There Will Be Brahms

My friend Jamie emailed me this link earlier this morning, to an article over on Slate comparing the soundtracks of There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men. I think Jan Swafford is right to touch on an interesting conversation - it's something that I've certainly discussed with various people - she does a good job, incidentally, of reassuring us that it's a reasonable thing to do - if they hadn't been released in the same award season, there's some chance that this conversation wouldn't come up, but indeed it well might since the movies share locations, and are both made by big-name American directors, and especially since both movies can be accurately described as having "good" soundtracks (an increasingly rare attribute for movies to have). What follows is more or less what my reply to Jamie was, with edits to make it more broadly readable:

I think Swafford misreads the There Will Be Blood soundtrack - to me none of the entrances were non-sequitors (she claims the glissando, for instance returns "for no discernible" reason). Also, it's more the fact that the soundtrack has narrative import, as opposed to just playing a supporting role, in There Will Be Blood that sets it apart from most other contemporary music scores. The opening glissando is directly related to the swooping sound Daniel Plainview's son makes when he first loses his hearing. And, if we must address the specific symbols that Swafford identifies for the various musics, how can we not make the comparison between the passion of Plainview as he attacks the rock wall of his gold mine and when he kills a man? Surely, if anything, the music in these places reinforces that view, rather than opposing it. And the Brahms' Violin Concerto, using the terminology of this particular article, is certainly related to the "leisure to flourish" that his hatred finally earned - in terms of the placement of the Concerto, during the movie, and again, immediately as the film ends (and it's reasonable to "read" the soundtrack that plays over the credits, as the soundtrack to the movie starts over black, before the film proper has started).

It's mistaken, I think to take the soundtrack to Blood as constantly standing in opposition to the narrative taking place on screen - it's surely more nuanced than that. I think it's more interesting to try and determine how much, if it at all, it differs from the sound design of No Country, in it's "service" of the narrative of the film. I agree much more with her read of the sound design in No Country - certainly designed to ramp up the irreality of the ongoings (thus making them that much more horrifying). But in the end, it's still a noticeable thing, at least to a critical audience (or one that is unwilling to be manipulated). I've gathered that No Country has been generally
considered to have failed in the moralistic aspect of it's story-telling (mostly between Jack's post about the movie and a conversation with our cousin Max (who was visiting me over the weekend), in that the unreality is too great for there to be much resonance in the movie-goer beyond shock and awe (where there are signs in the movie that perhaps that Coens are trying to moralize a bit (having Moss's wife call the killer on his faulty logic before he kills her, for instance) - though there are perhaps just as many signs that they were more interested in making a genre-piece than any kind of contemporaneously-looking moral fable at all (such as the two boy's reactions to the killer's severely broken arm). It's unclear to me whether the writer of this article thinks that train sounds during a killing is more less melo-dramatic than the old-fashioned movie scores, but surely, it does play a similar role to classic scores.

I'm still up in the air as to what exactly I think the soundtrack to There Will Be Blood does (aside from, along with Thom Yorke's solo album, explain whose presence in the band might be the one that makes Radiohead an even marginally listenable pop act), and how well it does it. It'll probably take additional viewings. But my sense, as a whole, I think is almost exactly opposite to Swafford's - to me, the soundtrack makes perfect sense, and doesn't stand in opposition to the narrative, but in fact helps in an intrusive way more familiar to (Romantic (Wagnerian)) opera than film.

But then again, I relate an awful lot of culture to opera already, so maybe that's just foolishness.