If we feel movies so much, how much of the film’s effect is due to music? That’s one question I want to explore in a new radio series produced live weekly.
Director Yorgos Lanthimos, known for the films The Favourite and The Lobster, was recently quoted in The Guardian talking about making the audience feel something. He says, “Being moved or laughing is something you can’t help but experience by feeling. I appreciate that much more than the intellectual part of it. You can think, ‘Oh, this is a great film because of this and this,’ but if you don’t experience it at the moment, if you don’t feel something, even if you don’t know what it is, then what’s the point?” [1]
How much of the film’s effect is due to the music?
Lanthimos heard celebrated British musician Jerskin Fendrix’s 2020 album Winterreise, and he “had a feeling that he had discovered a creative soulmate. Lanthimos says, “There are so many different sounds in his work, so many different feelings. There’s humour, there’s melodrama. It’s playful, it doesn’t take itself too seriously, but it can be heavy when it needs to be.”
- https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/dec/31/yorgos-lanthimos-poor-things-interview-director-favourite-lobster
Read more: https://laalfonso.substack.com
PLAYLIST
Jerskin Fendrix / Manhattan, (album: Winterreise)
Jerskin Fendrix / Bella (film: Poor Things by Yorgos Lanthimos)
Jerskin Fendrix / “Wee” (film: Poor Things by Yorgos Lanthimos)
Danny Elfman / Introduction (titles) (film: Edward Scissorhands by Tim Burton)
Danny Elfman / Storytime, (film: Edward Scissorhands by Tim Burton)
Beau Dixon and The Hiscox Bros. / [sound+vision], Sidewalk Movies, live performance recording, 2005 (film: The Empty Gallery by David LaRiviere)
DJ Z-Trip / Tribeca Film Festival, 2015 (film: Speedy by Harold Lloyd)
Jessica Moss / Entire Populations, Pt. II (album: Pools of Light)
Jessica Moss / Let Down (album: Phosphenes)