Movies, Music and Melodrama
May. 24th, 2004 12:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
liptonrm_backupI've been watching a lot of very emotional movies and TV shows in the past couple of weeks and ever since I saw Troy a week and a half ago I've had this essay, idea, paper thing floating around my head. You may all take it for what it's worth.
I believe music is an integral part of any experience I have with any of the visual arts. I enjoyed Troy as a movie and I was not at all distressed by the liberties it took with the source material. It never purported to be a faithful adaptation of The Iliad and hence I never expected it to be. I appreciated that Helen was given a meager backbone and a sense of responsibility, I was extrememly grateful that Hector's baby boy wasn't thrown off the walls of Troy, that Andromache wasn't turned into a slave and I kind of liked Briseis killing Agammenon because it worked for the story which we were being told. I disliked Achilles running around the streets of Troy looking for Briseis, but that's only a minor complaint compared to the hideousness that was the musical score, a score that accomplished the exact opposite of what a movie score is supposed to do. A score is supposed to underline and highlight the emotional moments of the film, it's supposed to work both in connection with the visual stimuli as well as stand thematically on its own. It should not distract one from enjoying what is seen on the screen and trivialize the triumphs and failures of the characters and the importance of the events. James Horner's score was distracting and obnoxiousness and the idiots who decided that it was appropriate should never work in Hollywood again.
The problems became even more apparent afterwards as I settled down to watch the director's commentary on Gladiator, something I had never done for any movie before. At one point Ridley Scott waxes poetic about Hans Zimmer's score in that movie; Mr. Scott stated that while many people believe a good score should be completely innocuous he, himself believed that a score should definitely be noticed and appreciated, that good music enhanced a movie and helped to tell the story on a different emotional and psychological level. I completely agree, music is important. I still weep uncontrollably at the end of Gladiator both because of the profundity of Maximus's last moments and for the amazing music that reaches into me and tears my heart in two. When I discovered that Troy could have had that kind of effect, that Gabriel Yared had composed an amazing score only to have it denied a month before the movie was released, I nearly screamed in frustration. If you don't believe me, go to GabrielYared.com and listen for yourself. The music is beautiful and appropriate and I wish that I could have it on CD right.now.
Another comment in the Gladiator commentary made me think, as well, and all of these thoughts are strangely bound up with the Smallville season finale that recently passed on our TV screens. At one point Gladiator was compared to an opera, but only in the best of ways and I realized that that is one of the reasons I continue to adore that movie so much even though so many people really aren't all that fond of it. It is big and lush and emotional and tragic and heart-rending and a little over the top and I love it for all of those reasons. This ties in directly with why I loved the ending of the last episode of Smallville, and ending which was emotional and traumatic and a little over the top but it caught me and would not let me go. My comment at the time was that I can forgive the people responsible for Smallville nearly anything if they give me a dramatic montage supported by the power of the Kyrie from Mozart's Requiem. I had a music-geek meltdown when I heard the opening strains and I was very nearly in tears by the time it was over. They gave me an amazingly lush and operatic ending and I have hence forgiven them of the interminable angst of the preceding season and the horror that is the on again/off again Clark/Lana relationship. I might have been born a few centuries too late if these operatic constructions affect me so powerfully.
The primal evocative power of music is much like the power of fantasy and magic and fairy tale, it touches a place inside of us, wakes us to understandings that are inherently inexplicable and allows us to feel a universe of emotions all within a single moment of time. When combined with visual images of power and beauty and a story or idea that captures one's intellect and imagination there is nothing more powerful or captivating. Go, listen, feel, be amazed and, above all, enjoy.
I believe music is an integral part of any experience I have with any of the visual arts. I enjoyed Troy as a movie and I was not at all distressed by the liberties it took with the source material. It never purported to be a faithful adaptation of The Iliad and hence I never expected it to be. I appreciated that Helen was given a meager backbone and a sense of responsibility, I was extrememly grateful that Hector's baby boy wasn't thrown off the walls of Troy, that Andromache wasn't turned into a slave and I kind of liked Briseis killing Agammenon because it worked for the story which we were being told. I disliked Achilles running around the streets of Troy looking for Briseis, but that's only a minor complaint compared to the hideousness that was the musical score, a score that accomplished the exact opposite of what a movie score is supposed to do. A score is supposed to underline and highlight the emotional moments of the film, it's supposed to work both in connection with the visual stimuli as well as stand thematically on its own. It should not distract one from enjoying what is seen on the screen and trivialize the triumphs and failures of the characters and the importance of the events. James Horner's score was distracting and obnoxiousness and the idiots who decided that it was appropriate should never work in Hollywood again.
The problems became even more apparent afterwards as I settled down to watch the director's commentary on Gladiator, something I had never done for any movie before. At one point Ridley Scott waxes poetic about Hans Zimmer's score in that movie; Mr. Scott stated that while many people believe a good score should be completely innocuous he, himself believed that a score should definitely be noticed and appreciated, that good music enhanced a movie and helped to tell the story on a different emotional and psychological level. I completely agree, music is important. I still weep uncontrollably at the end of Gladiator both because of the profundity of Maximus's last moments and for the amazing music that reaches into me and tears my heart in two. When I discovered that Troy could have had that kind of effect, that Gabriel Yared had composed an amazing score only to have it denied a month before the movie was released, I nearly screamed in frustration. If you don't believe me, go to GabrielYared.com and listen for yourself. The music is beautiful and appropriate and I wish that I could have it on CD right.now.
Another comment in the Gladiator commentary made me think, as well, and all of these thoughts are strangely bound up with the Smallville season finale that recently passed on our TV screens. At one point Gladiator was compared to an opera, but only in the best of ways and I realized that that is one of the reasons I continue to adore that movie so much even though so many people really aren't all that fond of it. It is big and lush and emotional and tragic and heart-rending and a little over the top and I love it for all of those reasons. This ties in directly with why I loved the ending of the last episode of Smallville, and ending which was emotional and traumatic and a little over the top but it caught me and would not let me go. My comment at the time was that I can forgive the people responsible for Smallville nearly anything if they give me a dramatic montage supported by the power of the Kyrie from Mozart's Requiem. I had a music-geek meltdown when I heard the opening strains and I was very nearly in tears by the time it was over. They gave me an amazingly lush and operatic ending and I have hence forgiven them of the interminable angst of the preceding season and the horror that is the on again/off again Clark/Lana relationship. I might have been born a few centuries too late if these operatic constructions affect me so powerfully.
The primal evocative power of music is much like the power of fantasy and magic and fairy tale, it touches a place inside of us, wakes us to understandings that are inherently inexplicable and allows us to feel a universe of emotions all within a single moment of time. When combined with visual images of power and beauty and a story or idea that captures one's intellect and imagination there is nothing more powerful or captivating. Go, listen, feel, be amazed and, above all, enjoy.
