Hold onto your hats, folks, this one is going to be long! And I'm just going to say spoilers, spoilers, spoilers: do not read this if you don't know and don't want to know what happens, especially at the end of the film.
There has been a fair amount of negativity about this film: others are entitled to their opinions and I to mine, and I enjoyed this film. OK, I'm coming at it more from what I think of the score and I am not for a second going to claim this it is perfect or even great. Yes, it has problems, not least some weird gaps in its logic and the fact that Wonder Woman needed about ten times the amount of screen time she got. On the other hand, I like the central idea of exploring what happens when you get two superheroes fundamentally distrusting the other's methods and motives, and although the movie's biggest problem is that it does not offer a remotely convincing explanation of how that problem is resolved, I thought the problem itself was well set up in the first part of the film. Also, I would happily watch Ben Affleck bagging groceries, so I have no issue with watching him being Batman; and even though I think Henry Cavill is funny looking, I continue to like his Superman.
Anyway, I enjoyed it and found it entertaining: I did not go to watch it to have my world view either confirmed or denied, and that is just as well, but I liked it enough to watch it twice in order to start getting to grips with the music. Alas, twice is clearly not enough as there is loads going on and I already know, despite having sworn I was done writing about superhero movies, that I am going to have to sit down with both Man of Steel and this one when it comes out on DVD and write something a bit more formal. And even longer.
Why do I like it? Because I'm an old fashioned girl and I like a nice theme, and this has bucketloads of them, intertwined and inventive and oh my goodness, just occasionally (and perhaps significantly, especially when he shares the composer credit with someone else as he did on Batman Begins) Hans Zimmer writes a good score. BB, he co-wrote with James Newton Howard, this one with someone bearing the improbable name Junkie XL. Says the woman called Steve Halfyard.
So, themes. Well, actually, let's start with a joke because another thing I like are musical jokes. When Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent meet for the first time at Lex Luthor's party, the music playing and being sung in the background is Cole Porter's "Night and Day". Cute, huh?
Other fun stuff: Bruce Wayne, especially his nightmarish visions/dreams (oh, we are so being set up for a sequel!) is haunted by the sound of the World Engine that nearly destroyed Metropolis in the climax of Man of Steel. It reverberates through the sound design and score (again, I like the way that Zimmer and his team often make it difficult to tell which is which) at the edges of the visions, reminding us of why he hates Superman so violently. and considers him such a threat. Nice touch, gentlemen.
So, themes. Superman retains his themes from Man of Steel, or rather his theme group: several themes that all start with a rising perfect fifth, the interval of the (Super) hero as defined by - well, I was going to say John Williams but actually Beethoven got in there long before him. The group includes his emotional theme (used for his parents and for Lois) which starts with the fifth, almost always on a soft piano, and then falls back downward, a gentle little musical sigh; and his big hero theme, where the fifth is then expanded with a series of wider leaps to major sixth and seventh and finally, when he is particularly successful, to a rather beautiful octave in different harmonizations.The sense of striving and the way 'arrival' at the final musical goal is emotionally transformative as we shift into a new harmony (hurrah for the mediant shift is all I can say, and if that makes no sense to you, buy my book and read the section on Dexter in the penultimate chapter!) is my favourite part of this theme, but it also plays to the thing that many of this film's detractors do not like and which they seem to have noticed less in Man of Steel: the theme makes it clear that everything is hard for Superman. It takes effort to haul that note ever upwards, like Sisyphus and his rock, striving and yearning for the goal. Williams's Superman theme positively bounced up to its goal notes, effortless and optimistic: this one makes it hard, and the goal uncertain, especially as another theme in this group does not rise at all, but sinks from a rising fifth to a rising fourth, and does not make it to the top of the musical mountain poor old Clark is always having to climb.
There is also a member of his theme group that involves a high, aching series of minor seconds/ falling and rising semitones, usually heard on brass and high strings, heard at moments of particular stress and conflict. This is one of the ones I have not yet fully got to grips with and need to track its use through both films in more detail; but it is important because this is the interval that connects him to the themes of his allies in the film, Batman (eventually) and Wonder Woman (oh, hurrah, again) both of whom have themes involving prominent rising and or falling semitones.
Wonder Woman gets the most kick-ass theme of the film that then provides the bedrock of the final battle scene with the Zod-beast, or whatever it is officially called. So, she is an ancient Amazon warrior woman, and part of her theme is a 'primitive' driving drum riff of epic proportions in its volume and ferocity. You go girl, so to speak. But she is also able to present herself as thoroughly modern woman and hero, so over the top of this is a contrastingly modern but no less ferocious electric guitar riff that combines elements from Batman's group (rising minor key broken chord - tonic, minor third, perfect fifth) and Superman's semitone motif, as the broken chord is followed by a big, loud, long lean onto the tritone (so a fall of a semitone from the perfect fifth) and back up again. The timbre of the drums and guitar make this theme absolutely and unmistakably hers, but the melodic elements place her as a bridge between Batman and Superman (something that made me laugh, second time round, at the exchange at the start of the battle when Supe asks Bat "is she with you?" and Batty replies "I thought she was with you". The answer the music gives is simultaneously "yes, she is", and "no, she's with her").
So, to the Batman. He, too, has a group of themes, although his are distinct rather than interlinked the way Superman's are.This an old Batman; and this is not entirely the Christopher Nolan Batman, either so, even though Zimmer wrote the music for those films, it does not reappear here and instead Bruce/ Batman's music almost literally takes it cue from an old Batman score. At the start of the film, which turns out to be a combination of memory and dream, young Bruce is seen being lifted out of the well into which he fell by the flight of hundreds of bats around him; and as he is lifted into the light, we hear a theme so close to Danny Elfman's Bat-theme from 1989 that I refuse to believe for one second that the allusion is not intentional. One of the things that Elfman did with his five note motif was to create multiple variations of it, and the theme used in this new film is the version we hear in the 1989 film a) when Batman terrifies poor Vicki Vale in the Batcave after rescuing her from the Joker and b) in the triumphant finale. This is the version with a rising minor broken chord (see WW above), ending with a semitone rise to a minor sixth (so a semitone in the opposite direction to WW). But to anyone who knows the 1989 film well, it is unmistakably an allusion to the oldest of our film Batmans. Batmen. Hmm.
So, this is his 'character' theme; but he has two others. Firstly we have his agency theme, a three note motif (the tonic/ root in the bass, with the melody over this as minor sixth falling to minor third, rising to perfect fifth) that takes key intervals from the character theme and reorders them - but note, the minor sixth/ perfect fifth combo in both character and agency theme give us that prominent semitone interval that connects his music Superman and Wonder Woman. The agency theme is, as my name for it suggests, the theme we hear when Batman is actually doing stuff: and for most of the film, that is plotting to kill Superman, so it initially presents more as a "Batman's vendetta" theme. However, after his change of heart (of which more in a second) it continues for his participation in the battle to defeat the Zod-beast, so its meaning shifts to a more encompassing idea of Batman as man of action.
Batman's third theme is actually some of the first music we hear, a theme for the loss of his parents that has a fair amount in common with Zimmer's music for Batman Begins, especially in the use of a high voice (soprano rather than boy treble this time, I think) as a marker of innocence, loss and longing. We only hear it twice, once at the start of the film and then it is recalled at the crucial moment when Batman has the opportunity to kill Superman, but is deflected from this by Superman's revelation that if he dies, Martha will die too. This is the most problematic moment of the film, in that up to this point, both superheroes have been convinced that the other is a danger that needs to be contained and/or destroyed; and Batman's sudden decision to come over to Superman's side seems rushed and unconvincing, relying on the fact that both of them have mother's called Martha and that by inadvertently invoking Batman's mother, suddenly Batman decides Superman is a good guy after all. Huh? How does his mother's name stop him and his god-like powers from being a potential totalitarian threat? Interestingly, on my second watching, when I was listening to the music much more actively, the sequence worked far better and more convincingly, as this theme that was first used as young Bruce watched his parents die is revisited at length alongside shots from that earlier scene; but that, alas, is not really good enough. Whilst I am all for films where you get more out of them on rewatching, that is not quite the same as a film where a gap in the logic seems less pronounced second time through - we perhaps needed some revelatory moment where they both realise that they are being manipulated by Luther and can therefore unite behind the idea that he is the true enemy, and that simple does not happen. Nonetheless, being more aware of the music second time did genuinely help this seem more logical than the first time. Alas, the same cannot be said for the process by which Lex makes the Zod-beast, but that's another story.
So, we have all out heroes' themes set up and the final battle is a marvellous melange of Wonder Woman, Batman and Superman motifs dancing around each other as the three bring down the Zod-beast together.
Superman is apparently dead at the end (didn't buy it for a second, and the final coffin shot supports that thesis) but this gives us a fabulous cue for his death at the hands of the Zod-monster, which also dies in the process. Because, of course, we have been here before: Superman is killing Zod for the second time. The cue revisits the music from Man of Steel for when Superman battles and eventually kills Zod the first time round (if you are interested, it's the cue "If you love these people" on the OST for Man of Steel and "This is my world" on Batman v. Superman). Both times, killing Zod is tragic: the first time because Superman has to kill the only other remaining member of his race, the second time because he has to kill himself too, both times to save humankind.
It is also the music that links him most strongly to previous filmic versions of Batman. There are several motifs and melodies in this cue: one harks back to the "big theme", almost never heard, from Batman Begins, with huge, almost unsingable leaps over a strangely baroque ground bass (read all about that here, if you wish: Link to Cue the Big theme). Another is a five note motif that is note-for-note identical to Elfman's principal Bat-theme from 1989 (if you want to recall that, just sing the first five notes of Irving Berlins's "Let's face the music and dance" specifically the ones to the words "There may be trouble [ahead]" - there is something about these five notes which seemed to speak of troubled times in darkness). It's differently harmonised and places its emphasis on the final note, where Elfman places it on the fourth one, but I just throw it out there as perhaps the archetypal motif - the museme, if you will - of the tragic, troubled (in this case, dying) superhero being superheroic nonetheless. Connecting Superman to Batman this way (not as a specific gesture of this film but revisiting one from the previous film) humanises him: he suffers, he feels pain, he sacrifices. All of which puts him a long way from the infallible and endlessly optimistic figure of John Willams' Superman but hey, we of the 21st century live in apocalyptic times (as several people, not least the endlessly brilliant Stacey Abbott, pointed out at a conference on the 21st century horror Film at Sheffield Hallam this weekend) and our superheroes reflect that.
So: to my surprise, a rather good score. Way too much of it, of course: the ears were profoundly grateful for the relatively rare moments of musical silence, but that is the price you pay for films obsessed with spectacle over plot and character development. But that, again, is another story.
Sunday, April 3, 2016
Saturday, March 12, 2016
Music in Cult TV: an introduction
US site: http://www.amazon.com/Music-Cult-TV-An-Introduction/dp/1784530298
UK site: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1784530298
Friday, January 8, 2016
Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens
Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens
Composer: oh, who do you think, John Williams, of course!
So, the bad news is that I have suddenly come down with a cold and feel
absolutely blinking awful. The good news is that this week I finally saw Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens, a film
I can happily admit to loving with a fiery passion. In fact, I saw it twice,
and musically speaking, that was an interesting experience in and of
itself. Spoilers ahead: for crying
out loud, why are you reading this if you haven’t seen the film already? Do you
know how much time I have spent avoiding on the internet since December 17th?
At my first viewing, I failed to notice a single new theme (and there
are three big significant ones for Rey, Kylo Ren and the Alliance, as well as
various smaller others). All I noticed, musically, was the old themes: The
Luke/ main title theme; the ‘triumph’ chords that so often punctuate action in
the original trilogy; the Force theme; Leia’s theme, and the Leia/Han love
theme. Each one jumped out at me and my ears greeted it like a long-lost,
much-loved friend, starting with the main title (grin the size of a slice of
watermelon on my face), then the triumph chords as we see the Millenium Falcon
for the first time (hello, Millenium Falcon!), the Force theme as Han remembers
Luke, the Leia theme as we see the lovely General for the first time,
transforming into the Han/Leia version as they talk to each other; even a quick
blast of Darth Vadar’s Imperial March as we see the remains of his ruined mask on
Kylo Ren’s little altar. Oh, my lovelies, how I’ve missed you! But new themes
utterly passed me by: I was aware of the recurrence of these themes throughout
but otherwise, was just too busy watching the film.
Second time round, out they started popping, as well as other things,
such as the first time we get the Luke/ main title theme in the score is when
Finn makes the decision that effectively sets the narrative rolling and tells
Poe Dameron that he is going to help him escape – some of Luke’s agency in that
moment seems to be passed on to Finn, a fascinating character who has had
rather less attention as the first major black character of the franchise (do
not get me started on Lando Calrissian) than its first female hero, Rey. However,
I am going to focus in particular on Rey and Kylo Ren or we’ll be here forever.
Kylo Ren’s theme
Kylo Ren has a classic ‘label’ theme of the type that Adorno and Eisler
detested, seeing it as the musical lackey announcing the person we can all very
well see is there. But the general stasis of this five note motif which we
repeatedly hear in basically identical form throughout the film actually does quite
a lot of work. It’s short and unchanging – this unchanging nature reflects his
rigidity, his desire to hold to his path and I could make a possibly slightly
fanciful argument about this being how he hears himself, the aural image of
what he wants to be, sternly foreboding, a musical anchor that pulls him back
to the dark side from that oh so tempting path of light. The motif is angular
and chromatic – sorry, my notation software is up the spout, so I shall have to
do it by description. Five notes: G, F sharp, C , E flat, G again, an octave
down from where it started. So, we start with a falling minor second (G to F
sharp), which then falls to the tritone
(F sharp to C) symbol of musical evil, the diablous in musica – no villain is a proper villain without a nice
tritone in his theme; then rising by a minor third (C to E flat) before
dropping down a minor sixth (E flat to C). It is almost entirely descending and
therefore a theme for the dark side: heroic themes, by contrast, tend to be
primarily ascending, constantly pushing upwards towards ever higher goals (e.g.
the Luke/ main title theme and indeed the Force theme: nice bit of analysis
here that demonstrates the idea well: http://www.filmmusicnotes.com/john-williams-themes-part-1-the-force-theme/). All the intervals in KR’s theme are either minor or chromatic – again,
culturally coded towards the negative end of the spectrum, compared to the
major key and unchromatic Main
title and Force themes.
Rey’s theme
Rey, by contrast, has a very long theme made up of several motifs; the
opening rapid figure is derived from the (as you will learn!) all-important
last three notes of the melody of the main motif. That main motif (6 notes in
all) is the opening of a long winding melody that meanders all over the place,
shifting and slipping into different keys, the melody becoming submerged in the
textures and then re-emerging again: note already, therefore, the extreme
contrast to the rigid brevity of Kylo Ren’s theme. Rey is unfixed, unformed at
this point: unawakened!
Rey’s motif appears in so many different keys that I’m going to give it
here in the version that best makes my point about its relationship with Kylo
Ren’s. This gives us a theme that goes: C, E flat, G, C, F, G . [C up to E
flat, down to G, back up to C, then up again to F and G]. So: the last three notes of KR’s theme are the first three of Rey’s; where his sinks down to the low G at the end, her’s
rises up to the high one; where his
motif starts with a chromatic fall from G to F sharp that in turn produces
the tritone, her’s ends with the rising, non-chromatic F natural to G.
There is both a reversal of the order of phrases and of the direction of the
two notes at the start of KR’s and the end of Rey’s, which means that where his
theme has only one ascending interval, her’s has only one descending one. These
motifs are so astoundingly mirrored around each other that I do not believe for
a second that its just one of those coincidences, because our John is
altogether rather too clever for that.
The lack of chromaticism and the primarily ascending contour give Rey’s
motif much more potential as a
heroic signifier. However, at the start of the film, it just ain’t heroic: its
actually pretty softy-sweetie-girlie, in terms of its Hollywood cultural
musical coding. Lots of woodwind and strings, nice overall sense of up-and-back
down phrase shaping in the cue as a whole, smooth, legato feel – all things
that good ol’ Philip Tagg (where would I be without him) identified as
female coded musical characteristics in his 1987 study, which you can find here
if you have never read it: http://tagg.org/articles/xpdfs/tvanthro.pdf
But her motif has potential to be heroic: its has the kind of open
intervals around tonic and dominant (the C and G) that are commonly found in
Williams’ hero themes; it is ascending; and it is strongly linked (as I am not
the first to notice) to the force theme, in that it has identical harmonic movement
and several similar intervals (he actually juxtaposes them in the final minute
of the end credits cue, just in case you hadn’t noticed, something that brought
another watermelon grin to my face as I stood by the exit door to let the poor
ushers clean the cinema! Having working in one, I am acutely aware that people
who stay to the end of the credits are pretty annoying for the ushers). The
identical harmonic movement means that in the more extended Rey theme (going
beyond her first six notes into the second part of the theme) both this and the
Force theme move from a minor tonic chord to the major subdominant (so here,
from C minor to F major). Technically, in C minor, the subdominant should be F
minor, so the brightening of the shift into a major chord gives it a sense of
hope (A New Hope! The Force Awakens! Woohoo!) that again pushes this toward the
heroic.
And that latent heroism and the force awakening in Rey gets its musical
realization in the final battle scene between her and KR, which you can hear
here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnvaA984uIc
I will confess that I was getting mightly frustrated by the end of the
film: we got the Force theme with the heroic bras (solo horn) mostly when
people were talking about Luke -
when it was used for Rey, back came the strings and woodwinds; and her own motif also kept on coming
back on strings and woodwind. For crying out loud, John (I was thinking) when
are you going to let her be a hero? And then, hurrah, in this cue, we finally
get both the Force theme and her motif transformed into a properly brass-led
heroism as she comes into her own and takes down KR. I may have cried a little
at the sound of massed brass around 2.40 in the above clip.
And so, to the crazy speculation. Why do Rey and KR essentially share a (mirrored)
theme? Why is the very first thing Leia does when she meets Rey is to clasp her
in a fierce embrace? Could they all be – gasp – related??? I seriously do not
know how I am going to get through a year and nine months without knowing the
answers to these questions.
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