"Contagion" and Zombies

Warning: spoilers below for the film Contagion


For the first half of geological time our ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria, and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria.

Richard Dawkins

Halloween is around the corner and it’s appropriate that these days, zombies are on the rise given that vampires are now about sex or sparkles, rebooted 80s’ franchises are, well, franchises, and I can only assume that werewolves are passe given how The Wolfman bombed at the box office only a year and a half ago. How appropriate, too, that I recently watched Steven Soderbergh's Contagion, a film with a premise so similar to the core root of the zombie sub-horror genre that the degree of separation between one and the other is as thin as Heineken. 

For those unfamiliar with the September release, Contagion is about an pandemic of a new, deadly virus, a virus so deadly it ravages countries and blips the mortality statistics into the millions worldwide within a month of its premiere. As people drop dead and the virus mutates, societies breakdown into anarchy, barely contained by a veil (if not facade) of remaining authority still alive. Doctors and nurses walk out, refusing to treat patients since there is no cure and they don’t want to become infected themselves; researchers at the Center for Disease Control (CDC) rush to find a vaccine and cure, working tirelessly against a pathogen that has no precursor; rioters break into pharmacies, attempting to loot homeopathic treatments a conspiracy-driven blogger promotes; civilians are forced to protect their homes with arms, turning away friends for fear of transmission and living lives of relative isolation; survivors live in more dread than the dying, going about their daily routine with a mysophobic and self-preservation alertness; and and the bureaucracy of governments churns its wheels as it attempts to allocate resources and personnel to different scenes, each nation balancing the interest of its own people with that of the international community in the face of natural force capable of wiping out the human population. 

While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often.

Philip Munz, Ioan Hudea, Joe Imad, and Robert J. Smith, "When Zombies Attack!“ (2009)

Pause for a second a consider how similar the events which unfold in Contagion correlate with events with which we’ve come to expect in zombie stories: if anything, zombies are a perfect model for the pandemic of an infectious disease, plus the bonus of bludgeoning practice if you’re into that sort of spectacle. The key difference between zombies and a deadly disease is a minute one: infectious diseases can be transmitted a variety of ways – such as vectors like mosquitoes and rats, fomites like a staircase railing or martini class, or even direct contact like handshaking and kissing – and unless the pathogen itself is particularly hardy and has a long incubation period, it will likely die off once its host (aka the unfortunate patient) dies; zombies, on the other have two modes of action: 1) eat the living, or 2) leave a infectious mark after their prey manages to get away – the agent which causes the disease, interestingly, requires both direct contact (aka chomp) and the host to die before it can be properly transmitted. Besides this medical difference, pandemics and zombies both share the same consequences: social breakdown into levels of anarchy and inhumanity, and both are spread by contact, direct or indirect. 

The film suggests that, at any moment, our advanced civilization could be close to a breakdown exacerbated by precisely what is most advanced in it.

David Denby, Contagion review via The New Yorker

Yet what’s really scary in “Contagion” is how fast once-humming airports and offices, homes and cities empty out when push comes to shove comes to panic in the streets.

Mahnola Dargis, Contagion review via The New York Times

What makes Contagion compelling is its particularly realistic grasp in depicting the events unfold when a new, deadly virus hits the globe. The film is an ensemble film with six intertwined stories with three distinct POVs: the first, involving Mitch Emhoff (Matt Damon) and his family, provides insight into the events unfolding amongst civilians; the second revolves around government authorities on the scene, and has three distinct plot lines – Dr. Ellis Cheever (Lawrence Fishburne) balancing his duties between the CDC and US homeland security, Dr. Ally Hextall (Jennifer Ehle) who works tirelessly on a vaccine, and Dr. Leonara Orantes (Marion Cotillard), a WHO epidemiologist who visits Hong Kong and tries to determine the origin of the virus; and lastly the third, which revolves around Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law) who blogs conspiracy theory-ridden polemics and vouches for alternative medicine. In total, there are six stories and three POVs which pervade Contagion. 

One aspect of the film is befuddling. Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law) is a popular blogger with conspiracy theories about the government’s ties with drug companies. His concerns are ominous but unfocused. Does he think drug companies encourage viruses? The blogger subplot doesn’t interact clearly with the main story lines and functions mostly as an alarming but vague distraction.

Roger Ebert, Contagion review via the Chicago SunTimes

If there’s a serious misstep in Contagion, it’s that the subplot involving Alan is poorly focused. His motivation is murky. Initially, he appears to be a conspiracy theory nutcase. Then he’s a market manipulator being recruited by a hedge fund manager. Soderbergh wants him in the film to represent a slice of the population, but doesn’t seem to know how to manage him. There’s a sense that Alan should have been given either more or less screen time. The amount he’s actually accorded doesn’t seem just right.

James Berardinelli, Contagion review

Listen, I don’t object to the depiction of an Internet journalist as a scumbag; I object to reducing the entire discussion of the current dreadful state of media in this country to a lame joke, and one that suggests we’re better off not challenging authority. 

Andrew O'Hehir, Contagion review via Salon.com

Contagion could have been a much more haunting (and hence stronger) film had Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns placed a bigger emphasis on the decay of social order that results when the disease becomes pandemic – the same emphasis that makes certain zombie dramas like The Walking Dead so much more compelling than the average zombie flesh fest. Unfortunately, the Krumwiede story becomes an unnecessary crux in the film’s progression: while it’s likely that a good portion of the population would turn to unfounded internet declarations in times of desperation, I don’t think an entire story line needed to be dedicated to this aspect of a pandemic causing social deterioration. In fact, the Krumwiede story could have easily been incorporated into Cheever’s troubles in dealing with government bureaucracy and reaching out to the American population. I suspect, however, that Krumwiede’s story was included to give Contagion narrative momentum, and unfortunately I wholeheartedly believe this was the wrong choice. A wiser decision would have been to linger more on the deterioration of the dying, and to give more screen time to Emhoff and Hextall, whose respective story lines encompass the core components of Contagion’s horror: a man who is trying to keep his remaining family alive, and a women who is pressed by the constraints of time and technology to find a cure. 

"Contagion’s” implacable tone has its drawbacks. The movie is almost pathological in its avoidance of messy emotion.

Michael Phillips, Contagion review via the Chicago Tribune

If anything, the primary momentum of Contagion could have easily been Mitch Emhoff’s perspective: true terror lies not with the dying, but with the remaining who have yet to know of their own fates. The moments in Contagion where we see people looting, robbing, and clawing over one another for limited supplies are as poignant as they are when we see similar moments in zombie narratives: they encompass the deterioration of social order, when anarchy becomes as pandemic as the disease itself. Sure, you have those who retain their own sense of decency and humanity, but realistically (and unfortunately) such individuals tend to be far and few between in the wake of a potential human apocalypse. Mitch Emhoff is one of those few dignified people amidst the chaos, a character whose sense of common decency is undeterred in the wake of disaster; his story line is what really keeps the viewers on edge, for we can only imagine what would happen to him and his daughter if they were forced to fend for themselves against violence or worse yet, opportunists. 

Had Soderbergh and Burns considered the possibility that being scientifically accurate and narratively compelling were not mutually exclusive, I suspect Contagion would have been one of the few films to achieve the feat of depicting a researcher more nuanced than Hollywood cliches – I’m speaking, of course, of Dr. Hextall’s story. 

The pressure cooker plot calls for intense performances all around but first among equals are Winslet and Ehle. The former’s abilities are amply known but, whenever Ehle appears in films or onstage, she makes it clear she entirely belongs in the company of Streep (whom she resembles), Winslet, Blanchett, Kidman, Linney, et al. 

Todd McCarthy, Contagion review via The Hollywood Reporter

While Contagion has more (currently) sound science than the average science fiction thriller, Soderbergh still makes the mistake of assuming the research process is too boring for the big screen. It’s not an unfounded assumption, but it’s an assumption based off the idea that the technology and technicalities themselves must be the focus in depicting the research process in a narrative. The technicalities themselves might be boring to the average non-researcher (even for researchers in some cases) but the human drive behind such research is a rather compelling one.

Imagine: Dr. Hextall gets a sample of the pathogen, and begins the arduous process of identifying its microscopic components – is it a bacteria, a virus, a prion?; imagine too that once she identifies its molecular make up and its origins (courtesy of Professor Ian Sussman, played by Elliott Gould), Hextall must now go through the various trial and errors in creating a viable vaccine. Sure, the process itself might be boring to watch, but imagine the emotions attached to each step: the grueling thought process that tests the extent of current knowledge and its application to a unforeseen force; the ensuing lack of sleep that results because each minute she sleeps means another hundred (if not thousand) victims to succumb; the hope and disappointment when a vaccine is tried and fails; the moment of despair when nothing seems to work; the burst of hope when an epiphany results in a successful vaccine – the end result is still the development of a vaccine, but the emphasis on Hextall’s humanity as opposed to her knowledge of microbiology could have been a particularly moving and incredibly novel aspect of Contagion’s momentum. 

Don’t get me wrong, Contagion is not a bad movie; in fact, it’s a very good thriller that, save Krumwiede’s story, is tightly paced and bound to create mysophobes in its wake. It’s quite possible to make a dramatically moving zombie story (The Walking Dead is doing a superb job at the moment), and likewise it’s very possible to make a dramatically moving pandemic thriller that builds on Contagion’s strengths and shortcomings. The focus, unfortunately, lies a bit too much on the overarching realities of the situation – bureaucracy, technicalities, research – that, in a documentary, would have been more than appropriate; however, since Contagion is fictional, a tighter grasp on the aspects that make a compelling narrative (such as the human condition and confluence of emotions) would have made for a stronger overall film. I’m not sure if Soderbergh made the connection between pandemics and zombies, but if he didn’t I think he would have made wiser choices in the film’s narrative momentum – minus the bludgeoning. 

SIde note: when Hextall tests the vaccine on herself, she references Dr. Barry Marshall when her diseased and distressed father protests her actions. Marshall, an Australian, along with his colleague Robin Warren, is responsible for identifying the bacteria, Helicobacter pylori, as the agent responsible for gastric (stomach) ulcers in 1982. Up until this discovery, it was largely believed that gastric ulcers were associated (or caused) by excessive stress. At the time of Marshall’s discovery, however, the medical community did not accept his findings as sound, so in 1984 he drank a petri dish of H. pylori and subsequently took antibiotics to prove his point. The experiment was cited in 1985 in the Medical Journal of Australia. In 1994, the National Institutes of Health of America acknowledged Marshall’s findings as sound. 

Small quibble: I don’t know if the production of Hextall’s vaccine would have been as speedy as depicted in Contagion given how long it took for the medical community to accept Marshall’s findings, notwithstanding the issues of human trials needed to prove the vaccine’s effectiveness. But really, who wants to sit through that process? 


Recommended Reading

Contagion trailer, which is where I got the above images from.

Happy (early) Halloween, everyone

3D - the Illusion Ruiner

3D was never meant for movies. 

If anything, 3D technology should be pursued for gaming. But movies? Every time I hear a 3D enthusiast insist that 3D enhances film, I feel like I’m hearing the equivalent of someone arguing under the right conditions – if you lived in an area where it mostly sun for the year, if you would willingly lay on your back and drove alone in a incredibly hot and claustrophobic compartment that had no windows and your only means of communicating was through a radio – a solar-powered car could work. 

Yes, under ideal conditions – perfect projection, good speakers, competent filmmaking that involves a excellent understanding of the effect’s use – 3D could work. But I’m not particularly forgiving when time and time again I see Hollywood knowingly use 3D as a gimmick – and a bad one at that – to lure audiences in. Since 3D’s surge to prominence I only remember seeing three movies in 3D: Alice in Wonderland, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, and Avatar. I was more or less coerced into the 3D ticket for Alice because majority rules when you’re seeing movies with friends; Ebert’s comments on the use of 3D enticed me enough to see Ice Age 3; and well Avatar – I’m not a Cameron diehard, but if a man spends nearly two decades bringing to life a visual wonder, I’m going to respect the hard work he put into it. Otherwise, I’ll willingly opt for a good, bright 2D projection any day than pay an extra surcharge that detracts away from my experience. 

Recently, acclaimed directors like Steven Spielberg and the legendary Francis Coppola have hopped on the 3D bandwagon with their respective movies, The Adventures of Tintin and Twixt. When I heard this (as well as their enthusiasm for the technology) I sadly shook my head. Had they lost their way? Or really, had they forgotten what the film medium accomplishes that 3D ruins? 

Movies are all about creating illusions. We watch a series of photographs or drawings projected in a sequence that creates the illusion that we are seeing live action or animated movement. Cinematography creates the aura, sound enhances the illusion by giving us a sense that we’re hearing actual dialogue and environmental noise, and music supports or supplies the emotion and mood appropriate to a particular point in the narrative. Stellar acting, competent directing, and solid writing help tie all these visual and auditory elements together. A successful film engages the audience through a combination of these various factors to convey a story. 

I’ve read many counterarguments to the anti-3D sentiment likening the introduction of 3D to that of sound into film. While similar on the surface, the circumstances surrounding sound and 3D and their effect on film differ vastly to the point that the comparison becomes null. 

Directors resisted sound because it forced them to use and learn new equipment. Not only that, silent actors, accustomed to acting without the need for a voice, would have a difficult time adjusting to a new era in filmmaking that required more subtlety and a voice that carried the dialogue (notwithstanding speaking the language of the target audience, for some). The transition to sound was inevitable though, mostly because it helped enhance the illusion of seeing a film: dialogue cards no longer interjected scenes, and the viewing experience became even more seamless because there was no external reminder that what we were watching on screen was only a projection. Sound helped create the illusion of film, as did color film when editors weren’t abusing technicolor or color filters in the early days. 

For shame, South Pacific, for shame. 

3D is completely different, mostly because its first incarnation goes back to the 1950s. Its resurgence most definitely reflects the state of the current American economy as Hollywood executives try to maintain their business by creating incentives for audiences to get off of their couches and computers and go to an actual theater in an increasingly digital age. The facts are clear: 3D is a gimmick. 

Oh, I believe there is artistic integrity that can come about with 3D. But in an increasingly large ocean of 3D gimmicks that contains fewer and fewer films commanding 3D as a absolute you-will-regret-it-if-you-don’t-just-like-the-time-you-didn’t-see-Finding Nemo-in-theaters-because-you’re-a-bloody-idiot-like-that necessity, I find myself increasingly unwilling to indulge in this effect – mostly because it adds nothing from my viewing experience. In fact, it almost definitely detracts away from the experience because unlike sound or color, I am too well aware that 3D is a special effect. 

Let me put it this way: when I see bad CGI, the film instantly becomes less illusionary because I am well aware that the CGI is a special effect; when it is done well – either the fictitious or reality sense – the illusion is complete. I can watch the film without anything distracting me from becoming absorbed in the projection of narrative movement and sound. 

3D is like bad CGI. You have to wear glasses for it to work, and more often than not the colors become dimmer whenever 3D is employed. And for a person like me who already has astigmatism, 3D is like a extra kick in the balls after it already chucked sand into your eyes. 

I’m all too aware that 3D is a special effect, and while I could be completely focused by what’s on screen and absorbed by what I’m hearing, knowing that 3D is being employed becomes an unnecessary awareness that inevitably distracts me from having a truly illusionary film experience. For example, apparently in Coppola’s Twixt, there are even cues when to take your glasses on and off – how much more obvious of an effect can you ask for?

If we likened film to the performance of a magician, a great film experience is like a great illusion, and 3D is like a trick that more often than not, turns out badly. A illusion works because it engages the audience, absorbs them through a process which the character John Cutter describes in Christopher Nolan's The Prestige: 

Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called “The Pledge”. The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course… it probably isn’t. The second act is called “The Turn”. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you’re looking for the secret… but you won’t find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn’t clap yet. Because making something disappear isn’t enough; you have to bring it back. That’s why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call “The Prestige”

A true cinematic experience doesn’t have you solely focused on how the effects were accomplished immediately after you leave the theater. 3D shifts the focus to being wowed by an obvious effect rather than being absorbed by it. It’s too obvious of a trick and fails to produce ‘the prestige’ effect that traditional film projection allows for. 

Illusions, Michael. A trick is something a whore does for money. Or cocaine. 

If anything, 3D technology should be pushed for gaming. As a medium, games ask for complete immersion into an alternate dimension – a completely different feat than what films accomplish. Games are about an alternative reality with which you can interact with, where as films are about an alternative reality created for the sake of conveying a narrative; games are primarily about individual experiences, and films are about storytelling. In this sense, 3D – an effect that begs to be noticed – is so much more appropriate in games, a medium that begs for you to pay attention to the effects: computer graphics, gaming engines, environment design, everything. 

3D is not meant for film because it ruins the illusion of a projected narrative. Perhaps one day 3D technology will improve beyond my comprehension, and might even become a mainstay; if that happens, however, I suspect that it will not become integrated in what we’ve come to define as the film medium, but rather it will transcend into a completely new medium. Though open to the idea of being proven wrong, I have my severe doubts about the future that so many have enthusiastically predicted as the imminent marriage between 3D and film. I’d bet all my chips on 3D and games making a good ol’ baby in a heart beat, hands down. 

But 3D and film? I’ll pass, thanks. And solar-powered cars? I think solar-powered road panels are a better idea. 

Recommended Reading

And, because we can never have enough of GOB: 

Soundtracks and Film

I discovered my love of movie soundtracks when I was fourteen years old. If memory hasn’t failed me it was the summer before I entered high school and, while my family and I were at the nearby science center exhibit for how movie’s are made, I stumbled upon the sound booth and put on the massive headphones to see what the exhibit was about. 

What I heard was nothing like I’d heard before. 

It was Danny Elfman’s Christmas Eve Montage from The Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack, a five minute piece that I must have pressed repeat and listened to at least five times in a row. Up until that point I’d never seen Tim Burton’s stop-motion masterpiece so I had no idea what the track coincided with; what I experienced was a gush of emotion, a sweeping wave of sounds that took me to another dimension. It was playful, scary, odd, dissonant, strange, sad, and incredibly beautiful. 

My older brother eventually burned me a CD copy of the songs, and I listened to the album nonstop for at least a good semester of my freshmen year; I watched the film at some point, though it was a good time after I’d obsessively listened to Elfman’s compositions and formed images of different scenes and characters in my head. Even now my original idea of how the scene with the Town Meeting Song track goes still permeates my mind whenever I listen to the track. If anything, Elfman’s marvelous score for The Nightmare Before Christmas amplified my love for what sound and music can accomplish in conjunction with moving images. 

I’ve always been inclined to sound. It began with my first lessons in piano, which was ear training. My first piano teacher, Maki, always told me to listen, listen, listen: for a long time I couldn’t even properly read music, but I was able to ear-train the melody correctly. I knew where to place my hands, what note produced what sound, and so on. This ear-training has really carried on into my later life, where I still can’t sight-read or transcribe music worth a damn, but give me a tune and with a bit of time, I’ll be playing the melody and, with a bit more time, eventually the bass chords. I hated performing like a technical machine, and even though it got me in quite a bit of trouble with the last piano studio I studied at I always preferred to perform with the energy and vibrancy of emotion instead of performing in the pursuit of technical perfection; this led to less-than-perfect performances, but it was always a personal evocation of images created with the magic of sound. 

I suppose that it was only natural and inevitable that my inclination for sounds and their association with images would lead me to discover my love for film soundtracks. For a long time, I believed that a soundtrack was only noteworthy if it sounded beautiful by itself and in conjunction with film; now, years later and having collected three hundred and five soundtrack albums currently, I believe that foremost, a soundtrack helps create the illusion of what we’ve come to love in movies: how that illusion is created depends on the composer. Cinema is all about creating an illusion, a dictated narrative that does not allow for a great range of experiences (that task falls onto the medium of games, which I’ll discuss in the future). Sound and music help establish that illusion. 

Many moviegoers are under in the impression that a soundtrack must supply or indicate a mood at a given moment, signaling us to feel a particular emotion at a particular time; this is not inaccurate, but what this attitude has also resulted in is many Hollywood and television productions requiring music to be played at every nearly every single moment, and many soundtracks have resorted to what I consider musical cliches. For instance, french horns and strong strings often dominate a military march, counter attack or victory (watch/listen to Michael Bay films and you’ll be able to ID this cliche like no other); dissonant strings pervade nearly every horror film I’ve had the courage to sit through; and many indie films resort to compilations of different artists performing a known but not MTV-status song that screams of Bohemian counterculture. Whenever I hear ‘stock music’ in film, or what is a similar sound composed with the very sole purpose of creating the stock sound’s stereotypically associated emotion, I remember the scene from Forgetting Sarah Marshall where Jason Segel’s character, a TV composer, begrudgingly presses away at stock sounds when the music producer cues him in for a particular emotion the scene calls. 

Not the scene but I can only imagine how many frustrated composers are out there dealing with music producers who only want stock sound-emotions.

While many soundtracks do resort to this kind of 'stock sound-emotions,’ there are always those whose compositions go far and above that. The question is: how do we distinguish these kinds of soundtracks from the average 'stock sound-emotion’ construction? 

Whenever I can, I try to listen to an album before actually seeing the movie. Thankfully, American movies tend to release their albums before the release of the actual movie, so this has given me ample opportunity to listen to many albums without the context of the images they have been paired up with. My criteria for a pre-movie album listening are these: 

  • Is it an original score, a compilation, or a mixture of both? If it’s an original score, does the composer have similar or distinct composition styles compared to their previous work? 
  • Is there a distinctive theme? 
  • Are the tracks interesting? Or, why are certain songs chosen? 
  • How complex are the orchestrations/instrumentals/lyrics/vocals? 
  • Are the tracks able to convey a non-stock sound-emotion image on their own? i.e. does the track convey more than simple emotions like happy, sad, scary…?
  • Would I willingly listen to this album if it wasn’t created for a movie/TV show? 

You’d be surprise how many times I’ve found exceptional albums by listening to them before actually watching the film it was composed for. Some albums are constructed specifically with the intention of the characters singing on screen: those familiar with the Disney Renaissance of the '90s will easily remember Howard Ashman and Alan Menken on The Little Mermaid and Beauty & the Beast soundtracks, as well as the subsequent albums that followed similar musical suit. Some composers like Yoko Kanno (Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex), Michael Giacchino (The Incredibles, UP), and Joe Hisaishi (Spirited Away, Ponyo) compose wonderful soundtracks that, all in all, could essentially be listened to without the associated images. Some composers like John Williams (Star Wars, Schindler’s List), Howard Shore (Lord of the Rings), Phillip Glass (The Truman Show, The Hours) and James Horner (A Beautiful Mind, Avatar) do have distinct thematics, but most of the tracks are more impressive when the associated moving images are known. Sometimes soundtracks are created by commissioned musicians, such as Sondre Lerche for the Dan in Real Life album, Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs for the Where the Wild Things Are soundtrack, and Glen Hansard and Market Irglova for the Once soundtrack. Sometimes the soundtrack might be a re-working or rearrangement of classical music like Clint Mansell on Black Swan or Disney’s Sleeping Beauty album that was basically Peter Tchaikovsky’s ballet of the same name rearranged with different track names. 

I always have a difficult time with compilation albums since they are often constructed with a specific purpose in mind: Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation, Someday) compiles soundtracks based on the idea the characters in the film would actually listen to these same songs; Quentin Tarantino (Kill Bill volumes 1&2, Inglourious Basterds) often creates albums that, like his films, pay homages to his cinematic and pop-cultural influences; but more often than not, I suspect that many compilation albums tend to be more young-adult oriented, in which songs are compiled intended to evoke a pop-cultural mood or be intentionally ironic, such as films like (500) Days of Summer, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and Juno. And sometimes soundtracks are comprised of both original scores and compilations, such as Jon Brion’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Alexandre Desplat’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Rolfe Kent’s Up in the Air. 

After I’ve seen a movie and listen (or re-listen) to its soundtrack, I critique the album based on these criteria: 

  • Is it an original score, a compilation, or a mixture of both? If it’s an original score, does the composer have similar or distinct composition styles compared to their previous work? 
  • Have I listened to this album before the movie? If yes, does this change my idea of what image and emotion the tracks convey? If not, would I willingly listen to this album if it wasn’t created for a movie/TV show? 
  • Is there a distinctive theme? 
  • Are the tracks interesting? Or, why are certain songs chosen? 
  • How complex are the orchestrations/instrumentals/lyrics/vocals? 
  • Do the tracks overwhelm the scene they are paired up with? Or are the tracks themselves underwhelming? 
  • If I hadn’t listened to the album before seeing the movie, did watching the movie inspire me to listen to the album? 

“Enterprising Young Men” by Michael Giacchino from 2009’s “Star Trek,” which is a good example of how music can overwhelm the scene. Not the best video quality since you can’t hear the dialogue well/at all, but now imagine trying to listen to the dialogue with a track that’s already pretty overwhelming. 

The criteria is similar to my pre-screening album-listening criteria, but the emphasis is more on the pairing between music and image as opposed to what the track by itself accomplishes. Many of my favorite soundtracks, such as Thomas Newman’s Finding Nemo, Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howards’ The Dark Knight, and Yuji Nomi’s Whisper of the Heart, became much more impressive once I understood the context of scenes the tracks were paired with. Some albums, such as Dario Marianelli’s Pride and Prejudice and Daft Punk’s Tron: Legacy, already impressive on their own, were only reaffirmed to be masterfully composed once I’d seen their respective movies. Other albums, such as Michael Giacchino’s revamping of the classic Star Trek in J.J. Abram’s 2009 reboot, become even more overwhelming once you understand the scene with which the tracks are associated with (many will disagree with me here, but I felt that Giacchino’s score should have been toned down a bit; there was already so much happening visually on screen, and having my ears bombarded with the bombastic score became a bit much). 

For compilation albums, it becomes much easier to assess how effectively the selected tracks are in complimenting (or ironically contrasting) the scenes on screen; it also becomes blazingly obvious which compilation albums have been created with a specific intention, and which albums are just looking to create a pop-culture and/or Bohemian counterculture music reference (unfortunately, with most compilation albums I’ve found the latter to be the more common reason, though I’m open to the possibility of being proven wrong one day). 

According to Disney’s staff, foreigners (non-Japanese) feel uncomfortable if there is no music for more than 3 minutes (laughs). You see this in the Western movies, which have music throughout. Especially, it is the natural state for a (non-Japanese) animated film to have music all the time. However in the original Laputa, there is only one-hour worth of music in the 2 hour 4 minute movie. There are parts that do not have any music for 7 to 8 minutes. So, we decided to redo the music as (the existing soundtrack) will not be suitable for (the markets) outside of Japan… 

The American way of putting music in a movie is basically very simple. They just match the music with the characters. For example, when the army shows up on screen, you hear the army’s theme. The music explains the screen images–that is the point of Hollywood music. Until this time, I avoided such an approach, as I felt that it would make music dull, although I understand such an approach. But when I redid (the music of Laputa this way), I learned a lot.

– composer Joe Hisaishi on rearranging the “Castle in the Sky” soundtrack for the US theatrical release

Sound and music are quintessential to film, but what many cinephiles and audiophiles forget is that to create an effective illusion, silence is also a necessity. One of the reasons I was ironically underwhelmed by Giacchino’s overpowering Star Trek soundtrack was that for the most part, it rarely allowed any silence on screen; I can’t remember any point where there wasn’t some music blaring in the background. More often than night, silence is golden, and the lack of sound can create a more powerful emotion than any instrument could possibly achieve. Ironically, having sound and music blast on screen every single moment detracts from the illusion because it can be overwhelming and/or distracting. Comparatively, we could even argue that early silent films, which were often screened with live performances, have less of an illusionary effect because music was always playing in every scene. 

Here is a perfect example of how effective the minimalistic use of (or lack of) music can be is this marvelous scene in My Neighbor Totoro. Here, Satsuki and Mei have been waiting for their father, a professor, to come home. A lot of time passes, and eventually a giant Totoro comes into scene where it interacts with a astonished but fascinated Satsuki (her little sister Mei has fallen asleep on her back). After the exchange between the Totoro and Satsuki, the Totoro eventually boards a Catbus and disappears, leaving both sisters (Mei is awake at this point) bewildered by what they have just witnessed. 

No music plays throughout this entire scene up until the point where the Totoro arrives, and all the better. Music would detract away from the mystique that a giant Totoro presents, a mystique that is further emphasize by how minimalistic music plays once a supernatural creature makes its appearance. The magic is a result of us only being focused on this sudden mythical presence, and the lack of special music up until this oint makes it even more magical since the emphasis is on its very image in an otherwise normal forest. Music is present while the Totoro is in scene, but it is barely present and does not detract away from the Totoro’s mythical image 

My criteria for film soundtracks are far from perfect, but I think they are helpful for those wondering where to start when it comes to critiquing music (and the lack of) in film. Contrary to my more youthful notions, music is more than about sounding beautiful, though a nicely composed track is always nice to hear. 

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SOME SELECT TRACKS FROM SOME OF MY FAVORITE COMPOSERS

“Tank!” by Yoko Kanno, from “Cowboy Bebop” – this track sets the mood of this wonderfully stylish anime

“Jazzy Bach” by Ben Charest, from “The Triplets of Belleville – a jazzy revamp of a classic Bach piece (which I actually performed, I believe) that is rather appropriate given the oddball feel of "The Triplets of Belleville”

“Anyone Can Cook” by Michael Giacchino, from “Ratatouille” – the wonderful song that plays during Anton Ego’s famous critique on criticism. 

“Define Dancing” by Thomas Newman, from “Wall•E” – this plays during the scene where Wall-E and EVE engage in a beautiful dance in space

“Transformation” by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, from “Beauty & the Beast” – set at the very end, I’m fond of this track because its arrangement and emotional range not only make it a stand alone track, but also a track that fully support the climax of this animated classic. 

“Rickshaw Chase” by Hans Zimmer and John Powell, from “Kung Fu Panda 2” – incredibly energetic, this track sounds from the recent Kung Fu Panda installment makes a good case for why Hans Zimmers’ work deserves an Oscar nod this upcoming year

“Mr. Fox in the Fields” by Alexandre Desplat, from “Fantastic Mr. Fox” – playful and light, this track demonstrates Desplat’s incredible range when you contrast to his other work such as Harry Potter and The Ghost Writer

“Briony” by Dario Marianelli, from “Atonement” – if anything, the ingenius use of the sounds from a typewriter are what distinguish Marianelli’s “Atonement” composition from any other dramatic piece. I still gripe that the Academy chose this score of Giacchino’s “Ratatouille” at the 2008 Oscars, but this score does deserve its recognition. 

“The Girl who Fell from the Sky” by Joe Hisaishi, from the USA soundtrack version of “Castle in the Sky” – I learned recently that Hisaishi actually rearranged his pieces for the US release of “Castle in the Sky” in 2002 because Disney felt there was too much silence in between the films. You can read his interview here. 

“Sean’s Theme” by John Williams, from “Minority Report” – Williams’ minimalistic take on “Minority Report” was met by some criticism who felt that he’d fallen into the 21st minimalism trap. I feel that the track “Sean’s Theme” does demonstrate a central composition technique that Williams’ employs in most of the albums of his I’ve listened to: a central theme (or a distinct melody) that highlights the overall soundtrack, and the rest serves to support and help create the illusion of cinema. In all of his albums he uses a full symphony, and his main thematics are always especially sweeping. Try Across the Stars and Raider’s March if you’re still curious to see what I mean. 

“Bookstore” by Jon Brion, from “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” – the minimalistic, slightly electronic orchestration is rather appropriate to Charlie Kaufman’s film about relationships, given that the characters voluntarily opt for what is essentially brain damage because their hearts are broken.

“Vanessa and the Changelings” by Philip Glass, from “The Hours” – a true minimalist, Glass manages to evoke the sadness and melancholy of Virgina Woolf’s life in this just over two minute track. A wonderful score, to say the least. 

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RECOMMENDED READING

• Sofia Coppola on the Somewhere soundtrack - via Pitchfork

• Francis Coppola’s Twixt and Live Performance at Comic-Con 2011 – via Hollywood Reporter

• The Spheres of the Music – via Roger Ebert’s blog

• Full Joe Hisaishi interview on rearranging the “Castle in the Sky” soundtrack for the US theatrical release – via Nausicaa.net

*Note: Michael Phillips is one of the few film critics I know of who regularly comments about soundtracks while writing his film reviews. I highly recommend a read, like his comments on “Black Swan” and Tchaikovsky’s score

*Lastly: if you haven’t guessed it already, the first image is of John Williams scoring “Raiders of the Lost Ark” :)

Minority Report - Individual Autonomy vs Collective Good

Warning: this essay contains spoilers for the movie Minority Report. 

You can’t run, John!

One of the fundamental questions Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report poses is whether or not individual autonomy weighs more than the collective good. This question is particularly apparent in the finale, which, albeit conclusive, roots itself on a rather open-ended question: 

Why exactly was PreCrime disbanded? 

The most obvious answer assumes that once Lamar Burgess’s murderous past to establish PreCrime was uncovered, the public moral outrage was too much of a PR nightmare to deal with (presumably, PreCrime was funded on taxpayer’s money). However, such an assumption would be far too simplistic and naive, especially given America’s notorious history of violating human rights in the name of homeland security (think Guantanamo Bay, for starters). No, to assume that one woman’s death would sufficiently rouse public protest against a seemingly perfect system that creates a utopia of safety is, sadly, too naive of a notion to be sufficient a reason. Instead, let’s consider the alternative reason why PreCrime was disbanded – the possibility that innocent people may have been wrongly jailed. 

While this second reason may seem obvious to the viewer, consider that, like many things hidden away from the public, PreCrime’s internal function was unknown to many outside its precincts: in one scene, a man giving a tour to school children claims that the three precogs – Arthur, Dashiell, and Agatha – have their own rooms with toys, books, and exercise equipment, and that they must be kept in isolation because they are too sensitive to normal environmental stimuli; in reality, the precogs are kept in a narcotic state in an isolated, antiseptic room, never quite awake nor quite asleep, just so they can function 24/7 for PreCrime to predict any potential murder at any given time. So while the tour scene is a small one (and more of some background dialogue while we see John Anderton paralyze his own facial muscles to look twenty years older), we can assume that, like the naivety and outright ignorance of the touring school children and the tour guide, the general public in Minority Report really has no idea the intricate, internal workings of PreCrime beyond its ultimate result – that it stops murders from happening, and the numbers show. 

So now let’s assume that once Burgess committed suicide and (presumably) Anderton testified to everything that happened – how PreCrime works, who Ann Lively was, why and how she was murdered, why he was set up by Lamar – would the reasons for individual autonomy and innocent until proven guilty still hold? Somehow, I find myself doubting either reason: Anderton states that there has not been a single murder in D.C. ever since PreCrime was established; additionally, most crimes after the establishment of PreCrime are spontaneous crimes of passion, which means the PreCrime officers more or less caught the perpetrators in the act of murder, as can be seen in the opening sequence of the movie. This means PreCrime 100% is efficient on paper – something unheard of in the real world. So would anyone dare to suggest disbanding such a system if there was even the slightest, most minute chance someone may have been jailed unjustly? Somehow, I find that very doubtful. 

While the chances of a minority report (when one precog disagrees with the other two in a prediction) are never stated, we can assume that it happens infrequently enough that the original creators of PreCrime would design the system to erase said minority report (note: Wally, the caretaker of the precogs, only erases echoes, aka the instances when the precogs visualize past predictions. Presumably he does not manually erase minority reports because that could possibly lead to error, which PreCrime touts as non-existent, which means the erasure of minority reports is likely done by a computer). Even then, only a handful of people would know that such a mechanism existed – Anderton, himself the head police officer of PreCrime, did not know of this until consulting with the retired Dr. Iris Hineman, the other co-founder of PreCrime – so until the revelation about Burgess, it’s highly unlikely that anyone knew how to manipulate the PreCrime system to commit murder undetected. PreCrime, despite its intrinsic human error, is a perfect system. 

You could argue that PreCrime was disbanded on the basis of human error, given it was touted as an absolutely perfect system. However, if you put it in perspective, there really isn’t any system that’s truly perfect: random error is inevitable, and the goal of a system designer is to minimize (ideally eradicate) systematic errors as much as possible. In this case, PreCrime is possibly one of the best systems you could ever ask for: minority reports (analogously random errors) are known to exist to only a few people, and beyond that everything is controlled with perfect, surgical precision. 

The most feasible reason for PreCrime’s disbandment, then, must be because of the potential corruption of the upper echelons of PreCrime – the systematic error, per se. When Burgess’s motives and means of securing PreCrime became public, it became very clear that, with the right position, power and knowledge, anyone could manipulate the PreCrime system and commit murders any which way they want. Of course, such a manipulation takes quite the planning and proper time span – I could only imagine the intricate steps Burgess took to kill Ann Lively without being caught, or what sum of money he must have offered Leo Crow in order to imprison Anderton before the truth about Lively’s death and the inherent, systematic flaw of PreCrime became apparent – so presumably, Burgess wanted to silence Anderton and anyone who could potentially uncover the truth about PreCrime and minority reports before such knowledge became untraceable with subsequent generations (this assumes, of course, that the existence of minority reports was never documented and was known only by the co-founders of PreCrime). We could infer, thus, that Burgess effectively wanted to create the ultimate utopian country when PreCrime became a national establishment. 

However, once it became apparent that the systematic flaw of PreCrime was not the minority reports themselves but in the way it dealt with random flaws (by erasing minority reports instead of allowing the PreCrime officers to consider alternative futures of the supposed perpetrators and/or victims), the disbandment of PreCrime was inevitable because such a systematic flaw not only rendered PreCrime as an imperfect system, but that such imperfection meant that this system itself could not justify its lack of “innocent until proven guilty” judicial processing. Even if hundreds of potential perpetrators were caught in the act of committing murder, it also means that those who were convicted of pre-meditated murder (those not caught in the act), regardless of their murderous potential, were jailed without due processing, thus violating their own civil right to testify in court. PreCrime is nothing short of an autocracy – a utopic one, but autocratic nonetheless. 

Minority Report ends on a rather unique note. On the surface, it argues that individual autonomy and civil rights outweigh the needs of a collective – Arthur, Dashiell and Agatha are eventually released to live out the rest of their lives in peace in isolation – and that misdemeanor can only be rightly punished after the fact because the future, no matter how accurate a prediction may be, is never absolute. The more interesting implication stems from the fact that PreCrime, once its flaws become apparent, is no different than an autocracy, yet until its disbandment is fully supported by the American public. The remaining question lies once again in the question regarding the balance between individual autonomy and the collective good, and at what cost we are willing to sacrifice to fulfill the needs of one side of the scale; unsurprisingly, Minority Report argues for the former (it’s an American film after all) and ends on a rather hopeful, humane tone as well. 

Everybody runs.

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Old Writing on Minority Report and Recommended Reading: 

The Metaphysics and Paradoxes of Minority Report – originally posted on October 12th, 2010

Is there a Minority Report?, or: What is Subjectivity? – Matthew Sharpe, PhD

FLCL and Two Types of Suspense (alternative title: How to Build your Patience for Cinematic Storytelling)

It took me awhile to finally get into FLCL, and only recently have I finished the acclaimed six part anime OVA that inspired the creators of the series Avatar: The Last Airbender. The first few viewing tries were unsuccessful, mostly because I couldn’t get past the ten minute mark without growing impatient or irritated. For some reason, whatever made the series so appealing to so many people I know was making me feel like I was developing a hernia in my brain. 

Then one day, as if the hernia had decided to develop somewhere else besides my brain, I realized what made FLCL work: it’s a modern take on gnostic suspense, where narrative logic and consistency is suspended and imagery and aesthetics take a front row. This runs contrary to circumstantial suspense, where regardless of what is not happening at a given moment of time, you are confident something will happen soon after. 

Take Alfred Hitchcock, the master of classic circumstantial suspense. Known for his mastery of the genre film, Hitchcock knew exactly what and how to keep his audience in a continuum of suspense, where at any given moment sequences of silence, calm or non-violence would be interrupted with something jarring. A perfect example would be the shower stabbing scene from Psycho: 

For a quick scene dissection to further demonstrate how Hitchcock creates a (relatively short) circumstantial suspense in this scene, here are a few screenshots to tip us off: 

As Marion enjoys her shower, Hitchcock positions her on the (lower) left of the screen…

Then slowly zooms in as it becomes apparent that someone has entered the bathroom without her knowledge (we know she’s oblivious because she doesn’t turn around when Mr. Bates casually sashays in)

The camera has zoomed in even more, and now Mr. Bates shadow against the curtain is even more evident. For the virgin viewers, we’re not sure what exactly he’s going to do (Hitchcock has been mindful to highly eroticize Marion’s shower scene to perhaps suggest Mr. Bates is interested in her sexually…)

… and then we have the famous curtain-drawing plus dagger holding silhouette, thus dispelling the possibility of sexy time and letting us viewers watch a full on murder assault, with the famous music to accompany it as well!

Another masterful example would be the introduction to Fritz Lang’s M, where we are introduced to the murder of a young girl with Lang’s ingenious use of diegetic sound, light/shadow, and mis-en-scene/props: 

A classic monster example of circumstantial suspense is the all-knowing Jaws, where little miss skinny dipping gives us a preview of mister fishy-fish as she gets dragged to and fro: 

For a example involving prehistoric reptiles (?) with fangs and claws, we have the rather remarkable scene in Jurassic Park where Tim and Lex do their best to elude the velociraptors:

So basically, circumstantial suspense is a classic component of the traditional narrative, where the audience’s expectations are suspended just enough to keep us on edge, either in fear, anxiety, or excitement. 

On the other spectrum, gnostic suspense is a auteur’s and surrealist’s wet dream, and is a fantastic way to test your patience with cinema. A master of gnostic suspense is Jan Švankmajer, the Czech filmmaker who made the famous short film Jabberwocky in 1971 and (the insanely grating) Alice in 1988 (arguably, he’s influenced modern filmmakers like Tim Burton and Henry Selick, and maybe even Wes Anderson to an extent). For a taste of what I mean when I say “a fantastic way to test your patience with cinema,” try and get through these six minutes of Alice without wanting to shove a chair in your eye: 

A less testing but equally surreal clip comes from Jabberwocky down below: 

Here’s the experimental short film Photographs by the talented Krishna Shenoi, brought to my attention courtesy of Mr. Roger Ebert (and I dare to say we may be seeing more of him in the future of filmmaking) 

Now if you’ve been brave and watched the above clips, you’re probably asking yourself why anyone would sit through more than a minute of a film like Alice or Jabberwocky. That’s where the magic of gnostic suspense comes in: unlike circumstantial suspense where you know something must happen at a given point in time, with gnostic suspense you’re left hanging, and the only thing keeping your attention is that small, minute hope that after all of the inanity, all of the surrealism there will be something, anything to clear up what is otherwise a clusterf**k that’s messing with your sense of (and grasp on) reality. The deux ex machina-like hope is really what makes gnostic suspense appealing and infuriating at the same time.

So when it comes to FLCL, a anime that goes out of bounds in self-reflexivity, pop cultural reference and mishmashing animation styles into a greater hodgepodge, you might see why I consider it a more modern employment of gnostic suspense, though to some meager sense there is a logical (???) narrative connecting each episode into an overall story (whether you call it logical narrative really depends on if you’re familiar with how over the top some anime can go, which I won’t even divulge into here). FLCL is really an artist’s and musician’s anime, a series that throws reasoning to the wind and asks us to simply enjoy every anime cliche amplified and caricatured tenfold with non-diegetic rock music blasting in the background, reminding us that hey – it’s just a cartoon. I recommend this short series for any animator stuck in a rut, or really for anyone who likes driving vespas with a bass strapped to their back. It’ll take some patience, but if you could sit through six minutes of Alice I guarantee you can sit through this entire series – and enjoyably so (though I can’t guarantee the same for Transformers 2, Skyline, or Fantastic Four 2). 

Some clips from FLCL if you’re curious for a taste of what the mini-series has to offer: 

If you’re interested in watching FLCL for free, visit the Funimation youtube page here.