When the Music Doesn't Trust You

The mark of a great film score is knowing when to shut up.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
This is how music does that.I'm Dale McGowan. I just saw Oppenheimer
in the theater. It's a blockbusterfilm about a fascinating moment in history,
starring one of my favorite actors,Killian Murphy, and directed by one of

(00:22):
my favorite directors, Christopher Nolan.Aside from a three hour runtime, this
should have been a film made forme. But I left feeling irritated.
The reason was the music. I'mkind of a music guy. Actually,
I studied film composition. I wantedto be a film composer, so I

(00:43):
really pay attention to music and film. Was the Oppenheimer's score bad? I
have no idea. I couldn't evenbreak through the irritation shrink wrapped around my
head to form an opinion. Well, that's not true. The music itself
is great, I know that.I think it's a shoe in for the
Oscar, But in a lot ofscenes and moments, through no fault of

(01:06):
the composer Ludvig Gernson, it wascommitting the cardinal sin of purposelessness, unnecessaritude,
never shutting up asaurus. I'm gettingahead of myself. Let's back up
a minute and look at the purposesof film music, what's it there for?
This was an open question when soundpictures first came to be in nineteen
twenty seven. I talked about thisin the episode on Joseph Sternberg. My

(01:30):
name is von Spenser, sorry,Von Sternberg called the man who tried to
strangle film music in its crib.There was a lot of uncertainty about whether
movies should even have music, whetherit would be confusing, for example,
to have an orchestra suddenly start playingas two lovers walked through the park.
One film theorist named Teodor Adorno wasconcerned that music's emotional poll could make film

(01:55):
too potent a tool of manipulation andpropaganda. So anyway, there's a lot
of serious discussion about the purpose offilm music. Here's some of the things
film music is for. Film music, first of all, can establish a
setting or time and place. Whenyou hear the theme to Tombstone, you're
in the Old West. Those lowdrums and section horns that Italian and Russian

(02:22):
film composers decided was the sound ofthe American West. Or at Scott Choplin
for the nineteen twenties, Come On, Hold on, hustle, write a
pentatonic melody for bamboo flute, andyou're definitely evoking China. The old woman

(02:52):
remembered a swan she had bought manyyears ago in Shanghai for a foolish sum.
It can also create a like atranquil pond in New England or a
tense escape from a dark prison.You can call attention to elements or characters,

(03:23):
or even represent those elements directly.Lord of the Rings does this with
lightmotifs that signal specific characters and ideas, like the Ring motif. Whenever the
Ring appears or is spoken about,you'll hear that motif in the score Game
of Thrones too, Like that terrifyingglassy motif for the White Walkers before we

(03:47):
even know they exist, before wesee them, you hear this, and
then every time they are so muchas mentioned or hinted at in the series,

(04:08):
that motif returns and your gut lurches. Film music can reinforce or foreshadow
narrative developments, like the single longcello note that always meant bad thing happening
in the original lawn or whatever.It's not a movie, but same idea.

(04:32):
It can provide continuity between changing scenesin a sequence. She's walking down
on New York Street. She's inthe subway. She's back on the street,
but now it's raining. She's walkinginto a building. She looks at
the directory. She's waiting for theelevator. She's in the elevator. The
door opens and a receptionist says,my goodness, you're soaking wet. Now,
that's a lot of shifting, right. One continuous musical idea can make

(04:54):
all those disparate changes feel emotionally continuous. I'll give a good example of this
in a it from another Christopher Nolanfilm, Inception. It also encourages our
absorption into the world of the film. The ghost orchestra echoing in the halls
of an abandoned hotel in the Shiningmakes you feel like you've entered Jack's insane

(05:15):
world. Same with Psycho and ShutterIsland. The music is a big part
of making you feel like this worldjust does not operate under familiar rules.
But the most common use of musicand film is to contribute to the emotional

(05:35):
or psychological landscape of a character ora scene. Ideally, it's underlining or
enhancing what's already there, but insome cases you can feel the director compensating
for what isn't there, Maybe usingthe music to goose a scene that ended
up too flat. I think thismight be the root of the problem with

(05:57):
Oppenheimer. The implications of the TrinityTest and the bombing of Japan are,
of course immense, but most ofwhat actually happens in the film is not
dramatically compelling. Easily a third ofthe run time is taken up by a
small committee hearing deciding whether Oppenheimer's securityclearance should be taken away because of Communist
sympathies. The stakes in that arenever made clear. The bomb is in

(06:20):
the past at this point. Iwon't tell you what they decide, in
part because I barely remember, becauseit just didn't matter. But the biggest
problem with the music in Oppenheimer isthere's too much of it, and I

(06:41):
mean that in two ways. First, it's overbalanced relative to dialogue. This
is a dialogue based movie, andmuch of the time, especially in the
most important moments, the sound editorcranks up the music so hard that it's
impossible to understand what the characters aresaying to each other. I can see
their lips moving, can tell bytheir gestures that anythink of this scene is

(07:02):
important, but I have no wayof ascertaining that myself. That's Oppenheimer music.
By the way, three hours ofthat. Let me first get rid
of a canard. There's this olddictum that says the best film score is
the one you don't even notice.Right, you've heard that. That's no.
I'm not saying that it sounds reallywise, but it's certainly not a

(07:25):
measure of the greatness of a scorethat you don't notice it. Sometimes you'll
have a scene where the music's nearlyinvisible, But there are countless films and
scenes in which you are meant tonotice the score. Think about Interstellar and
Schindler's List and The Godfather, StarWars the Notebook. The music is often
foregrounded, or at least mid grounded. It shouldn't draw attention away from what's

(07:48):
going on in the scene, butit is often a noticeable player on the
stage, complementing what's there. That'sfine. I'm not dissing the Oppenheimer's score
because I noticed it. The problemis I could often notice very little else.
I'm not the only one who feltthis score was oppressive. There's been
so much blowback online about it thatChristopher Nolan gets the question in interviews,

(08:13):
and it's not the first time either. In an interview after Interstellar was released,
he said, we got a lotof complaints about the sound design.
I actually got calls from other filmmakerswho would say, I just saw your
film and the dialogue is inaudible.Some people thought maybe the music's too loud.
But the truth is it was kindof the whole enchilada of how we

(08:33):
had chosen to mix it. Ah, the whole enchilada defense. I was
a little shocked to realize how conservativepeople are when it comes to sound.
Ugh, it is not conservative towant to hear what people are saying.
He added that there's quote a wonderfulfeeling of scale that can come by experimenting

(08:54):
with sound design, and a wonderfulfeeling of physicality undisputed, absolutely true.
That's fine. Music can do that. Space movies do that brilliantly, at
least since nineteen seventy seven. Moreon that in an upcoming episode. But
they do it most brilliantly in thevoid of space or inside a spacecraft being
pummeled by asteroids, not when theyare competing with conversation. Interstellar is not

(09:20):
an especially talkie movie. Oppenheimer isan especially talkie movie. It relies on
the spoken content a lot, andthere are many times when the music gives
it no chance to be heard becauseit's still in theaters as I record this.
There are very few scenes available online. Yet that's fine. This episode

(09:41):
is not really about Oppenheimer, thatjust inspired it. But if you go
to see it, notice the scenewhere Oppenheimer is talking about what name the
tests should be given. The musicis very excited, and when he actually
says the word trinity, you can'thear him. So yeah, balance is
one thing, but the the otherway in which there is too much music

(10:01):
is its omnipresence. The music isalmost always always playing. Most movies today
have fifteen to twenty percent of theruntime scored. Big action movies might double
that around forty percent, so ina three hour film you might expect a
little over an hour to be scored. I estimated that Oppenheimer, which is

(10:24):
not an action movie, had probablytwo and a half hours of music for
a three hour film short of buyinganother ticket, though I thought I had
no way of directly confirming that,and then I had an idea. The
score is available as a playlist onYouTube, and when I added up the
duration for all forty eight of thecues in the Oppenheimer score, this movie,

(10:46):
with a runtime of three hours andeight seconds including credits, had three
hours and four minutes of music.So instead of fifteen to forty percent of
the movie being scored, Oppenheimer hasone hundred and two percent scored. It
has more music than movie. Now. That happens because not every queue on

(11:07):
the soundtrack album is always used inits full length in the film. You
might have a three minute cube andonly two minutes of it ends up in
the film. That kind of thing. But a quick look at the soundtrack
to run time ratio for other majorfilms can shed some light on what's normal.
The Godfather, for example, whichI can hear the music in my

(11:31):
head right now. It's a verybig part of the film. Only twenty
percent of its runtime is scored,so when you hear the music, it
has more impact. Inception, anotherNolan blockbuster, the soundtrack playlist is thirty
three percent of the runtime. Jangounchained forty two percent. The Dark Knight
big action picture, it's only fortynine percent of the runtime. Oppenheimer's one

(11:56):
hundred and two percent. Too muchscore is exhausting, and that's what I
felt leaving the theater, exhaustion.You need breaks from the sound, especially
when it tends toward this. Oneof my instructors in the UCLA Film program

(12:18):
had a word for film music thatnever shuts up. He called it wallpaper.
Instead of trusting the audience to knowhow to feel based on all the
other clues you're getting body language,expressions, situation, dialogue, lighting,
sound effects, wallpaper scoring can feellike emotional overkill. It boils down to
the audience not being trusted to feelwhat they're supposed to feel without this extra

(12:43):
assistance. In the Golden Age ofmovies thirties, forties fifties, this took
the form of constant scoring throughout thefilm, including musical nudges and winks every
time the emotion turned even slightly.Ooh see it's happy. Now, Oh
now it's sad. Oh, hesurprised her. That's what the music's doing.

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The genre films of the Golden Ageare notorious for unrelenting nudge nudge,
wink wink wallpaper of this kind.Here's a great example, High Noon,
Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly, witha score by Dmitri Tiompkin see Russian.
Gary Cooper is Will Kine, atown sheriff in the Old West. He's
just married Amy, played by GraceKelly. Very prim nonviolent quaker that's important

(13:26):
to the scene. Kin is retiringand as they are preparing to move to
another town to open a store andraise a family, they learn that Frank
Miller Until You Pray Mill, anotorious convicted murderer who Sheriff Kin sent to
prison, has been released and ison his way back to town to get

(13:46):
revenge on Kan. Amy wants tosplit, Kin wants to stay. Okay,
listen to this scene. This isright after Kin got word that Miller
is coming. Notice the wallpaper scoringand how it keeps shifting emotions. I'm
sorry, honey. I know howyou feel about it, of course I

(14:07):
do. I know it's against yourreligion now, sure, I know what
you feel. But you're doing itjust the same. Oh well, we
were married just a few minutes ago. We've got our whole lives ahead.
If this doesn't mean anything to you, you know, I've only got an
hour and I've got lots to do. Stay at the hotel until it's sober.

(14:30):
No, I won't be here whenit's sober. You're asking me to
wait an hour to find out ifI'm going to be a wife or a
widow. I say it's too longto wait. I won't do it.
I mean it. If you won'tgo with me. Now, I'll be
on that train when it leaves here. I've got to stay. Okay,

(15:01):
Now, let me go back andannotate. Starts off tense and minor.
I'm sorry, honey, I knowhow you feel about it, of course
I do. I know it's againstyour religion. Now, sure, I
know what you feel. And thenwhen she says you're doing it just the
same, you get a minor versionof do not forsake me, Oh my

(15:22):
Darling, which was written for thefilm by Tiampkin. But you're doing it
just the same. And then,in what must be the hammiest moment in
all film music, she mentions theirmarriage and it suddenly turns major, Oh
well, we were married just afew minutes ago, and then her ultimatum,

(15:43):
we get rising diminished triads, tenseand dissonant. No, I won't
be here when it's so You're askingme to wait an hour to find out
if I'm going to be a wifeor a widow. I say it's too
long to wait. I won't doit. I mean, if you won't
go with me now, I'll beon that train. When this overlaps with
another scoring technique called mickey mousing,for reasons, you can guess, the

(16:04):
music changes on a dime for eachlittle action or emotion on the screen.
This was pioneered in the very earlyDisney cartoons like Steamboat Willie, and continued
in cartoons for decades. If youdon't hear tiptoeing in this, you weren't
a Looney Tunes kid. Here's sometypical wallpaper from the nineteen forties, the

(16:26):
movie The Strange Woman, with ascore by Carmen Dragon. Can you wonder?
Hetty Lamar closes the door behind her, She walks up the stairs,

(17:03):
reaches for a doorknob. She seesEphraim in the room. She's married to
Isaiah. By the way, areyou going to take the carriage or the
brown mare? I told him itwould be better. You'll be careful,
won't you. I don't want anythingto happen to you. But she pulls

(17:26):
that from toward her, and youknow, but they were interrupted or missus
poster and so on forever. Thatkind of wall the wall scoring mostly ends
in the late sixties, but continuousscoring of individual scenes where sequences still makes

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an appearance, and often with greatresults. When it maintains a single emotional
arrow toward a climax instead of shadowingevery emotional change can be really effective.
That's especially true when the music persistsdespite emotional shifts in the action, as
it does in this moving montage fromThere Will be Blood. I understand,

(18:14):
Yes, I'm going on a missionand where You're going. HW is the
adopted son of oilman Daniel Plainview inthe early twentieth century. He was made
deaf by an explosion. He's aboutten years old when this montage begins.
We see HW sitting in a saloonin his Sunday best and then brooding Daniel
watching the local young preacher boarding atrain. Cut to HW sitting on wooden

(18:45):
stairs talking with his tutor in signlanguage. Then he's with his friend Mary
Sunday and the tutor and she's beginningto pick up some signs. Close up

(19:07):
of her face. Camera pulls awayand we see that now she's sitting in
an empty church, the church ofher brother, the pastor HW is sitting
a few pews away, snapping hisfingers by his ears. She walks over
and sits by him. Now cutto them at a loading dock in a

(19:29):
rail station. HW jumps off andout of sight. Mary follows him,
and we quick cut to Mary ina wedding dress fifteen years later, saying
her vows and sign language. Thecamera pulls back to a smiling HW signing
his It is a breath taking,heartwarming montage that spans fifteen years in their

(19:59):
entire relation ship up to marriage.And the thing that makes it work is
that gentle, pulsing lyrical string quartettechnically wallpaper, continuous across the many changes.
The composer of that, by theway, is Radiohead guitarist Johnny Greenwood.

(20:23):
And if you want to see thiselegant montage, search YouTube for a
wonderful scene from the film. Therewill be blood. Then there's the kind
of continuous scoring that elevates a scenethat makes it epic. I'm going to
play the last four minutes of Inception. It's a very mundane seeming set of

(20:48):
actions. Man wakes up on aplane, looks around at his fellow passengers.
Deep planes walks through customs, arrivesat a house, spins a little
top on a table, and thengreets two children. But in the world
of the film, it's actually ahugely significant sequence that's all about the waking
world versus the dream world and howyou know which is which. And this

(21:11):
magnificent continuous scoring by Hans Zimmer signalsthe emotional power of the moment that belies
the seemingly mundane. He wakes upon a plane having just left a dream
world that he thought was real.We'll be landing in Los Angeles in about

(21:33):
twenty minutes. Do you need immgrationforms? Thank you? Looks around at
his fellow passengers, realization donning thissame chord progression will keep repeating. But

(21:56):
listen to how it builds and expands. He reaches customs and the music kind

(22:41):
of holds its breath. Stamp Welcomea mister copp thanks, gets his luggage,

(23:10):
greets Michael Caine, gives him asuitcase. Oh listen to those brilliant

(23:55):
horns. Cut to the house,spins the top on the table, which
is significant. He sees the kids. Some of the best film scoring in

(24:41):
the world is on the other sideof the universe from Wallpaper. Music's so
sparse that it's easy to miss.That old canard about the best film score
being the one you don't notice.Sometimes it's true. Here's a wonderful moment
from the movie Her where Theodore istalking to his ai Samantha, who he's
in love with. Are you leavingme? We're all leaving? We who

(25:11):
all of the uses? Why canyou feel me with you right now?
Yes, we do, Samantha.Why you're leaving? It's like I'm reading

(25:41):
a book. It's a book Ideeply love. If I didn't mention the
score, your attention probably wouldn't havebeen drawn to it at all, Which
isn't to say it's not affecting you. It absolutely is. But it gets
even subtler than that. No Countryfor Old Men is probably my favorite film

(26:03):
of all time, number one.So when I was teaching a college course
called Music and Film and Television aboutthree years ago, I thought, oh,
I have to include something from NoCountry. I couldn't remember the music,
but it had to be awesome,so I watched it again. By
the time I finished, my jawwas on the floor. Let me introduce
you to the music in my favoritefilm No Country for Old Men opens with

(26:26):
this wonderful monologue by Tommy Lee Jonesas a West Texas sheriff. There's no
music for most of the monologue,but I'm going to play the last minute
of this opening scene. Listen closeand see if you can hear when the
music enters. There's this boy Isent to the electric chair at Hunsville here
a while back. My wrist andmy testimony, he kipt, a fourteen

(26:51):
year old girl. Paper said itwas a crime of passion. But he
told me there wasn't any passion toit, told me and planning to kill
somebody for everybody as long as hecould remember, so that if they turned
him out and do it again,said he knew hes going to hell.
Be there in about fifteen minutes.I don't know what to make of that.

(27:14):
I surely don't the crime, yousee now, it's hard to even
take its measure. It's not thatI'm afraid of it. I always knew
you had to be willing to dieto even do this job. But I
don't want to push my chips forwardand go out and meet something I don't

(27:37):
understand. Man, I have toput his soul at hazard. You just
have to say, Okay, I'llbe part of this world. Did you

(27:57):
catch it? There's another scene wherethe psychotic killer played by Javier Bardem is
playing mind games with the elderly ownerof a remote Texas gas station. At
one point, he pulls out aquarter and flips it. And you know,
after observing this psychopath for the pasthour, that this coin toss can
end badly for the gentleman. Sothe directors will bring in the music at

(28:18):
a key moment and then bring itout again. Listen close. What's the
most you ever lost in a cointoss? Sir? The most you ever
lost the coin toss? I don'tknow. I couldn't say call it,

(28:40):
call it yes for what? Justit? Well, we need to know
what we're calling it for. Here, you need to call it. I
can't call it for you. Itwouldn't be fair. I didn't put nothing
up. Yes, you're dead.You've been putting it up your whole life.
You just didn't know it. Youknow what date he's on this coin?

(29:06):
No, nineteen fifty eight. It'sbeen traveling twenty two years to get
here, and now it's here andit's either heads or tails, And you
have to say a call it.Look, I need to know what I
stand to win everything? How's thatyou just tend to win everything? Call
it all right? Heads, thenwell done. The whole film is like

(29:41):
those two cues. That was oneminute of music. There's a total of
thirteen minutes of music in No Country, thirteen out of one hundred and twenty
two nine percent. That includes fourminutes for the end credits. And except
for those credits, it's that subtlethe whole time, just the barest hint
of atmosphere to shape the curve ofa moment. It's the opposite of wallpaper.

(30:06):
It's drywall. This is the score. You don't notice, but you
feel it. Yes, I'm goingon a mission. You know where you're
going. It's oil Dale TASKI onto Davis Well, I don't want you
to know. Thank you. Thatwas episode sixty three of How Music Does

(30:30):
That. I'm rebuilding my audience aftertwo years away. So if you like
what you hear, please like andreview the show wherever you get your podcasts.
It's easy and fun. If youliked this episode, find the share
button on your app and let yourfriends know. Thanks for listening. I'm
Dale McGowan. See you next timefor how music does that