Last day of the festival today & I’m off to see The Future Is Unwritten, a doco about Joe Strummer & The Clash… Last night I saw Gus Van Sants new film: Paranoid Park, and while I really liked it there was one moment when the score totally pulled me out of the film & I’ve been thinking about why. The film often uses a technique, especially when we are right there with the lead boys point of view, of removing all ‘real’ sound & shifting the soundtrack to quite beautiful ambient music. The effect is very powerful in an understated & evocative way and after doing a few searches I discovered the music was created by musician & sound artist Ethan Rose: “Whether it be taped-up player piano rolls, broken music boxes, or instruments of a more traditional sort, all the sounds were carefully and randomly interrupted by my hands, before being arranged into larger pieces. For the most part it is a love of the archaic mechanizations of gears spinning and paper scratching, of textural sounds discovered in old things that propelled me into making these songs.”
Check out his myspace, record label & boomkat site, plus heres some mp3s:
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So far so good, but for me the film broke its spell at a crucial moment (spoiler warning) when the boy witnesses a death. Although we are with the boys point of view at that moment, the score switches to a completely over the top blast of classical music. It just felt so heavy handed it totally broke my concentration & I started thinking, what is this? The score to Gods point of view? Will there be thunder & lightning next? It was a shame as it was a lapse in an otherwise brilliant soundtrack & felt totally unnecessary….
Relatedly there was a moment in Inland Empire where music did the same thing although it is more easily forgiven in Inland Empire as it is such a fragmented film there are many many times when you cannot suspend your disbelief because you simply dont know what you are watching: is it the film within the film, or the film itself? But the moment that bugged me was when the Beck song Black Tambourine kicked in. I dont mind Becks music, but the song felt out of place in the film & i think it is because the score had otherwise used almost timeless music ie not of a particular era, & then when the Beck song started it was like, oh right 2006…
Music & film eh?
When it works it is SO powerful..
but when it doesnt it pulls you right out of the movie like bad acting
