Lost Issue Wednesday: Criticism and the State of Film Music (1996)

by John Walsh

(Continued from last Wednesday's (5/16) Lost Issue Column...)

Howard Shore's se7en

The very characteristics that denote the flaws of today's shoddy scores -- limited thematic material, repetition, lack of variety -- are shared by the best scores of the '90s, like Howard Shore's se7en. Ignored by fans and critics, here is music that not only works in the film and elevates the storytelling but actually describes the unspoken mechanism of the plot.

After a great title sequence with an unsettling remix of a Nine Inch Nails song, Shore's score begins with the arrival at the first of the se7en victims, a sequence most composers would leave silent considering how early we are in the film and the number of crime scenes to come. I have no idea what Shore's intentions were in this score -- I am merely reporting my impressions -- but the use of scoring here seems a deliberate announcement that there is much more going on than just a murder mystery. Within three minutes Shore uses most of the thematic material he will deal with over the following two hours. Underscoring the discovery of the obesity victim is what sounds like the world's most bored bassoon player practicing his scales, very slowly, with a simple string accompaniment and drifting electronic creaks, more a chord progression than melody. It's a little like John Barry scoring Psycho, and uses some of the same tools Shore used in Silence of the Lambs. But Shore is working different territory here -- where Lambs was about character, se7en is about character (or morality) intersecting with fate. The murder-scene motif is like the slow slapping of waves on a shore (whoops), or the slow sucking-in of the protagonists into the whirlpool of John Doe's plan. This is significant because Doe is not even a presence yet and there is no way to reveal his intentions without disrupting the narrative subjectivity (for example, cutting to shots of him following the next victim, as Lambs did). Like Doe, Shore is ahead of the audience and the main characters, and to reveal Doe would disrupt audience involvement -- we would know more about Doe than the detectives do, and become restless for them to catch up -- but Shore begins setting us up for what is to come, letting us know there is something of consequence awaiting us, not just chases and the villain being killed. The next crime scene has a similar cue, quite brief, continuing the oppressive feeling. Again, Shore is aware that everything of consequence from here on will take place by plan. The cohesion of his score is so important to this, the inexorable pulling-along of a two-hour vamp to Doe's moment of apotheosis. The importance of this film actually having a strong third act and a point cannot be ignored: Shore could not get away with all this build-up without a powerful payoff, and a chase and shootout just wouldn't cut it.

(Shore's sound is so subterranean, so in tune with the low hum of a rainy city with a subway, the music's effect strangely lingers even when there is no score, just the sound effects the music perfectly meshes with. Then again, right after the title sequence, is that a scrap of music I hear?)

When Morgan Freeman's Sommerset makes the first connection to John Doe's true nature while examining crime scene photos, Shore uses a sound like distant gongs, somewhat like the "Water of Life" music in Dune. The cue commences on the line "He's preaching." Shore emphasizes the line's relevance but not as one would in a regular police drama -- instead, this sounds like music for demon hunters finding the Book of Ancients prophesizing the world's end. It sounds like a horror movie. Here as elsewhere the score sets its film apart from others of its genre, a valuable service.

The scenes of Somerset going to the library and both detectives visiting the greed victim's widow have music most like Shore's Lambs score, essentially "going to work" music that returns upon discovery of the words "Help Me" on the wall of the crime scene (which is discovered during the course of their doing the first real detective "work," get it?).

During a brief hallway discussion that defines our heroes' differences -- Brad Pitt's Miller's optimism, Somerset's resignation -- the men share the views that will be affirmed in one case and destroyed in the other at the climax; Doe's music hangs over this discussion, biding its time, waiting.

The chase music is both suffocating and exciting, its blunt intensity reminding me of Herrmann as well as Michael Convertino's very different but equally forceful action music for The Hidden. Imagine if Shore "Hornered" his score with a rewrite of a chase cue from another film and you can see that a composer's job is in showing how each particular scene, though like hundreds of others, has to be made unique or the audience snaps out of the film's reality and thinks, "Oh, good, a chase," something we do not do here because Shore's one chase cue retains its part in the oppressive whole; we fear for Mills' safety, knowing that if he catches this guy he's going to be face-to-face with whatever the score has made us so apprehensive about for the last hour. The chase cue has a limping rhythm that captures the excitement but also the terror of the pursuer running through unknown territory. If Shore suddenly inserted an adaptation of one of his previous chase cues he would shatter his score's cohesion. Instead he treats this as a chance to expand his material using a churning version of his two-note murder scene piece, culminating in the only overtly thematic moment in the score. When Doe strikes Miller and moves in he is accompanied by a moment reminiscent of Michael Kamen's theme for Shining Through.

Although Doe's decision not to kill Miller feels like a cheat we've seen too often in movies, Shore knows better, the music trailing off and brooding. John Doe is still calling the shots.

The climax of Shore's careful work comes with the discovery of the sixth victim. For nearly two hours Shore has been building up with only limited payoff -- the S.W.A.T. invasion of Victor's apartment, the chase and John Doe's surrender are the only places where the score blooms -- but in the barren landscape under the high-tension towers Shore begins building yet again when a delivery van appears, using the playing-the-scales piece on the brass, heightening the electronics a bit, adding a very anguished tone -- he's been pushing this piece repeatedly through the score and we know he can't do it again, and the music calms down. By this point the script has dropped enough hints that we know who the victim will be, but I believe the filmmakers want us to be tipped off (as Stephen King says, "Just because you know a train is coming doesn't make it any easier to be tied to the tracks"). Somerset opens the box to no musical accompaniment, then jumps up. (Whether through intention or coincidence, the quick cut to the helicopter, with its accompanying noise, breaks us from the silence. If we were to go from silence directly to the next music cut, I think it would have provoked laughter -- "Where's that music coming from?" It's subtle, but either very lucky or quite ingenious.) With a whip-pan to Somerset, Shore pays off with what sounds like a one-note theme. A similar idea was used by Christopher Gunning in the English mystery film Under Suspicion, though with a more extensive use of the orchestra that made it pretty melodramatic. Only with a crime so horrible could Shore get away with this stark cue, one that evolves into a march of triumphant evil that makes Darth Vader's theme sound like "Happy Days Are Here Again." When Doe gets "the upper hand" the music reflects Somerset's shock, the reply to the score's constant questioning of what's going to happen.

The cue started with all the instruments together, then relaxes slightly when Somerset runs for Mills. When Doe explains to Mills what he has done, the harsh electronics begin to spill over, not doubling instruments but squealing independently. We hear the drums, cymbals and electronics wandering away, mimicking our and Mills' sensing something is very wrong here. Shore builds on the idea used in the alley scene with brass and woodwinds and it is quite startling, the music expanding even as our concept of Doe's plan does. It's far clearer on the laserdisc that the "march" is actually a compacted version of the two-note murder scene theme, and it is here for the final murder. As Mills begins to accept that Doe is telling the truth the instruments begin to coordinate, and when Doe realizes Mills did not know his wife was pregnant there is a triumphant roll on the timpani, accentuating Doe's elation: Doe knows he will win. The final use of the pounding march as Somerset tries to explain how killing Doe will let him win is played with the drums and brass united, rolling right over Somerset's flimsy plea, the brass notes alternating with a response from the percussion (it sounds like wood blocks), an effect much like the metronome at Somerset's bedside. (Lulling Doe to his final snooze? He does close his eyes.)
An electronic screech accentuates a couple of frames of Tracy's face, pushing Mills to his final act and Doe's victory. The brass and percussion lose their unity and dissolve, like Doe's life. Had the film's alternate ending been used (Somerset kills Doe, thereby ruining Doe's plan to have Mills be the executioner), this sucking toward evil's moment of triumph would be invalidated, the score nothing but mood music that dissolves once we see good win out over evil. But evil has won out here, and it is useful that a song was used for the end credits, not only as a refreshing break but because there really isn't anything left for Shore to write about: Doe is gone.

While se7en is the perfect illustration of how a score is linked to a film having a decent script -- you know, the opposite of something that's "Just entertainment" -- it's interesting that the only mention it gets on the Criterion Collection's laserdisc second audio track comes from Brad Pitt, who criticizes the use of music instead of silence over the climax. Pitt is flat wrong, though one understands his opinion, actors preferring constantly to be the center of attention rather than being one player in the ensemble. Silence would turn the final scene into just another piece of cruelty, while the score emphasizes Doe's final victory, which, Mr. Pitt, is kind of the whole point of the movie you made. (Pitt owes Shore a debt for supporting him in this scene; without music I can't imagine not laughing at Pitt's appropriate but petulant question to Somerset, which makes him sound like a bratty kid on Christmas Eve.)

Where se7en's score is prominent and adds depth, a thriller score like Horner's Jade is serviceable, using Kamenish string rustlings and (no! yes!) a shakuhachi -- but the composer here does no favors for the pointless script. If Horner helped Friedkin add depth as Shore does, he could have improved his film.
Which, by the way, is what a soundtrack is supposed to do.
 

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