Tree of Life

The first thing that came to mind watching this film was that they copied the stargate sequence from 2001! And the overall message reminded me of 2001 (with the Dawn of Man and Stargate sequences) with Boyhood spliced into the middle somewhere (same growing up in Texas trope).

Apart from reminding me of 2001 and Boyhood , I mainly noticed the Christianity narrative. As an atheist I actually take a lot of interest in how religious people view the world. My brother is actually studying at Colorado Christian to one day become a pastor but that’s another story…

Starting with the abstract color shape thing which I assumed to be the holy spirit or god in some sort. Then the voice over tells us about grace and nature, later to be represented by Jessica Chastain and Brad Pitt. The camera seems to always be pointing at the sun as a constant reminder of god’s presence and grace. This leads to my favorite part of the film ,the cosmic creation sequence. The sound design is perfectly done in my opinion with a beautiful, angelic voice to confirming that god is behind it all. This shifts to the sound of volcanoes and the beginnings of life.  Malick obviously took a lot from 2001 for this sequence and knowingly so since he hired Douglas Trumbull for the special effects (who was robbed an Oscar for 2001 which went to Kubrick). He even has similar flyover shots like in 2001. It makes sense though since both films try to depict bizarre cosmological events and worlds.

The rest of the film felt like a stumbling through the past with the handheld, wide-angle lens wandering and skipping around in his childhood like an introspective acid trip. Like memories, the images are just snippets from the reality such as birds chirping (which can be heard almost nonstop in this sequence) or the image of his brother sitting with his guitar. And, like Boyhood, Tree of Life showed the awkwardness of puberty and growing up. Boyhood showed a scene with the boys looking at a dirty magazine and Tree of Life had the boy stealing his mother’s slip. 

Thin Red Line

This film reminded me a lot of a mural or montage with the many different characters. The story never focused really on one character which gave the film a continuous flow or stream of action from one event of character development to the next. The score brilliantly keeps the flow of the film during non-battle scenes where skipping around to different characters constantly could easily feel disjointed or sporadic. Not only that but the music also helps blend the beauty of nature into the quiet moments between chaos and war. This makes the caucophony of battle all the more unpleasant. And since we compared this to “Saving Private Ryan”… the first difference I noticed was how the battles were shot. “Saving Private Tyan” matches the mise-en-scene, which is dark and gritty, to the human drama of war. For instance, the opening amphibious landing in Saving Private Ryan shows dark skies shot with a shaky handheld camera. Thin Red Line does the opposite in its battle scenes. By showing clear blue skies rolling green hills, and lush jungle foliage from smooth crane shots, Malick points out the absurdity and irony of the situation (much like the surfing in Apocalypse Now). It’s a beautiful day in a tropical paradise and these soldiers are dying while natives are living in huts just as bystanders…

I started getting annoyed that almost every soldier sounded like they were from the south but I got over it. The voiceovers seemed a bit cheesy to me at times but I did like the Dear John scene. I couldn’t believe it. What a horrible heartbreak to stack on to all the crap this guy is already going through…

Mulholland Drive

When I first saw this movie in film history I immediately fell in love with the ominous and confusing story. I also thought the sound was absolutely the most important factor in the film. The low frequency wind noise, or however it was created, creates all the tension in the film. This was one of those films where you look back on it and think “man I wish I had thought of that”. I'm a big fan of movies with those "what the hell" moments like 2001 and Ex Machina (great film, by the way, in case anyone hasn't seen it) and Mulholland Drive is definitely in that category. 

The scenes with Adam Kesher (the director) and Billy Ray Cyrus and the Cowboy are hilarious and completely necessary. The same can be said of the scene where the blonde guy shoots the lady in the room adjacent. These scenes capture the absurdity of dreams and how we only realize that things in dreams are weird or out of place once we’ve woken up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk990pKn7vY

The Billy Ray scene where he sleeps with Justin Theroux’s wife has excellent music. Not in a typical, musically genius sense, but the oddity and quirkiness of the music just makes the scene so absurd and funny, it just works, man. These scenes also allow for comic relief which is important because it refreshes the audience and lets us recharge the suspense batteries, so to speak. 

Since it's probably impossible to perfectly understand what David Lynch was going for with this narrative I'll refrain from trying to break it down and comprehend it. But I do think the No Hay Banda/Silencio scene says a lot about film music and films in general from a postmodernist perspective. "It is a tape recording. It is...an illusion" The point of this scene is to illustrate the disconnect between what the audience hears and sees from reality just like the dream Hollywood that Betty is living in isn't real either. Everything seen and heard in films is just an illusion and the postmodern points out this lack of fidelity in representation. 

Apocalypse Now

Apocalypse Now has to be the darkest and most darkly comic film of all time. I had seen it before but never in the cinema and the sound did make a huge difference. The surround sound was a necessity to try and replicate how the sounds of war are all around you, mostly in the sound of helicopters circling overhead or constant chirping of the jungle.

The film’s opening has to be one of the greatest ever. The “Apocalypse” in the title is symbolized by The Doors’ “This is the End” with a beautiful jungle being napalmed to death, like the death of paradise. In this area, the Apocalypse Now is very similar to Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line. The film takes place in World War II but both films share the industrial war destruction of nature theme. Thin Red Line shows a pristine south Pacific island with sandy beaches and lush jungle being invaded by a country hundreds of miles away as the local villagers just watch, oblivious to the struggles of the outside world and therefore symbols of nature and a kind of loss of innocence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W82YyP9nleQ

My favorite scene was the night bridge scene where Lance drops acid with a puppy in his vest. The whole scene feel like a nightmare The Jimi Hendrix tape playing and the weird organ music along with the strings of lights overhead makes It’s an allegory for the entire war, an unorganized chaotic mess. A bad acid trip while trying to protect a little puppy, man… I mean how much darker could the comedy be?

JFK

This was my first time seeing JFK. I was pretty familiar with the Kennedy assassination already because I had an essay assignment in high school to argue for what really happened (Oswald was a patsy) so this film was interesting to revisit that history.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuUtu2xRGgY

I think sound plays an important part in keeping a narrative with multiple shifts in time or place flowing smoothly. Much like Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas which relies on voiceover and rock and roll music to keep the narrative pacing along. JFK uses a traditional score, a semi-voiceover which usually happens over flashbacks, and sound effects like cameras flashbulbs or gunshots. Oliver Stone weaves these all together very effectively. These scenes rely on music to build up to the apex of each flashback scene. The music gets louder and more intense, like in the scene watching the Zapruder film where the music crescendos up the kill shot.

But in this film’s style, silence becomes important because it allows time to think, like a pillow shot. So after hearing a barrage of conspiracy information, the audience takes a moment to let what they’ve just seen sink in. Then the questions are asked. Was Oswald the real killer or a patsy? Was the CIA really behind the assassination? Without a chance to take things down a notch and stop to think, the film wouldn’t be as interesting. 

Martin Scorsese

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzpIB5TJ7LI

This was my first time seeing Goodfellas and the whole time watching I kept thinking “this is exactly like Wolf of Wall Street!” which I have seen multiple times. Both films follow the same basic formula. The protagonist provides a voiceover narration guiding us through their rise and fall from power, in Goodfellas it’s Ray Liotta’s gangster life and in Wolf of Wall Street it’s Leonardo DiCaprio’s wall street white collar crime. Both end up spiraling into drug addiction and both go down hard by the authorities. Both have the same frantic pace and energy and rock ‘n’ roll… hell it’s like they just took all the same character notes and switched settings!

But with regards to Scorsese’s use of rock ‘n’ roll, I felt the whole movie was made to feel like a drug high. As Ray Liotta recounts his life’s tale, he re-experiences all the good times of being a gangster. After all, what’s not to like? He’s got money, friends, women, and drugs wherever he goes. The film takes of from his childhood and introduction to the criminal underground and picks up energy, which is the whole purpose of rock ‘n’ roll anyway right? It’s supposed to make you want to turn up the volume and rock out. And isn’t the saying “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll”? Ray Liotta (I have a hard time remembering character’s names) is the epitome of this lifestyle. He doesn’t play by the rules, he has fun and does what he wants like a true renegade which makes him a likeable character until the trip goes out of control. Just like in Wolf of Wall Street, the Ray Liotta/Leonardo DiCaprio character takes too many drugs and ends up getting caught shortly thereafter (with Ray on coke and Leo on Quaaludes). 

The use of the second half of Layla by Eric Clapton works perfectly. The song is used when they discovered the freezer truck full of dead bodies and it's at this point that the fun times stop, The rush of the high is fading out just like the song which has a fast and energized first half but calms down and switches to piano for the comedown. 

Once Upon a Time in the West and Ennio Morricone

I view Bernard Hermann and Ennio Morricone as examples of extreme cinema score opposites. Bernard Hermann used traditional orchestral instruments and as Hermann said in the interview from the readings, “I don’t like the leitmotif system”. In Once Upon a time in the West, Ennio Morricone’s score is almost 100% leitmotifs from what I recall watching the film. Each of the three main characters has a theme for their appearance on screen: harmonica for Harmonica (which reminded me of a lone wolf howling to match Harmonica’s rogue nature), a goofy drunken horse type melody for Cheyenne (which really acts as comic relief since it’s so hard to take him seriously with that music), a distorted guitar tune for Frank, and an emotionally tender piece with strings for Jill who represents the only redeeming quality for the west which would be destroyed if it were left in the hands of these outlaws.

The one word I would use to describe this film is operatic. The constant extreme close ups and staring contests with pistols loaded are a trademark of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western style just as much as Ennio Morricone’s nontraditional musical arrangements. And to be honest, this style wore thin pretty quick in my opinion. I can’t quite put my finger on it but something about the ever present threat of getting shot or the long tension of Harmonica playing just sitting in a corner playing music. The melodrama just goes overboard. I felt like the final shootout between Harmonica and Frank would be more exciting or emotional if the rest of the movie wasn’t already more of the same. It feels like someone is always a breath away from getting a bullet.