Ask yourself: What do The Revenant,
Call Me By Your Name,
The Last Emperor,
Femme Fatale,
Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence,
the 1990 Handmaid's Tale and Black Rain all have in common?
Can you hear it? Listen carefully.
We talked about seeing a film but what about listening to it?
Most of us in an audience are not as aware of how what we hear in a film acts on us,
so as a result sound and music can have an even greater subconscious, emotional impact.
In this video, we'll look in detail at how a film's music completely shapes our viewing
experience, and we're going to do this through the works of a legendary Japanese musician
who composed the scores for films by directors from
Brian De Palma to Alejandro González Iñárritu.
Not to mention the fact that he was a pop star in the 80s who collaborated with the likes of
Madonna and David Bowie.
Sakamoto is having a big moment right now,
thanks to a documentary that's getting a lot of attention:
So let's use some of these Sakamoto films to show us all of the different ways music guides our movie experience.
One of the most classic ways film scores operate is by using motifs and themes
to tell us things about a character or the narrative journey.
What makes something a musical theme as opposed to just a melody is that a theme is repeated.
The repetition connects that theme to a character, setting, emotion or idea.
So every time we hear it, it evokes this particular meaning in the story.
So now let's look at The Last Emperor for an example of this.
Here's the theme we hear when the young Emperor's nurse and surrogate mother, Ar Mo is taken away from him.
This moment of losing the one person he loves
corresponds to a huge political moment when he learns China is now a republic with a president,
so he as emperor no longer has any real power.
And throughout the movie this theme returns in moments of painful transitions.
Like when he's forced to finally leave the Forbidden City,
when his wife, the Empress leaves after her baby's been killed,
when she returns, the completely deteriorated opium addict
and the former emperor deals with the aftermath of having sided with the Japanese in World War Two.
And all of these moments the music underlines the characters powerlessness.
It articulates the feeling that for all his outward shows of wealth and importance,
he's really been a prisoner his entire life, and the music takes on this significance through
its repetition in scenes when every last thing the character has is wrenched away from him.
In Merry Christmas Mr. Laurence, this theme embodies the rebellious spirit of David Bowie's Jack Celliers.
We hear it when he helps his friend Lawrence escape their solitary confinement and then chooses not to fight
Yonoi, who happens to be played by Sakamoto himself.
And we hear it in the climactic moment when he kisses Yonoi in front of the whole camp.
In both moments the theme expresses Jack's bravery as he understands
the right thing to do is not to fight but to show compassion, sensitivity and love.
This music gets out the central idea of the film, which is that these men should allow themselves to be open to
their emotions, their vulnerability and innocence.
And that both cultures' pursuit of an aggressive, invincible masculinity
is what's led them to this terrible mess of a war.
The practice of attaching specific musical themes and motifs to characters or moments was the norm in the Hollywood Golden Age
According to Peter Larson's Film Music this approach has been in decline ever since the 60s
It's still a huge part of music in most movies you see
But in recent decades film music is also increasingly used in other ways
One of the first things music can do right from the start is place us in a setting.
The Sheltering Sky's opening credits
play us a jazzy old New York sound to match the images
we see of the Manhattan skyline.
But as soon as the credits finish the score announces immediately that we're somewhere very far from Manhattan in every way.
The film opens on an upside-down close-up of eyes
So we hear where we are before we see it as if we with this
character are waking from a dream of New York to find ourselves in a foreign place
The effect here actually reminds us of Apocalypse Now's famous opening which isn't a coincidence perhaps considering both movies were shot by
cinematographer Vittorio Storaro
Music can establish a mood
And it can even foreshadow the end
It tells us in one way or another how this film will make us feel or what it's going to be about
So that setting that was established in The Sheltering Sky told us
this would be a story about
travel, about alienation, about getting lost and ending up very far from where you thought you'd be when you started
Soon after this point when we hear Sakamoto's main theme enter
It imparts to us emotions of melancholy
Foreboding, distance, regret. We don't yet understand how these emotions relate to the story
we're about to see but we already feel them and we have a sense that this trip is not going to go the way that
the characters plan
In Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, the main theme over the opening credits starts us off with a catchy tune and electronic sound
So right away that tells us this grim war film has a pop sensibility.
This mirrors the casting of David Bowie and Sakamoto himself who were at the time both
huge pop stars in their respective cultures
"Sakomoto was the number 1 rock star in Japan.
He was the David Bowie of Japan"
And a surprising combination of pop music and wartime setting signals to us
then this is going to be a very different take on the war film.
Just imagine this type of score over Saving Private Ryan
Or Dunkirk
Sakamoto said this sound was inspired by the bells of Christmas carols, but it uses Asian instruments
So the result sounds like a fusion of east and west
And fittingly the theme plays at key points when we see the characters from opposing sides of the war
achieving some kind of brief connection or understanding
"Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence."
The music underlines that these moments are small miracles
Even if they can't stop the greater narrative of the war,
aggression and brutality that's going on around them.
Music can connect us to a character's feelings
It has an inherent link to emotion
So one of the most powerful things music can do in a film is let us in on a character's inner world
Call Me By Your Name uses two songs previously written by Sakamoto
to tell us about Elio's emotional state.
Here, Sakamoto's hectic chaotic piano skipping around
reflects Elio's confusion at the odd behavior of this new stranger who just entered his life
The sound is unbalanced just as Elio feels disturbed by Oliver
but also invigorating and playful, capturing Elio's immediate fascination with this person's energizing presence
We hear another sakamoto song after Elio has sex for the first time
The disjointed piano through its lurches and pauses reflects his dissatisfaction and longings.
It tells us that his sexual consummation with a woman has only intensified
his desire for the true object of his affection. And it's a great example of the way that music by revealing these inner feelings
bond's us to the characters in a way that external observation alone can't
Music can also be a contrast to what we're seeing in the visuals or action like in The Last Emperor when the celebratory music of this
formal occasion is a jarring contrast to the former Empress's visible sadness and her behavior and in the images we see
"You do not believe I could be Emperor again, but I am"
"You are blind."
The music playing against what we see conveys the false optimism of the occasion,
just as the puppet government in Manchuria that the former emperor has agreed to establish for the Japanese is a lie
So music as a
counterpoint to the images can create the feeling that something is off or at odds, and the
contrast between what we see in here adds a layer of commentary to the narrative
One key modern way the music can be used in a film is to create a soundscape,
where the sound feels like part of the
environment or like it's emerging out of the environment
Sakamoto himself is very inspired by the soundscapes of Tarkovsky as we hear him talk about in the documentary, Coda
An in Sakomoto's own work, we find a very clear example of a soundscape in his score for The Revenant
In this film Nature is not only a character but even arguably the star and this character of the vast open
wild is expressed musically
The main theme makes us feel that the natural world is awe-inspiring
immeasurable, spiritual,
unknowable, and refuses to give us comfort
Sakamoto is obsessed with purity of sound, as we see in Coda
when he goes to the Arctic and record the sound of water running under the ice.
The Revenant is full of these pure sounds which are almost indistinguishable from the music
The musical motifs mix and
intermingle with the sounds of water, wind, and human breath
So the music really seems to flow out of the environment
"Mix with the sound of nature"
Sakamoto is also very interested in the idea of a perpetual sound
And we can hear this attempt to create a kind of never-ending sound that doesn't diminish in The Revenant
This sound seems to expand, to hint at something infinite
So the score subtly links nature to an idea of eternity
There are lots more ways that music can function in a film too.
It can set the pace.
It can be diegetic, meaning the music is heard inside the scene so it has meaning for the characters.
Or it can be non-diegetic, so the characters in the scene aren't hearing it,
but it adds an extra layer of meaning or commentary for the viewers observing these characters
Ultimately music reveals the emotional core of a film
It's like when you wake up from a dream
You can analyze all of the symbols or events you've experienced but none of that tells you the true meaning of the dream,
until you also ask yourself: What did you feel about all of this while you were dreaming?
Film score or soundtrack in the same way holds that key to what we feel about all that we've seen
It's the key part of what we take away with us as we awake from the trance of the cinema
And for Sakamoto himself, the score is an essential part of what he calls a film's flow
If you want to learn more about Sakamoto, you should definitely watch the documentary
Ryoichi Sakamoto: Coda. Right now, it's playing only on Mubi.
Getting inside Sakamoto's mind can truly open up
a new way of experiencing the world around you,
through listening to your environment in a deeper, more profound way.
Check it out soon, because it's there until October 6th
And if you use our link, you can get a whole lot month of movie for free so you can go watch this movie for free
right now and we'd highly recommend it