Awards season usually bores me, but this year I find myself transfixed with some of the music nominated at the Oscars. I clearly don’t mean anything in the original song category. Let’s face it, once you’ve heard one Randy Newman song and you’ve heard them all. Don’t get me wrong, I find the man charming and I would take him over any of those bullshit Cher songs they nominated at the Golden Globes any day. I just don’t feel he needs my attention this year.
No, in this case I’m talking about the music up for best original score. There was one film a couple of years ago that really made me take note of this category; There Will Be Blood. Scored by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, it was one of the first times that I watched a film and felt my mouth drop at what could be accomplished by someone I thought only had one trick up their sleeve. It really should come as no surprise how much I focus on a few of the musicians in the post.
The first soundtrack I have to mention is the one that I feel was snubbed. Those who know me clearly understand that I’m speaking of the Daft Punk scored soundtrack to Tron Legacy. This soundtrack, like the movie, was hugely overlooked by every critic this year. The problem that I really have is that I don’t get why it got so many negative reviews. In my mind it did everything a soundtrack is supposed to do and enhanced the movie in every imaginable manner. In the scenes focusing on some sort of epic discovery, Daft Punk brought out a sense of wonder. When the action picked up, the music swelled and the tempo really came out to play. The only reason I can honestly come up with for the mass dislike, is that it wasn’t a traditional Daft Punk album (Derezzed was the closest the came). Then again, that wasn’t what the masked duo set out to do. They scored the sequel to a farfetched movie from the 80’s. I think they did a damn fine job at it too.
The only thing keeping me from going completely off the rails with the Tron snub, is the accolades the score for the Social Network has received. Sure Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross made a soundtrack that was a lot different from the direction Daft Punk went in, but you can hear similarities in the two scores. Like most good scores, this one touched on the subject matter. Extremely moody and isolating, Reznor and Ross clearly got Sorkin's script. Yes the movie was interesting, but I found myself paying a lot more attention to the music. A lot of this score was so Reznor-esque that it might as well have been on the tail end of an early Nine Inch Nails album. Hands down the most progressive nominee this year, I would be totally satisfied if this one picked up the gold paperweight.
The next nominee I want to look at really falls back into the traditional vein of this category. In this case it comes from Hans Zimmer’s score for Inception. A friend teased me this summer saying that she could instantly tell I loved this movie from the music alone. There was one tell-tale sign that tipped her off: a huge blast of horns. For some reason, every movie that I see that contains a massive wall of sound really gets through to me. In this case, it was Zimmer’s inclusion of horns from the slowed Edith Piaf song ‘Non, Je Ne Regrette Rein’ that gave the effect an actual reason to be in the film. Easily the cleverest use of music in any film this year, Zimmer brilliantly scored this movie in a way that enhanced every scene. Each emotion, fight, and that ever present sense of urgency was established even more with the music. As a former band geek – and one in the brass section at that – I really did appreciate the use of horns in this film.
The three other films nominated this year are ones where the music really didn’t make much of an impact on me. Instead of talking about what they lacked, I would much rather finish off by speaking about a film in another category.
Like No Country for Old Men, this year Winter’s Bone created an immense feeling of isolation with its lack of music. But while the former was completely barren of a soundtrack, Winter’s Bone had moments of an ever-so-subtle rise in ominous music. It was this sparing use of song that made it one of the most tense films to watch this year. Most of the time that swell often lead to nothing, but it emphasized a growing sense of uncertainty among its characters.
Whatever wins this year doesn’t make much of a difference to me. Like many of you, there are far too many films I didn’t get a chance to see, many of which I’m sure feature some fantastic original music. So until then, I’ll just perk up my ears and listen every time I head to the talkies.
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