I sometimes find the diversity of rock music quite surprising, especially considering its pretty much homogeneous initial years and the (relative) musical unsophistication of most of its practitioners. Rock originated as a sort of dance music, developing from blues and country music, and so it is interesting to observe some of its practitioners turn towards an abstract, "pure" music more characteristic of the classical and avant-garde traditions. It is of course true that jazz has tended in this direction since the Second World War, but jazz was always, even from its beginnings, more concerned with individual creative expression over, say, youthful rebellion, which has always been at least one subtext of rock.
Recently, however, I started listening to some music from the so-called Math Rock genre. While I had been aware of it previously, it was only upon reading an interview with second-generation Math Rock band Battles that I was really intrigued; specifically, I was intrigued by the fact that one of their members, Tyondai Braxton, is in fact the son of famed avant-garde saxophonist and composer Anthony Braxton. I've never been a huge fan of most of the elder Braxton's work - I saw him with his band last spring at the Iridium and the music was for the most part mundane, unsurprising, and undifferentiated, which is saying a lot for a composer of some of the world's most cryptically notated pieces - but I do, at the very least, appreciate his artistry, especially on 1968's For Alto. Anyway, I proceeded to download Battle's first LP, Mirrored, and while I was initially unimpressed with the music as a whole (the musicianship and production, needless to say, were first-rate), I have come to enjoy several tracks.
But I'm not entirely sure that the music is interesting in the same way as the band (or at least Pitchfork) would have it. In Jess Harvell's review of the album, the name dropping is furious, but this is to be expected. Here, however, there are references to two of minimalism's founders, Steve Reich and Terry Riley. The Reich reference (to Music for 18 Musicians) is not out of the ordinary, being probably the easiest minimalism reference for someone with a hipster's knowledge of music history, but taken in tandem with the Riley, we are clearly being pointed in a specific direction. And despite the later paragraphs of the review, which attribute the charm of the record to "the frenzied gibberish of Braxton's pitch-shifted and electronically processed vocals," I couldn't help but come away with the impression that we were dealing with some genuinely sophisticated music here. I don't mean to say that this music isn't sophisticated in a certain way: its use of contemporary audio technology is impressive, and all four of the core band members are certainly talented players. But ultimately mostly it all comes down to the same sort of thing done so well by prog rockers in the late 70s: compare Rush's "YYZ" with Battle's "Rainbows." You get the same sort of repetition of complicated riffs, followed by a transition to another, equally complicated riff, and perhaps a return to the original riff to close the tune. Formally, the whole thing plays out as a sequence of non sequiturs, and the music, which would be of the same formal density and coherence of the best minimalism (like Reich's aforementioned piece), is nothing more than a riff-driven quodlibet of sorts.
The problem lies more with the way rock has traditionally worked than with particular bands, which is why it's hard to find much fault with Battles for continuing in a way similar to that of their predecessors. Rock's basic structure is between alternating verses and choruses, with the occasional bridge or alternate chorus thrown in for variety's sake. There is very little space for the development of melodies within this rigid structure, much less for that of riffs or the form itself. So when rock complicates or mathematizes itself it mostly just expands on the bifurcations it already does so well. In fact, it's very difficult to imagine a system of rock motive development, or even rock musicians patient enough to develop motives rather than switch between them when it felt right. This sort of logic is pushed to its extreme in the work of bands like The Fiery Furnaces, whose most famous album, 2004's Blueberry Boat, is most famous for its inaccessibility. In their case, motives are taken almost a priori as throwaway, not because of any sort of intrinsic blandness, but rather, seemingly, because they seem to consider every idea as valuable only for a few seconds at most. What results, as attested to in the glowingly snobbish tone of Pitchfork's canonization of the album, is a sort of intellectually hollow obscurantism. Again, this isn't to say that I fail to appreciate the band's concept completely; indeed, there are many inspired moments on both this album and others. The first such moments that comes to mind are scattered throughout "Black-Hearted Boy" from the Furnaces' 2006 album Bitter Tea.
The strength of individual moments in structurally complex rock pieces, and especially their greater strength relative to that of the structures themselves, points in the direction of a barrier all formally dense rock music will sooner or later have to face; namely, the difficulty rock has in maintaining an original affect across changes in motive and formal development. Thus, the most successful pieces on Mirrored are those that proceed in a minimalistic fashion, like the lead single "Atlas." Rock has certainly produced a great number of musicians able to capture a specific affective state, and what is great about Battles is their ability to do the same with a high caliber of musicianship and a discerning understanding of timbre.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Marie Antoinette
Okay, so the Aldrich didn't pan out, but here's something else instead. Some family friends are visiting us this week, and as they were planning on heading out to Versailles tomorrow morning, I brought up Marie Antoinette (2006), which we ended up renting. I'd seen the film once previously, but it was a year ago and my memories of it were limited to a few moments (notably the spectactular wide shot of Marie (Kirsten Dunst) and her closest friends the Duchesse de Polignac (Rose Byrne) and Princess Lamballe (Mary Nighy) climbing the Chateau's main staircase the morning after a night of birthday revelries, accompanied by Aphex Twin's sublime "Avril 14th," one of a few surprisingly restrained tracks from the 2001 Drukqs album) and the aggressive use of contemporary rock music, mostly from '80s post-punk and new-wave bands. It is of course easy to see why this film got such a mixed reception when it was released.
Although this time around I did feel the rock music was overstated a little bit, as if Sofia Coppola had to find place for every single one of her favorite post-punk anthems, I was overall very receptive to what she was trying to do. And this is the obvious interpretation of the movie: it's about Marie as a girl, growing up without any economic limits and without any real parental guidance, instead of Marie the historical figure and Queen of France. Which is right and everything, but somewhat trivial - I doubt that any movie focusing on this particular queen could avoid looking at her in this way.
Instead, the music seems to be functioning as a tool of empathy, and this on two levels. First, for the audience: period music has a tendency to center films as historical and, perhaps, literary, robbing the characters of any sort of lived subjectivity and instead framing them as fugal subjects (musically, not psychoanalytically). Each character performs his specific function, furthering the Idea of the historicized story, established in its totality and unrelenting in its objectivity. A film of this sort is also the kind that would find the transposition of 18th-century Versailles into contemporary English. But in the sphere of Sophia Coppola's Versailles, the music forces us to feel with Marie - she is the classical Hollywood protagonist par excellence, apart from whom their can be no experience of this world. So when Marie and clique secretly attend the masked ball in Paris to dance savagely to electric guitars, or when they regale themselves with champagne to New Order's "Ceremony," it's for our benefit. And rest assured that Coppola knows who her audience is.
The second address of the music as empathetic tool is on another ontological level: to the actors of the film. The essential point of the casting of the central roles (Marie and her friends) is their demographic identity with the director herself: these are people she can live through unabashedly, unlike, say, an actual French fourteen year old. So, assuming the auterist cloak for a moment, if we read Coppola as determining this story as the story of every girl of privilege, for whom "the problem of leisure" is "what to do for pleasure," we must read Ms. Coppola as deploying Ms. Dunst as her counterpart in the story. For this to work, Kirsten Dunst must actually enter the story, not merely observe it, however acute this observation might be. What is called for, then, is an actual repetition of the pleasure of a young girl of privilege, not that of Marie Antoinette herself, which would of course be impossible, strictly speaking. So Kirsten Dunst is allowed to dance to music she would dance to, and is placed in the jump-cut world of her actual reality. This is a film of actors playing 18th-century royalty by being themselves in costume in Versaille's courts and gardens.
The intrusion of linguistic reality into the film is also quite remarkable. There were two instances of this, and it's interesting that they are positioned at opposite ends of the spectrum of royal: one at the most personal and private of moments, the other in the most formal context. The first was one of the other scenes that got stuck in my head from my first viewing. Marie and her daughter are playing with a lamb in the garden of Marie's retreat at St. Cloud. Marie urges her child to feed the lamb, and the little girl playing Marie's daughter responds in childish French. The total innocence of this spontaneous response, the unforced reaction of pleasure by a child in both the film and the filming - like the unflagging grip of the prematurely born baby in Stroszek - gives the moment an authentic moment of childlike experience its ground level shooting angle and handheld camerawork could never have provided by themselves.
The other time Sophia Coppola insists on French provides the film sees the intrusion of the other extreme of Reality. Marie's first morning meal with her husband, Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzmann), as well as every subsequent one in the film up to the final dinner as Versailles is surrounded by an anonymous mob, is presided over by a cadre of court officials. One of these is responsible for the play-by-play of the ongoing meal: "premier service," "Le roi veut a boire." This is the voice of authority, always foreign and imposed upon us; indeed, it it is almost worth remarking that Kirsten Dunst and Jason Schwartzmann don't ask for a translation of the procedure - this is their court after all, and all discourse must be in the language of the court. Aside from one or two other formal functions shown, like the dressing-of-the-Dauphine sequence, which is played more for laughs than for insight into the life of a court, this recurring motive stands alone as an intrusion of the rigidity of court life. Marie's court is one of frivolity and teenage delights - this is also why the newspapers' libel ("Let them eat cake!") and the accompanying tableau of a Marie naked in a bathtub, wearing a hideously crimson shade of lipstick, is just as ridiculous as their depiction of her in an orgy. The life and love of Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette is innocent in its extravagance, and the true rigors of monarchy are essentially alien to her life.
Maybe this is the reason the film doesn't show us her beheading. A beheading, the fetishist's opposite of the coronation, the only way to remove a crown from one born wearing it, is a fate fitting only the truly royal. And while Marie certainly belonged to her milieu, she was also always never a natural fit - the eternally besieged Austrian in the French court, always slightly out of joint. Instead, her fate is the fate of Versailles, and her true destruction the shattering of a chandelier.
Although this time around I did feel the rock music was overstated a little bit, as if Sofia Coppola had to find place for every single one of her favorite post-punk anthems, I was overall very receptive to what she was trying to do. And this is the obvious interpretation of the movie: it's about Marie as a girl, growing up without any economic limits and without any real parental guidance, instead of Marie the historical figure and Queen of France. Which is right and everything, but somewhat trivial - I doubt that any movie focusing on this particular queen could avoid looking at her in this way.
Instead, the music seems to be functioning as a tool of empathy, and this on two levels. First, for the audience: period music has a tendency to center films as historical and, perhaps, literary, robbing the characters of any sort of lived subjectivity and instead framing them as fugal subjects (musically, not psychoanalytically). Each character performs his specific function, furthering the Idea of the historicized story, established in its totality and unrelenting in its objectivity. A film of this sort is also the kind that would find the transposition of 18th-century Versailles into contemporary English. But in the sphere of Sophia Coppola's Versailles, the music forces us to feel with Marie - she is the classical Hollywood protagonist par excellence, apart from whom their can be no experience of this world. So when Marie and clique secretly attend the masked ball in Paris to dance savagely to electric guitars, or when they regale themselves with champagne to New Order's "Ceremony," it's for our benefit. And rest assured that Coppola knows who her audience is.
The second address of the music as empathetic tool is on another ontological level: to the actors of the film. The essential point of the casting of the central roles (Marie and her friends) is their demographic identity with the director herself: these are people she can live through unabashedly, unlike, say, an actual French fourteen year old. So, assuming the auterist cloak for a moment, if we read Coppola as determining this story as the story of every girl of privilege, for whom "the problem of leisure" is "what to do for pleasure," we must read Ms. Coppola as deploying Ms. Dunst as her counterpart in the story. For this to work, Kirsten Dunst must actually enter the story, not merely observe it, however acute this observation might be. What is called for, then, is an actual repetition of the pleasure of a young girl of privilege, not that of Marie Antoinette herself, which would of course be impossible, strictly speaking. So Kirsten Dunst is allowed to dance to music she would dance to, and is placed in the jump-cut world of her actual reality. This is a film of actors playing 18th-century royalty by being themselves in costume in Versaille's courts and gardens.
The intrusion of linguistic reality into the film is also quite remarkable. There were two instances of this, and it's interesting that they are positioned at opposite ends of the spectrum of royal: one at the most personal and private of moments, the other in the most formal context. The first was one of the other scenes that got stuck in my head from my first viewing. Marie and her daughter are playing with a lamb in the garden of Marie's retreat at St. Cloud. Marie urges her child to feed the lamb, and the little girl playing Marie's daughter responds in childish French. The total innocence of this spontaneous response, the unforced reaction of pleasure by a child in both the film and the filming - like the unflagging grip of the prematurely born baby in Stroszek - gives the moment an authentic moment of childlike experience its ground level shooting angle and handheld camerawork could never have provided by themselves.
The other time Sophia Coppola insists on French provides the film sees the intrusion of the other extreme of Reality. Marie's first morning meal with her husband, Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzmann), as well as every subsequent one in the film up to the final dinner as Versailles is surrounded by an anonymous mob, is presided over by a cadre of court officials. One of these is responsible for the play-by-play of the ongoing meal: "premier service," "Le roi veut a boire." This is the voice of authority, always foreign and imposed upon us; indeed, it it is almost worth remarking that Kirsten Dunst and Jason Schwartzmann don't ask for a translation of the procedure - this is their court after all, and all discourse must be in the language of the court. Aside from one or two other formal functions shown, like the dressing-of-the-Dauphine sequence, which is played more for laughs than for insight into the life of a court, this recurring motive stands alone as an intrusion of the rigidity of court life. Marie's court is one of frivolity and teenage delights - this is also why the newspapers' libel ("Let them eat cake!") and the accompanying tableau of a Marie naked in a bathtub, wearing a hideously crimson shade of lipstick, is just as ridiculous as their depiction of her in an orgy. The life and love of Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette is innocent in its extravagance, and the true rigors of monarchy are essentially alien to her life.
Maybe this is the reason the film doesn't show us her beheading. A beheading, the fetishist's opposite of the coronation, the only way to remove a crown from one born wearing it, is a fate fitting only the truly royal. And while Marie certainly belonged to her milieu, she was also always never a natural fit - the eternally besieged Austrian in the French court, always slightly out of joint. Instead, her fate is the fate of Versailles, and her true destruction the shattering of a chandelier.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Starting Again
Okay, so I've obviously been horrible about keeping this blog up, but I figure that's excusable because of the pressure of my last semester of college. From this point on, however, I plan on exerting some effort to keep it going on a regular basis.
Besides having a few halfway completed posts from last year that I'd like to finish (one on the problems of artsongs, for example), I plan on keeping a Paris Cinema blog - pairing my thoughts on films I've viewed with images of the cinemas the films are shown in. This city is home to a remarkable number of cinemas, and I would love to explore them more comprehensively than I have. Perhaps the best thing about them is the range of what plays here: aside from new releases (of which Paris has one of the best selections in the world), there are always several retrospectives going on and always at least a few restored prints circling around. This blog will at the very least give me the excuse to keep track of all that.
And there's plenty to be frustrated with missing. Already I missed the tail end of the Atom Egoyan retrospective at the Pompidou - just for not paying enough attention. And the Cinematheque Francaise is running a Preston Sturges retrospective in July, so I don't want to miss that.
Well, that's the plan. I'm going to try to go see Robert Aldrich's "The Choirboys" (1977) (know to the French as "Bande de flics") at the Cinematheque tomorrow, so we'll see from there.
Besides having a few halfway completed posts from last year that I'd like to finish (one on the problems of artsongs, for example), I plan on keeping a Paris Cinema blog - pairing my thoughts on films I've viewed with images of the cinemas the films are shown in. This city is home to a remarkable number of cinemas, and I would love to explore them more comprehensively than I have. Perhaps the best thing about them is the range of what plays here: aside from new releases (of which Paris has one of the best selections in the world), there are always several retrospectives going on and always at least a few restored prints circling around. This blog will at the very least give me the excuse to keep track of all that.
And there's plenty to be frustrated with missing. Already I missed the tail end of the Atom Egoyan retrospective at the Pompidou - just for not paying enough attention. And the Cinematheque Francaise is running a Preston Sturges retrospective in July, so I don't want to miss that.
Well, that's the plan. I'm going to try to go see Robert Aldrich's "The Choirboys" (1977) (know to the French as "Bande de flics") at the Cinematheque tomorrow, so we'll see from there.
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