Film Score Analysis: The Shining

For Halloween I thought that I'd offer up this brief (and otherwise incomplete) film score analysis of a few scenes from Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror masterpiece, The Shining. I wrote a massive research paper on this in grad school, but lost it, so I'm starting from scratch here. The film itself is a 142 minute long exercise in the art of building tension. The music plays such a key role in the pacing of the film and in establishing the suspense that it almost becomes another character in of itself. There is actually very little in the way of original score in the film, Kubrick opting once again to use the music of past and present masters as opposed to typical Hollywood factory music.

What little original score there is, is provided by Wendy Carlos. In the opening scene, her arrangement of the Dies Irae accompanies the gorgeous second unit photography that follows Jack Torrance's car through the Rocky Mountains. The Dies Irae is a part of the Catholic Requiem Mass that deals with the Day of Judgement. The actual sequence of notes heard dates back to Gregorian chant and has been used by many composers over the years. Carlos' arrangement is especially reminiscent of Berlioz's setting in the Symphonie Fantastique. She chooses to add haunting effects throughout as well, using a combination of electronic sounds and and samples to give an eerie quality to the already ominous notes of the ancient melody. The effect of this scoring, combined with the cinematography, is to immediately draw us in to the vulnerability of Jack Torrance and clearly sets the tone for the events that will unfold over the course of the film.



One of my favorite appropriations of concert music in the film is the scene of Danny and Wendy in the hedge maze set to Bela Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta. What always amazes me about this scene, is that without the music, it is almost entirely innocuous. Go ahead and watch it without the music, you'll see what I mean. It is unclear to me whether or not Kubrick intended from the start to use this music over this scene, but it is clear that he cut the scene to fit directly to the music as opposed to the traditional method of writing music to film. The end result is to push the tension to a new level and to expose a possible predatory relationship between Jack and Danny and Wendy.



The scene begins with the sound of a tennis ball (ominous in of itself for some reason) hitting the wall as we see an unused typewriter, indicative of the fact that Jack is getting no work done. A dissolve from Jack throwing the ball to Danny and Wendy running towards the maze leads into the beginning of the cue. The music is from the third “Adagio” movement of the piece and was heard in part in a previous scene where Jack and Danny have a slightly unnerving conversation. The cue plays over Danny and Wendy walking through the maze and makes it clear to us that this is not just a walk in the park. A dissolve to Jack pacing the hallways of the hotel leads to a minor climax in the music that lines up exactly with Jack's tennis ball hitting the floor (sorry, for some reason this is missing in the only clip of this on YouTube). Jack approaches a model of the maze and as he gazes over it there is a cut to an overhead shot of the real maze making it feel as though Jack is looking down on them. The cut happens exactly in time to the point in the music that multiple overlayed glissandi in the harp and celeste begin, a beautiful orchestrational effect that works perfectly in conjunction with the effects shot (a flawless composite) that we see. As the music builds, Wendy and Danny continue their banal conversation until finally the tension is released with a loud cymbal crash and a title card that reads “Tuesday” (also missing from this clip. Seriously, go watch this tonight). The scene would have little impact without the music. Although it serves to establish a crucial location for the climax of the film, it would hardly ratchet up the suspense or move the plot forward without the Bartok.

The next scene to look at is the one where Wendy finds Jack's stack of papers and an ensuing confrontation takes the situation to a new level. The music here is from Polish composer Krzysztof Pendereki's Polymorphy. The piece was not written to be scary, rather it was another exercise in the sound mass music that was being explored at the time by Pendereki and others such as Gyorgy Ligeti, whose music is also featured earlier in the film. The extended string techniques and timbre organization of this piece have had an enormous effect on film scoring (specifically in horror-genre films). Once again Kubrick cuts the scene to the music. The audio and visual marry together so well that it is hard to imagine that Kubrick didn't envision this music for the scene from an early point.



When Wendy enters the lounge carrying the bat, we hear the low rumble of the basses. This idea builds as Wendy crosses the lounge hesitantly and ultimately ends up at the typewriter. Jack's true mental state begins to dawn on Wendy as she looks through the stack of papers that he has been typing. The music at this point changes. We still hear the basses but high piercing harmonics in the violins enter into the orchestration followed soon after by glissandi in the cellos and violas. The moment that Jack steps into frame behind Wendy, the timbre changes to the random pizzicati (plucked strings) and establishes a new dynamic for both the music and the scene. Watch as Jack drops his hand on the stack of papers. It is synced up with the larger more prominent pizzicato at that moment. The rest of the scene plays out with the music providing a subtle bed of uneasiness underneath. When Wendy finally hits Jack with the bat, the music is actually from another Pendereki piece, the “Kanon Pascy” from Utrenja, which is actually a sacred choral piece believe it or not.

Hope you enjoy these clips. I can't resist leaving you with this final little video that some genius asshole posted up. Brilliant.

This...

In the early morning

We smoke cigarettes on

The fire escape. I hide

Behind my glasses and

The stalling elephants

Produce silly sounds.

There is a light in my throat and

It blinds me.

Whenever things get

Big fast people begin

To stare at the

Wall. There are

Pictures behind my

Eyes that you

Will never see, I

Will never get the curves

Just right or the lines

Just straight and for

That I am sorry.

By Caitlin Rothrock

The Sinking Bed: Part 3

Just when you’re at your wits end old red calls and your nervous when she first steps into the restaurant because she’s been starving herself and she looks good. When she turns the waiter takes her jacket and you notice her ass. She talks about her ex-boyfriend from six weeks ago and your phone rings from a fb update. Your ex from the past year has yet another boyfriend. It’s not so much that you care, but more along the lines that it’s embarrassing. You’re the best-looking guy in the room except for the queer at the booth next to yours, but he didn’t matter as much probably. The waiter is being smug so you send the wine back in disgust when he offers you a taste. She likes it when you’re an asshole she always did. You walk around the town and you actually are having a good time just talking and it haunts you. She studied English like you, and is snob of local eateries, and is pretentious like you, and is damaged but seemingly balanced about it, and loves the strange art galleries like you, but something is off. She takes your arm as she walks and tells you how she helped a homeless man behind the speedway. Maggots between his toes she dressed his rotting foot and bought him some socks and your disgusted by her attempted at warmth. She tells the story like she must have so many times before. You wonder how many people were impressed by it and you wonder why she thinks you would be.

Back at your place she just wants to snuggle and you don’t even want to do that. But when she comes out of the bathroom in only her panties it’s hard to deny her figure. Her scares should turn you on, but they don’t. She lies next to you and within seconds starts to grind on your cock which is amazingly hard and before you know it your giving her the royal treatment. Her pussy is tighter than you remembered, but her clit is saggy like wet dough. She moans and says stupid shit like “that’s perfect” and even no joke “it feels like your hitting my kidney”. She is vial and she has to go. You spend the next two hours fucking her hard, trying to make her sore, biting her clit and making one of her nipples bleed, but she keeps up and your annoyed. You chock her and at first she looks worried and you start to enjoy this, but then she smiles and closes her eyes. Jesus she really likes you and it’s a problem. The next day you skip work and fuck her all day. On paper she is perfect for you, but inside your bones are crumbling, your organs are turning to mush, everything feels chilled and dead.

The next morning she wants to make breakfast and she wants all these ingredients that you don’t have and she wants to go to the store around the corner, but you can’t imagine being seen with her. Even though it wouldn’t hurt your image the idea is gross to you and convince her to eat a dry English muffin. And on the drive to her car she puts her head on your shoulder and it’s everything you can do not to grab that nasty red matted rats nest you made of her hair rubbing it against your contaminated sheets and bash her face into the windshield. She thanks you for a wonderful day and your still feel nervous until you drive away as she still looks through her purse for her keys.

Dick Laurent is Alive and Well

Crazy Like A Fox

This Von Trier business got me thinking about this. Enjoy.

Art or porn? Who cares.

Just finished watching Lars Von Trier's 2003 film Dogville. Not about to digress on this crown jewel of anti-Americanism, but while I was reading an analysis of the film by Carlos Cavagna, I found a very interesting little quote (by Cavagna). “Never trust anyone who tells you what art should be and what function it should serve.” This is great because it essentially states that art cannot (and should not) be defined. It's like pornography. You can't define it, you know it when you see it. Except with art we don't always know when we see it (or hear it, or even taste it for that matter). (This also puts an interesting spin on the age old question “Is it art or porn?” because both defy definition, although its pretty clear what function pornography serves.) But it is not Cavagna's intention to point out the futility of definition, rather to question the motives of those who find it necessary to define for their own purposes and justification. The Soviets forced (often upon penalty of death) their composers, writers, filmmakers, and painters into a concept of art that served only the state and its interests. Not cool U.S.S.R. The motive is usually a selfish one, and art should not be selfish. Should art be functional? I feel that the more functional something is, the less artistic it becomes (sorry pornography).  A film (or song, or novel) made for the purpose of generating large revenues is highly functional.
Is it disconcerting as an artist to commit your life to something that is ill defined and of dubious purpose? Go ask someone else, I have yet to create a true work of art. 

To become a muse...

So now you’re gone again and I have nothing to show for it. I search for one of your hairs in my sheets, but have no luck at it. No one even knows the fable of our summer in bed and therefore there is no shoulder to make wet. I search for a note or a piece of clothing. Maybe something fell behind the bed, but I still find nothing to properly torture myself with. I think of the days to come and the dying songbirds that will fall from my dark purple valve. It feels as if a large gold clock has been heaved onto my shoulders ticking loudly in my ear like a machine that’s gears are missing rusted metal rubbing against rusted metal mocking my impatience. I’ll play happy music and move my legs quickly for three miles to provoke whatever endorphins I can muster to force the puckered brow from my face, but behind my eyes there are only gray skies to fill my life as I trudge through this beige wallpapered existence. But then I start to feel it rising in the side of my neck. A slight soreness is developing as I remember your cough while fluid drains from my ear swelling the skin below my chin. Like a young boy’s love for the torn laces of his baseball, like the hallow shaft-like stomach of a starved model, like a torn petal of a peony or the finch’s wounded wing it stings to the touch as I press it again and again. The virus will grow and wrap around my throat and I will not nurture it like a drop of water on a dry and brown piece of grass. I will not tend to it with corn syrup soaked candies or warm spiced teas, but instead stand in the chilled wind without insulation, throw away my vitamins, and lay on the pillow you slept and breathed your beautiful little green and blue dancers of bacteria on. With my chipped teeth and crooked smile I greet all that is left of you here and help it weaken my cold shoulder and warm my organs.

The Sinking Bed: Part 2 (fiction)

She comes up and there is a past self still in your bones hiding in the marrow that wants to engage her the way she wants to be. She tells me my shirt is good, that she likes it. She wants me to look in her eyes and be masculine, but not too pretentious. She wants me to say something funny and then only half smile and look at her with slanted, but knowing eyes, but I can’t. I don’t have the energy. I want to tell her all the wrong things. I want to tell her I was molested at eight years old, that I’ve already been married and divorced, that I gain and loose 35 to 40 pounds regularly, that my last girlfriend slept with two of friends and the thought of a relationship makes me want to tuck my tail between and lay my head on a stick of dynamite. I want to tell her that I find her interesting, that she looks athletic, that I’d like to get to know her. I want to warn her that every relationship I’ve ever had ends poorly and if the two of us got involved that one day we would most certainly not be friends sometime in that future. I don’t want her to laugh when I say that I’m ok with this. I want her to believe that some people have a dark raincloud that follows them around like a cartoon, but that I accept the chaos and wrap it around me like hot wet towel around my head.

why is there blood on the doorstep?

Your Shoes (fiction)

Tony wanted to climb the hill and I just wasn’t feeling up to it. He looked down at my shoes, then at his sandals, and finally up to me. Without him even saying anything I took off my shoes and individually kicked them over to him. I didn’t act overly dramatic like maybe I would have a year ago. I just played it blank like the solid sea foam green walls of my mother’s living room staring at him without the inkling of any reaction. He put them on quickly and with the shame that made him look as if he was stealing them off of a dead man. I imagined him putting each one on as if his feet had fallen off and he was connecting them back to the bone. As he took off up the hill he looked younger and I thought of him now weaving the muscle back together from his foot to his leg like braiding a little girls hair.

Reaching the top he cried out, “You should really come up here the view is remarkable.”

Who said words like remarkable anyway?

“Well I would, but you have my shoes.”

“Oh yeah, Right!”

And with the word right acting as the gunshot to a race he bounced down the hill with all the gravity I could handle. Taking off my shoes and putting them in front of me he stood like a proud infant that had just shit his pants.

“Well are you going up?”

As I put on my shoes they felt heavy with mud and I tried to think of any legitimate reason why I shouldn’t, but nothing was catching.

“Of course I am,” I said reluctantly taking the first step into the thickened summer grass. Half way up I was already out of breath as I grabbed onto branches and roots pulling myself towards the top like a rusted link in a bicycle chain hooking into the next point of the gear. And at the top the view was at least notable. The town below seemed more planned out then it looked up close and I wiggled my toes inside my shoes with difficulty. They were different then they were before. The arch of his foot or maybe the way he placed his weight on his toes had slightly reshaped the shoe’s insides. I sincerely wondered how this could have happened so fast and then I…….just……..stopped……………. wondering……………………...

The Sinking Bed: Part 1 (fiction)

The tragic comedy of my life echoes like an insect trapped in my ear canal. Jesus how dramatic does that sound? Coming up for air I can tell she is faking. To get off I have to pleasure her, but this is going nowhere. Looking at her I feel nothing. I want to love her like I once loved Ali, but even the bourbon in my kidneys has gone cold. I suck on her clit hard and she squirms. I know she doesn’t like it. How the fuck did this happen? Why am I so bitter taking it out on this lost soul in this bed sinking all around us? Even the love I had for Ali seems like a distant memory from someone else’s stories. What was I to this one anyway, other than some novelty? He’s almost 30, but he is so hot. Where were the others this one has grown tiresome to me. At least Lacy enjoyed sex this one just let me do whatever I wanted. Lacy or Macy shit whatever her name was she was athletic in bed and aggressive.

Tiny Trumpets: A Fiction Breather

When I came home tonight I couldn’t understand the change in my attitude and how I felt. It wasn’t overwhelming, but I was ok and I wasn’t before. Then on the edge of my bed, I saw it, a thin strand of what must have been your hair. I realized the first night we breathed next to each other I leaned in to kiss you and the single brown strand must have fallen on my shoulder and stayed there until I came home. By sheer chance it must have floated off of my cute ironed shirt onto my bed.

It must have been that night I laid my head down so close to your lonely curl that unconsciously I must have thought I smelled you and your wonderfulness, but what was really happening was I was taking in your DNA: your soul. And that whole night I must have realized fully your mind and heart wrapping around my spin so tight and warm. the following morning I was different. My breakfast seemed to be confessing its opinions of me and I suddenly liked the Beatles.

The strangest thing of all was in the palm of my hand I felt something growing very slowly just under my skin like potting soul under my fingernails.

I tried to ignore, but then in a group of friends I accidentally opened my hand and there without warning a thousand tiny trumpets blared the most beautiful Morricone influenced melody I had ever heard.

Of course I claimed I was ill and quickly moved away in hopes of avoiding awkwardness among my sometimes closed minded colleagues. I scratched at the trumpets, dashed them with chemicals, and even tried to burn them, but this only seemed to fuel their tender tunes.

Then days went by and the trumpets became heavy pulling me towards the ground, but then when I saw you last night it was like a tulip shifting towards a lighted window. Suddenly the small golden pieces of metal felt light again and began to play an old Lebanese folk song.

This was a song that spoke of the impossible. It held stories of small hairy canines dancing in the streets with dogcatchers. It spoke of an English man with white and straight teeth. And it told of a man much older in mind then even in years, which did not help his plight. A silly man that knew the trumpets and the hair danced down his ribcage like a dizzy ballerina hiding her painful grace. He knew this, but he could not shake the fragrance of her DNA or the notes of those trumpets weaving through the tendons that held his muscle down to his bones.

Shaun Rhoad's Photo Shoot: Boy without a pail

Shaun Rhoad's Photo Shoot: Les filles et les légumes

The American Audience: Trust me you got a dog in this fight

We cannot be children anymore. Even though we may want to we now understand the signifiers far too well. We do not just identify we know the drama that comes along with the bullshit. Being nostalgic is no different than falsifying evidence. I spent my teenage years trying to fight the man and most of my twenties hating the media. Only now do I realize the truth. That you, he, and I are the man. And I don’t mean that we’ve become the man, but that we always have been. Especially when we were snot nosed kids crawling on all fours. That is when we were at our worst. We are the machine that pumps out shitty hit song after shitty popular movie. You are the man that controls the media. In youth we make whatever the future classics will be of music, we eat the fast food, we put the theatrical actors in office (the ones we want to have a beer with). We ask for the truth in the news, but you don’t watch that. Nobody does. Turn on CSPAN for five minutes and see if your finger doesn’t try to poke yourself in your soggy uninterested eye. We don’t want to see Detroit rise up we want to see the abandoned buildings and say that’s a shame. We drive the ratings. We want the Rush Limbaugh’s and the Bill Maher’s to love, hate, or at least shake our head in disdain or approval. Entertain us or watch the cameraman fall asleep at the wheel as he cuts off some local governor’s head. We can’t hate any audience without looking inward first.

Welcome... or whatever

So Hank and I (Brad) are starting this blog. What's it going to be about? Film, music, literature, generalities, specifics,  what have you. But mostly film. That's where we are at now. We're filmmakers (when we're not paying the bills). If you don't know, Hank is an accomplished writer, has an English degree and, as of Friday, the clap. I have a couple music degrees and am something of a composer as well. Hope we can post something of interest for someone out there. We'll be putting up essays, videos, links... you know, blog shit. So that's about it for intros. Read on, enjoy, tell your acquaintances and keep stopping by.