Scores on Screen is a column by Clare Nina Norelli on film soundtracks.The blackened screen. A barrage of percussion on the soundtrack summons forth the cries of an agonized, frenetic violin. They fuse with a chorus of synthesized sonorities and begin to crescendo, a perpetual discordant climax that is so all-consuming, so alarming, that if it feels as though your head might explode from the sheer intensity of it all. Suddenly the aural assault is brought to a halt with a jarring “crack!” The word “Suspiria” appears on screen, followed by a new cue on the soundtrack, a sweet celesta and bells melody. The soft tinkling of the celesta and bells' repetitive motif would be almost soothing, lulling, if it were not for fact it is accompanied by a faint, discordant whisper. Our ears strain, we listen in, we cannot be sure of what we are hearing. Is the...
- 11/26/2018
- MUBI
Scores on Screen is a column by Clare Nina Norelli on film soundtracks.In Stephen Nomura Schible’s moving documentary Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda (2017), we are brought into the world of Ryuichi Sakamoto, an innovative Japanese composer responsible for not only a myriad of diverse compositional works, but also for the iconic scores of such films as Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (1983), The Last Emperor (1987), and Gohatto (1999). Shot over the course of five years, Coda allows us a glimpse at the composer at work, be it through traditional means as he notates by hand on manuscript at his Steinway grand piano, or in experimental mode, recording ambient sound in pursuit of complimentary timbres to include in his compositions. We watch as Sakamoto enthusiastically records the tranquil din of rain collecting in a bucket, the crunch of his boots meeting dry leaves on a forest floor, and the strained notes of a...
- 9/28/2018
- MUBI
Scores on Screen is a column by Clare Nina Norelli on film soundtracks.Can a person be born bad or is “badness” a learnt trait, one taught to an impressionable and willing protégée by someone who keenly detects their potential for darkness? This question of nature vs. nurture is the moral quandary presented to us in Park Chan-wook’s Stoker (2013), an unconventional coming-of-age film that is informed by violence, eroticism, a creepy gothic ambience, and heightened sound design in which the piano emerges as a vital player not only on the soundtrack, but diegetically as part of the film’s story. The film’s protagonist, eighteen-year-old India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska), believes that the formation of the self is beyond her control, declaring in the film’s opening monologue that “Just as a flower does not choose its color, we are not responsible for who we come to be.” Though she...
- 9/2/2018
- MUBI
Scores on Screen is a column by Clare Nina Norelli on film soundtracks.When French documentarian Alain Resnais was commissioned to produce a short film about the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima, it initially seemed to him an impossible and daunting task. How does one convey onscreen the sheer magnitude of the horrific atomic attack and its devastating effects; how to reproduce on celluloid the ongoing trauma of that fateful August morning as experienced by the Japanese people? Resnais ultimately decided to focus his film on the “impossibility” of talking about, or fully knowing, the tragedy of Hiroshima. Eschewing the documentary form he was familiar with, the director instead embarked on his first narrative film, Hiroshima, mon amour (1959), enlisting the help of the celebrated French writer Marguerite Duras to write the film’s scenario and dialogue. Resnais still retained documentary-style images of the ruins of Hiroshima and the city’s survivors, but...
- 7/9/2018
- MUBI
Scores on Screen is a column by Clare Nina Norelli on film soundtracks.“I think that we wrote the spirit — the musical spirit — that [Sofia Coppola] had needed for her movie.”–Jean-Benoît Dunckel (Air)1The Virgin Suicides (1999) opens with a blonde teen-aged girl standing in the middle of a suburban street eating a popsicle. She is looking out past the camera, appears simultaneously bored and amused, and is surrounded by the familiar sounds of imminent dusk: birds chirping, the hiss of sprinklers, the bark of a dog, the elongated buzz of crickets, and a child’s shouts. Underneath this chorus of the everyday, a grave electric organ-driven dirge on the soundtrack invests the otherwise commonplace scene with an eerie solemnity. The girl moves off camera and, amidst the golden hues of sunlight flickering through tree branches, we are shown other residents of her neighborhood going about their afternoons, their faces obscured,...
- 5/25/2018
- MUBI
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