Philm: Philosophy and Film with David Zafra

I don’t write about television, because I feel like it is a separate art form that I don’t have a lot of knowledge about. However, there are a lot of similarities between TV and cinema. I think the biggest difference is the narrative structure. But when I watched a recent episode of How I Met Your Mother, I was blown away by the use of Florence and The Machine’s song “Shake It Out”  to end the episode. This is something that is used very often in movies as well, which is why I’m choosing this topic to write about.

I find it interesting when people say that they don’t like musicals. I think it’s interesting because so often we see that music and movies intertwine to make some amazing scenes. I know a lot of people may protest this notion, thinking that the two are very distinct; but there are many similarities between the style used in musicals and non-musicals. They are both interruptions in the narrative that are used to tell what’s going on at this point in the movie.

In the case of musical, the characters usually participate in the actual performance of the music, and non-musicals find ways around this. Though we will find that in some really great cases, they don’t really try to separate the two at all. I’d say there is three different musical styles in non-musicals:

a)The first is where the characters actually participate in the performing of the music(10 Things I Hate About You- “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” scene). The difference between this and the musical is that the characters around them are actually acknowledging the fact that singing is going on. Bio-flicks do a great job of this, but a lot of the times the music they are singing does not actually move along the narrative. b)The other method is a montage that edits several different parts of the story together like a music video(500 Days of Summer- ”vagabond”. c)The Last is where the song serves as background to a scene, and keeps the editing within the event(Fight Club- “Where is my Mind”. This last method is the least like a musical, so it is harder to link together the two together. But I think that you can still make an argument in those cases, because the music is still doing a lot to mix music and the movement of the narrative.

There is also something to say about scenes where there is music that sets the mood, but doesn’t actually help to know about the story. I can think of a lot of scenes but here’s a list that is in no particular order.

Some of my favorite scenes come from…

ALMOST FAMOUS

In the case of Almost Famous there is several examples of ” a”-“c” styles of combining song with the movie. However the most notable scene is the ”Tiny Dancer” scene. In my research of this topic, I encountered this scene a lot, and it’s easy to tell why. The scene uses a very musical style method by having the characters resolve the problem using nothing except song. There is a lot of great scenes in the movie that combine song with the story, but this is the best example of taking “a”, and making a great scene.

Quentin Tarantino 

It’s hard for me to pick just one scene out of all the great scenes in Quentin Tarantino’s movies. Tarantino really knows how to pick songs for his movies soundtrack. One great example is the Reservoir Dogs “Stuck in the Middle With You” scene. Another is the scene in Pulp Fiction’s “Girl,You’ll be a Woman Soon. Kill Bill Vol 1 has a ton of great examples as well; Tarantion’s use of “Battle Without Honor or Humanity” has become so representative of being a bad ass, that other people have tried to copy it. But you can pretty much grab an example from every one of his movies, which is why I have to clump everything together. The way he uses music it doesn’t just sit in the background, its an important force that gets intertwined with the story. In some cases the characters acknowledge the music, giving way to the events that follow, or using it to tone down the gritty violence that is or will take place.  

Romeo + Juliet 

This is one of the songs that came up a lot when I was trying to get ideas for the movies I wanted to talk about. And even though I wanted to try to come up with as many of my own ideas as possible, I couldn’t look past this one. For this scene Baz Luhrman chooses the song “Kissing You” to accompany the meeting of the two lovers. This isn’t just a great song that sets the mood, but perfectly creates the movement of the narrative. Specifically, it creates fascination between the two characters.  It captures the magic of love at first sight, but also carries on into the famous “If I profane with my unworthiest hand… etc”from Act 5 scene 1, where they first kiss. So the song works as a set up, so that they don’t just suddenly break into dialogue, since they don’t know each other.

500 Days of Summer 

After a good career doing music videos, it seemed natural for Mark Webb to transfer some of those skills onto the big screen. There’s no missing the use of music in 500 Days of Summer. The scenarios are numerous, from the “Vagabond” scene mentioned earlier to “You Make My Dreams Come True” dance number. But I think the most impressive use of song comes from the “expectations reality scene” in which Webb uses Regina Spektors song “Hero” to accompany the Tom’s visit with Summer. The lyrics of the song really do justice to the themes that have been presented thus far. It’s very powerful that Spektor says “I’m the hero of the story, don’t need to be saved”, in the same seen where  we see Tom hasn’t lost hope of his failed relationship. In his head, Summer is the perfect girl and he is blinded by that love. Another powerful line to go along with this is “Power to the people, we don’t want it we, want pleasure”. It goes along with the idea that Tom is in denial about his status with Summer. The scene is a good mix of “b” and “c” styles, because the lyrics and the events go so well together.

La Bamba and Annie Hall

To me these scenes are similar in both their form, and their ability to destroy me emotionally. I can pair these up as some of the most hauntingly beautiful moments in my memory, and they get me every time I watch them. With La Bamba we have the song “Sleepwalker” to accompany the scene after Ritchie Valens dies. The song serves to really finish of the movie, since the movie doesn’t have much running time after the plane crashes. The simplicity of the editing and the music serves to deliver what words cannot. And the song doesn’t try to word  anything either. This use of song may not seem very musical, but the song works pretty well to say what nobody else does; “this is a tragedy”. Same goes for Annie Hall. Sure Woody Allen gives us some monologue about the events that happened, but “It Seems Like Old Times” as sung by Annie hall, helps to give that tragic nostalgia that ends the movie. Once again we need to wrap up the movie, and the song helps to do that. It’s an easy out for the person who wants to put an end to the movie.  It is truly beautiful.

DRIVE

I know that I’ve been dick riding this movie a lot, but it’s so good. But on top of being a great movie, it also has  a great example of what I’ve been talking about. Specifically the “Real Hero” scene, which works like a music video to show the relationship of the two characters evolving. In a movie with very minimal dialogue, the use of music was really emphasized to set the mood. Though in this scene, the director really helped to make a musical-esque moment to move along the narrative, since we don’t get to see a lot of the interaction that goes on between Driver and his love interest. It’s a great example of “b”.

I know that I still have plenty of other great examples that I can use, but I’m going to stick with this list for now. If you guys have anything to add let me know. I’m sure there’s probably some really great scenes that I missed.