THE MUSIC OF FLIGHT AND LEVITATION

 In Denis Villeneuve's films, certain sequences and images are extraordinarily beautiful and powerful.  Take, for example, the brief sequence at the beginning of Dune Part Two, where Harkonnen soldiers levitate to the top of a rocky peak in the surreal light of an orange dawn.

(Villeneuve's predilection for the color orange is also evident in the magnificent Las Vegas episode in Blade Runner 2049).

The Harkonnens' weightless ascent is a dreamlike scene that defies the imagination.

I have no idea how it was done. The actors were probably suspended from cables against a green screen before being superimposed onto this desert landscape.

This image, like the entire scene, is related to my musical universe, to the music I like to listen to (I'm thinking of Brian Eno's Apollo) and that I try to create.

A dream of slowness and lightness, of flying in an almost aquatic atmosphere, of effortless floating ascension.

Watching this sequence, this image, makes me dream of the music that could accompany it.

Not just Hans Zimmer's synthetic, grainy layers.

But others, more fluid and airy, more minimal and subliminal...

But perhaps silence is the best soundtrack.

Silence, the music of dreams of flight and levitation... 

The Revenant: A haunting soundtrack...

 

The Revenant is one of those films that I never tire of seeing again, and that has had a haunting effect on me.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy star in this 2015 film by Alejandro G. Iñárritu.

It's a story of survival and revenge, but above all it's an immersion into the lives of American trappers and soldiers, as well as the various tribes of Native Americans, in the early 19th century, and into the immense, desolate landscapes of the plains, forests and mountains of a still untamed America.

Immersion in a world where water, forests, ice and snow, wood and rock are omnipresent, along with wild animal life. A harsh, hostile world for the group of hunters and their scout, exposed to attacks from Indians and wild beasts, and to competition between trappers.

The landscapes, filmed in panoramic widescreen with great depth of field (the director of photography is Emmanuel Lubezki), are characters in their own right in the film, whether they be the waves of the Missouri river, forests streaming with water or covered in snow, immense plains surrounded by mountains or roamed by herds of ghostly bison...

 

 

Twilight, endless expanses, walking to the end of exhaustion in an attempt to regain the human world, bloodied and breathless bodies, the survival drive exacerbated by the desire for revenge, omnipresent violence and cruelty, dreamlike escapes into the world of the dead and memories, paternity and betrayal, love and murderous rage...

The magnificent soundtrack by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto (Carsten Nicolai) plays an essential role: minimalist, atmospheric, alternating between the dreamlike fluidity of ondes Martenot (or equivalent) and the unleashing of tribal percussion (for the final battle scene), between sounds lost in a reverberation as vast as the immense expanse of the landscape, or slow, pared-down melodic sketches, expressive and melancholy, blending strings and electronics.

The Revenant's music is subtly atmospheric, based on a sound design as sophisticated as it is minimalist, and blends perfectly with the film's desolate, twilight landscapes and its unforgettable plot.

Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto offer a magnificent lesson in musical and sound design, and we can only be grateful that Alejandro G. Iñárritu chose their experimental, minimalist proposal for his film.

A true masterpiece...

Ad Astra

 About Ad Astra, film by James Gray, 2019, starring Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones...

Soundtrack: Max Richter

This film fascinated me and I never tire of watching it again...

It's an introspective, cerebral, melancholy space opera centered around two characters: Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) and his father, Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones).

The film could be described as an “Apocalypse Now” in deep space, on the edge of solar system.

The film tells the story of two quests, Clifford McBride's search for traces of intelligent life at the very edge of the solar system: the obsessive quest of an astronaut, a scientist, to unravel the mystery of life and intelligence: are we alone in the universe?

And Roy McBride's quest to find his father, lost in deep space and on the bangs of reason, the solar system and madness.

This film fascinated me by the beauty of the shots... By the vision of what space travel could be, from Earth to the Moon, from the Moon to Mars, from Mars to Neptune, with its logistics, its hubs, its stopover personnel...

But it was above all the sequence of the meeting, and then the heart-rending farewell between the son and father, that really stood out for me... Tragic, moving scenes....

I'm thinking of Clifford Bride's willingness to die in an infinite drift around Neptune, all ties severed with his son, with the promise of inescapable asphyxiation, but, deep down, the fulfillment of his destiny...

I loved the sober, haunted, inhabited acting of the two protagonists... of the two actors who played them...

And this existential confrontation between a son and his father touched me deeply, for personal reasons.

For me, “Ad Astra” is one of those “intelligent” science fiction films that ask questions, give food for thought, and put the human in the foreground. Christopher Nolan's “Interstellar” would be in the same category - and I'll be talking about it soon, no doubt...

A final word to say that Max Richter's soundtrack seems to me to reflect the introspective and dramatic dimension of the film, at the antipodes of John Williams' fanfare for Star Wars, which are not without their qualities, but that's something else...