Nothing More Than Feelings?
by Doug Adams
The Game is one of those movies that fools us most by pulling
no punches. Like The Usual Suspects before it, The Game gives
us all the information we need to solve the puzzle, but the pieces are
so odd that we'd almost never think to assemble them in their logical sequence.
I think that on second viewing, The Game would be an entirely different
film. And there are more than just a few parallels to be drawn between
the film and the score by Howard Shore. Every note of The Game's score
has a reason for being there, but it takes some time to figure it all out.
When I first heard that Howard Shore was scoring this film, I expected
that the end result may resemble the very successful score he did for David
Fincher's last film, Seven. But, I couldn't have been more wrong.
Seven was a wonderfully gut churning score--the essence of living
in the soul smearing city. In contrast, The Game is a prickly, pins-and-needles
work that's bristles with a kind of hyper-immediacy. So if Seven represented
a numbness to every-day horrors, The Game is more of a paranoid,
extra sensory delusion--i.e. every little aspect of life is magnified and
scrutinized. As usual, Shore has reflected and enhanced the exact attitudes
in the film.
I won't get too much into the specifics of the score here. Howard was
kind enough to spend some time explaining the entire work to me in great
detail last week, and that will be running in an upcoming FSM. However,
I would like to comment on the usage of the music in the film. Many film
makers expect composers to supply, or at least aid the emotion in films.
It can work a lot of ways--a happy scene can simply become happier, or
perhaps a sad scene can take on a hint of honor, or moral triumph or whatever.
But what's the overall emotion in The Game? It ranges from anger
to sorrow to confusion... and I guess that's a mind-set more than an emotion
anyway. The point is, an emotion-driven score wouldn't work in many sections
of this film. There's a melancholy piano melody that opens and closes the
film, and a single major chord at a crucial point (the only major chord
in the score, incidentally). But the majority of the narrative needs more
of a glancing dramaticism. Shore's score is all about perceptions, dichotomies,
and character relationships. That's why this score is so much more intelligent
than a hypothetical "Nicholas is mad because he can't figure out what's
happening"-style score. The music genuinely adds to what's on the
screen rather than simply restating it or enforcing it. And, believe it
or not, this nicely carries our discussion to another recent film...
Rosewood
Way back in April I promised that we'd take a closer look at John Williams'
score to Rosewood when the film was out on video, and this is a
perfect time to do that. Rosewood the film is packed with emotion.
All throughout the film there are terrible atrocities committed upon the
black citizens of the town, and of course there's the resulting horror
and sorrow. But like The Game, Rosewood does not need an overly
emotional score - in this case because all the emotion is already on the
screen. This is a true story, and to musicalize it, to try to sum up its
statements into one musical declaration would be to trivialize it. What
Williams does is to take all the sounds of the setting (the acoustic guitar,
the harmonica, the spirituals) and the intervals and harmonies of Americana,
put them all in a bag, and shake it as hard as he can. Those of you familiar
with this score will remember that it features a lot of guttural harmonica
lines, dissonant guitar strumming, and of course that French horn melody
that starts off as a basic folksy tune, then continually bends lower. Of
course, these are the timbres we expect to hear, but hardly the settings.
So when the score is played with the film, it cleverly avoids creating
laser-sharp dramatic messages. The setting is there, the style is there,
but the emotion is a bit farther back. This is the musical sound of thinking--characters
still figuring out how to feel--and it brings a great deal of realism to
Rosewood. Every time it sounds like the French horn is going to
call out some with sort of chest thumping bravura, it falls down and wriggles
around for a few bars. (The opening chord progression of this melody is
D, D7, G, D augmented, D, F, E, Eb, C, D.) Neither the courage nor the
uncertainty of this theme cancel each other out, they exist simultaneously.
It's among the best scores this year, just as satisfying on disc as in
the film.
Nonesuch
As speaking of CDs, Nonesuch's new film music CDs have gotten a lot
of spin in the general press recently. For those unacquainted with the
series, the four releases consist of an Alex North disc (Eric Stern conducting
the London Symphony Orchestra in music from The Bad Seed, The Misfits,
Viva Zapata!, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Spartacus), a Toru
Takemitsu disc (John Adams conducting the London Sinfonietta on three selections
and seven original studio recordings), a Leonard Rosenman disc (Adams again
conducting the Sinfonietta in East or Eden and Rebel Without
a Cause), and a Georges Delerue disc (Hugh Wolff conducting the Sinfonietta
in music from Two English Girls, Jules and Jim, The Soft Skin, and
numerous others). So far I've been able to pick up the Takemitsu and Rosenman
recordings, and I've been rather impressed. I have to admit, I've always
been more familiar with Takemitsu's concert works, but his film compositions
are pretty much on par. It's a testament to his abilities and his resolve
that he didn't "dumb-down" his film music. The original studio
recordings are all very texturally based and have a very Asian sense of
harmonic flow. Those familiar with the works of Miyoshi will find a lot
of interest here. Unfortunately, many of the films represented here are
not easily available to American audiences, so I can comment on how most
of the scores work in the films. Still, I think people should find this
disc pretty accessible as Takemitsu has a way of mixing very familiar elements
into his own experimenting. The Adams conducted numbers, for example, are
orchestrated in a much more Western culture string orchestra style. The
packaging is very nice with extensive liner notes and a nice production
design. Everyone who regards Takemitsu as "that guy who scored Rising
Sun" should check this one out.
I'm out of room, so next week we'll take a quick look at Nonesuch's
Leonard Rosenman disc, as well as Jerry Goldsmith's latest, LA Confidential.
Mail always welcome. Doug@filmscoremonthly.com
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