Music and Film

As we approach our film viewing occasion for the semester, it's worth noting, sadly, the loss of Roger Ebert, who passed away last week. He certainly changed my relationship to movies, and I think he became even more treasured in his later years, during his battle with cancer, when, by necessity, he had to turn to writing (his reviews, his blog, etc.) to compensate for the physical difficulties of speaking; the blog (click on "Roger's Journal" when you get there) is especially worth visiting, as it's interesting to have seen Ebert move away from writing purely about movies to writing about all sorts of topics (in the way of someone who is simply in love with life). These lines, from Ebert's 2011 personal essay on dying, are touching and inspiring, and a challenge to us all: "'Kindness' covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out." Finally, apropos of what awaits us, here is Ebert's review of Alan Parker's The Commitments.

After watching that scene from O, Brother Where Art Thou? before the break, I'm increasingly reminded why that film would have nicely picked up some of the strands of our various discussions (e.g., regarding Dylan and the folk tradition, as well as the ideas of wandering and homelessness that have inhered in much of what we've read and listened to this semester). It would also have effectively galvanized our focus on the blues and on the jazz aesthetic during this current three-to-four week run of the semester, and it would have anticipated the ideas of music as resistance and music as signifier of cultural authenticity. And then there's the wonderful way that music works as a form of storytelling in that film (what other films can you think of that use music in this way? I guess Les Miserables would be an obvious one, although I didn't end up seeing it).

Well, The Commitments is going to serve us well next week as our featured film of the semester (and should provide some much-needed laughter), but I could now nearly wish we had time for two films! I remain curious about what springs to your mind when you consider the convergence of music and film. What films are memorable to you in terms of music (and why)? You might respond with films that to varying degrees include music as their subject matter, or films that are almost unimaginable without their soundtracks or scores (did anyone do more to create the menace of the shark in Jaws than John Williams? It was Williams who put the bite in that shark with that primal, insistent, and Stravinsky-esque theme), or films that use music to advance or augment narrative, or films that use musical technique as a structuring device, etc. What film might have fit particularly well in the schedule for this course (and why)? I was recently reminded of the conversations about jazz that occur in Michael Mann's film Collateral from some years ago (with Tom Cruise (when he was still a little bit likable!) and Jamie Foxx) -- which now causes me to remember Mann's use of rousing Irish music during that pulsating flight to the waterfall sequence in The Last of the Mohicans (clearly here's a director who consistently and memorably uses music in his films). Having shown a clip from Apocalypse Now in my survey class a couple weeks ago, I have Coppola's film on my mind in this regard (and, now that I've mentioned that name, Sophia Coppola always seems to use music in essential ways in her films, too).