, and thus cutting out non-source music altogether (apart from the beginning and the end) eliminates that possibility.
My wife and I enjoyed the film quite a bit. Not a great movie, I’d say, but a good story, told well. Even without a score.
Joyeux Noël
A few weeks ago my lovely wife and I watched the 2005 film Joyeux Noël (“Merry Christmas” in French)–her for the second time, me for the first. (Incidentally, we’ve been loving our subscription to Netflix and I’d heartily recommend it to anybody who enjoys watching a lot of movies.) Joyeux Noël is the story of the “Christmas Truces” during World War I, where soldiers on both sides left their trenches and met together in no man’s land on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in 1914. It was a superlative film–the acting and cinematography were top-notch, and it was emotionally powerful while never falling into sentimentality.
I don’t have much to say about the score, but I loved how music was portrayed in the movie as a force that brings people together. The truces were initiated when the German soldiers started singing carols on Christmas Eve, and were responded to by the other side singing carols back; in the movie (which takes a bit of historical license while still representing the spirit of the story) the Scottish soldiers start playing on their bagpipes, and are answered by the Germans singing “Silent Night.” Cautiously, the Scottish soldiers begin playing “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” and a German tenor rises from his trench and crosses no man’s land, singing along. It’s a powerful moment. Later, the Scottish chaplain holds a Mass, and the German tenor’s wife (who has come along to raise the troops’ morale) sings an “Ave Maria” to a transfixed crowd of all the soldiers: a great illustration of the power of beauty in a horrifically ugly situation.
The movie is a powerful testimony to how music can transcend race and culture and differences to unite people, and it garners my highest admiration and recommendation.
Watchmen Soundtrack, Tyler Bates
As you may have seen on my Twitter page (or the sidebar on the right), I went to see the movie Watchmen on Thursday night. It’s the only film adaptation of what is generally accepted to be the greatest graphic novel/comic book of all time, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ work of the same name. It was considered “unfilmable” for over twenty years, but director Zack Snyder (of 300 fame) did a terrific job and made a movie worthy of the book. I’ve heard that he used the graphic novel basically as a storyboard for the movie, and many scenes are recreated almost shot-for-shot; overall it’s probably the most faithful book-to-movie adaptation I’ve ever seen. The performances were all great, especially Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach and Patrick Wilson as Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl II. One of my few reservations was that the movie didn’t give the Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias character enough credit–he was too much of a pretty boy and not enough emphasis was given to his intelligence–but overall I vastly enjoyed it. (IMDB’s trivia page on the movie is rather extensive, and is an interesting source of information on the long process of making the movie as well as a compendium of many of the subtle references made to the book in the movie. Well worth checking out, if you’re interested.)
I really enjoyed the music, as well. Most of the soundtrack consisted of songs from the time in which the movie takes place–”The Times They Are A-Changin’” by Bob Dylan, “All Along The Watchtower” performed by Jimi Hendrix, “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen, “The Sound Of Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel, etc. Some of the songs play with the action happening on screen; for example, “The Times They are A-Changin’” plays over a historical montage setting the context of the movie and “The Sound Of Silence” plays over the graveyard scene of The Comedian’s funeral. Other songs play against the action, for example when “Unforgettable” performed by Nat King Cole plays over the intense violence of The Comedian’s murder at the beginning. Both uses are very effective in their own way, and I was impressed at how well all of the songs (which already exist in a set form, and were chosen because of their fame in the era) were put to use in the film. It’s also worth noting that many of the songs were referenced in the original graphic novel, several being the basis of issue titles; another example of Snyder paying homage to the source material in as many ways as possible.
The movie also uses several “classical” cues like Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” for one of the Vietnam War scenes (the piece is referenced in the book, though not in that context). During the scene of Dr. Manhattan’s origin story, which takes place on Mars, the music played is Philip Glass’ “Prophecies,” from the movie Koyaanisqatsi; the eerie, otherworldly quality of Glass’ minimalism is a perfect complement to the isolation and (literally) otherworldliness of the scene.
I enjoyed the actual score by Tyler Bates too (many if not all of the choices of pop songs would have been made by the music supervisor). It was unintrusive, and mostly consisted of background atmosphere-type cues. The one moment that stood out, however, was the scene where Laurie and Daniel (aka Silk Spectre II and Nite Owl II) decide to put their costumes on and go out adventuring, like they did in the old days. The music grew to a stirring, inspirational feel as the characters gained confidence and sensed old excitements coming back. The first thing that stood out was the music’s subtle homage paid to the Batman Begins and The Dark Knight scores, by James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer, in its rhythmic string pattern (I wrote about the Dark Knight score back in August). But scarcely before I began smiling at recognizing the reference, the score paid a much less subtle homage to Don Davis’ score for The Matrix, particularly part of the last cue “Anything Is Possible” which occurs when Neo comes back from the dead and realizes all of his powers inside the Matrix. It was practically Bates’ paraphrase of the Matrix cue. Both of the score references were to “superheroes,” of a sort, and indicated strong decisions to take up superhero-like powers–which, of course, was exactly what was happening in that scene in Watchmen. It was rather brilliant.
Watchmen was a great movie with a great soundtrack. The caveat is that there’s a lot of blood’n'guts and a few sex scenes, but I would recommend the movie highly to anyone who enjoyed the graphic novel. I rarely purchase film score albums, and even more rarely do I purchase soundtrack albums; but I’m considering both from this film. Well done, Zack Snyder and Tyler Bates.
Slumdog Millionaire Soundtrack, A.R. Rahman
Last week my lovely fiancée and I decided to take a break from wedding planning and go out on an old-fashioned date to dinner and a movie. The movie we saw was Slumdog Millionaire, a film about an 18 year-old orphan named Jamal from the slums of Mumbai who becomes a contestant on India’s version of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” and is poised to win the grand prize of 20 million rupees. But when the show breaks for the night, he is arrested and interrogated by a police inspector who doesn’t believe a “slumdog” could know so much. Jamal tells the inspector his life story, each new stage in his tale revealing how he knew the answer to one of the questions.
Eleanor and I both enjoyed the film very much. It was a very well-made movie, with terrific cinematography, good writing and good acting–a fun ride. I remarked to her that the story was filled with contrasts pitted against each other: the rich gang lords contrasted with the orphans in the slums; the superficiality and shallowness of the game show contrasted with the gritty, authentic picture of life on the streets; the old slums and trash heaps in Mumbai contrasted with seemingly endless new construction. And this contrast of old and new came out in the music quite a bit, too. The score was written by A.R. Rahman, a composer who apparently has done a lot of Indian movies. I noticed that a lot of the music utilized modern electronics and beats, but featured traditional Indian instruments.
You can hear some samples on the Amazon product page for the soundtrack. “O… Saya,” a collaboration between the composer and artist M.I.A., features a computer-altered voice singing a traditional-sounding melody above fast percussion. An uncredited editorial review on the Amazon page declares the song “a rumbling hybrid of Bollywood and hip-hop.” The soundtrack also juxtaposes more ethnic music like “Ringa Ringa” (track number six) with “Latika’s Theme” (track number eight), an atmospheric treatment of a theme that could fit in a variety of movies and becomes a pop song in “Dreams On Fire,” the penultimate track. And the third track, “Mausam & Escape,” sounds perhaps like the Indian version of “Through The Fire And Flames.”
The Amazon page also quotes Kurt Loder of MTV.com as saying this: “The propulsive score, by Bollywood soundtrack auteur A. R. Rahman, is hip-hop fusion of a very up-to-date kind.” I agree. Artistically, I appreciated how the fusion in the music reflected the fusion in the movie; and as a listener I enjoyed the music for adding another dimension to a very cool film.
La Vie En Rose Soundtrack, Christopher Gunning
Well, so much for posting more consistently….
A few weeks ago, my lovely fiancée and I rented the movie La Vie En Rose and watched it for the first time. It’s a French movie (originally titled La Môme in France), in French with English subtitles, about the “extraordinary life” of the French singer Édith Piaf. The actress who plays Piaf, Marion Cotillard, won a Best Actress Oscar for the role last year–only the second time a foreign film has ever garnered that award. So, between the critical accolades (a draw for me) and the fact that it was French (a draw for Eleanor), we decided we would check it out.
It was a very good movie–very long and very sad, but very good. Cotillard’s performance was heralded as “breathtaking” and “one of the greatest performances on film ever,” and it is certainly a superlative one, especially as Piaf near the end of her life.
Of course, since the movie was about Piaf, much of the score was comprised of her songs–sometimes with Cotillard singing but often the original Piaf recordings. The rest of the score was composed by Christopher Gunning, whose IMDB page reveals no other movies that I recognize–apparently he’s written a lot for TV. I found it interesting that in many of the movie’s moments where the score enters, when it didn’t involve a Piaf song, the composer employed a lone piano with no other instrumentation. Often the rest of the movie’s audio (dialogue, sound effects, etc.) would fade or disappear completely, leaving only a piano playing generally chordal passages in minor keys. It was an interesting touch, and a poignant one. As portrayed in the movie, Piaf had few friends and very few close ones; I wonder if Gunning’s choice of a single instrument was representative of her loneliness. In any case, the score did not make a great impression on me otherwise, but I enjoyed this particular concept and the rest of the movie was excellent.
The Dark Knight Soundtrack, Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard
Okay, okay, I know, I was the last person to see the new Batman movie The Dark Knight–I saw it this past weekend (last Thursday night, I think, with my lovely girlfriend). I am a huge fan of the director, Christopher Nolan, particularly his films Memento (one of my favorite movies, and one of the most brilliant movies, ever) and Batman Begins. Up there with the (in some ways) incomparable M. Night Shyamalan, Nolan is one of the greatest consummate filmmakers of our day. Going into The Dark Knight, then, I had high expectations. And I must say, before I get to the musical side, that it is an excellent movie in almost all respects. Yes, it’s very dark and rather creepy, but it’s an amazing movie. All that stuff you’ve heard about Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker–one of the greatest movie villains ever, posthumous Oscar, etc.? All true. Is this the most intelligent superhero movie ever? Very possible.
Okay, but we know this isn’t a film blog. What was my opinion of the score from Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard?
Much as I felt about their score for Batman Begins; in a word, disappointing.
Hans Zimmer (who, interestingly enough, doesn’t read music) and James Newton Howard are two of Hollywood’s top five film composers. I particularly like Howard’s (Newton Howard’s?) work; for example, his scores for Peter Jackson’s recent King Kong and all of Shyamalan’s films. From such a composer, especially in collaboration with Zimmer who has scored movies such as The Da Vinci Code, The Last Samurai, and Gladiator, one would expect an impressive and memorable score.
It’s memorable, all right, but only because it’s so unimpressive that it’s surprising from two A-plus-list composers.
I have to say that my recollections of the score in the movie may be tainted, because I was so engrossed with how awesome the rest of the movie was; but I didn’t even remember much music at all, much less good music. The main theme from Batman Begins returns here: steady strings playing the alternating notes of a minor third, with occasional bass notes thrown in here and there somehow comprising both the bass and the melody. But they’re occasional enough (i.e. far enough apart) that they don’t make for much of a melody. You can hear a hint of this theme on the Amazon product page in the sample for the track “A Dark Knight” (the last track on the album), although that includes a bit of extra melody, in the low strings.
There is a progression of two chords which comes back very often in the score; you can hear it in the sample of “Introduce A Little Anarchy” (track 12)–which, as you may notice, includes as an accompaniment a slight variant on the minor third in the strings. You can perhaps hear James Newton Howard’s influence in the sample of “Agent of Chaos” (track 11), which layers King Kong-esque piano over the minor third in the strings–are we starting to see a pattern here?
The most notable change from the Batman Begins score (and there aren’t many) is the addition of the musical leitmotif, if you will, for the character of the Joker. You can hear the general idea in the sample of “Why So Serious,” which is track 1 (and also “Always A Catch,” track 5): a part-strings-part-electronic hum which slowly rises in pitch as it rises in volume. A creepy effect; it’s not even really a theme, it’s just that, an effect. But it’s effective, and I have to say it’s probably my favorite part of the score: it’s interesting, it’s provocative, and while it may not exactly be original it’s definitely not a cliché.
After listening to the sample tracks on the Amazon page, I am perhaps willing to surrender a bit of ground. It seems that there was quite a bit of the score that I didn’t notice in the movie. But even just listening to the samples, you can hear a great deal of homogeneity. There are basically three components to the score:
1. The strings playing the alternating minor third.
2. The two-chord progression.
3. The Joker’s “theme.”
If you listen through each of the samples on the page, almost all of them are variations–but only slightly changed variations–of one or more of these ideas. Yes, movie scores need a lot of coherence, but they need more variety than this.
The score is moody, dark, and brooding, as many of its reviewers have noted, but it accomplishes those ends by using the same means throughout. I can’t say I was surprised, exactly, because I expected more of the same from Batman Begins; but I was certainly disappointed that it could not rise higher than the low expectations I’d set for it.
The Dark Knight is now the number one movie in America for the third straight weekend, which means that statistically, there’s a very high chance that most of my readers have seen it. What are your thoughts? Agree or disagree?
(P.S. Just an FYI: In researching this post, I discovered that the score even has its own website: thedarkknightscore.com.)
