Music Movie Mix

Everybody can admit it’s weird when a movie doesn’t have a soundtrack to speak of. And of course people have songs that they associate extremely closely with particular periods in their lives. Because don’t we all think our lives would be much cooler with soundtracks? I’ll share this much: One summer, for example, I became quite depressed. I had trouble eating and getting out of bed and the only place that made me feel better was my mom’s bed after she went to work. (The doctor said I probably had hypoglycemia. Doctors are very helpful.) A cross-country road trip to Chicago just before school started snapped me out of it. But I can’t hear “Too Close” by Next without getting the sense of dread I associate with that period.

But how often does a movie become inextricably/inexplicably linked with a song that doesn’t appear on its soundtrack? For me, it’s happened at least twice. The first one I can say is a bizarre one: Titanic and Eddie Money’s “Take Me Home Tonight.” Yes, you read me right. “Take Me Home Tonight” was my current wake-up song on my CD alarm and I also listened to it on a loop before sleeping. While I was seeing Titanic five times in the theatre. So my dreams were filled with the song’s intro (it’s intense, you must admit) with Leo DiCaprio running down water-filling hallways.

So the new one is Coldplay’s “Violet Hill” and Blood Diamond. Okay, wait a tic, that’s two DiCaprio flicks; what gives? Anyway, I just discovered the Coldplay song Monday, the night I finally got around to watching Diamond. And so once again I was listening to it on a loop, because that’s what I do. And it’s become linked with the emotions evoked by the film. Fortunately I still like the song, even though a movie like Diamond only serves to upset the relative equilibrium of my existence. See, I said this when I discussed The Kingdom: I don’t understand people who just have rocket launchers handy in their homes. When I see a film that even remotely truthfully depicts a situation in a part of the world that is not my safe little United States pocket, my faith in my ability to understand the human creature and life at large feels as though it is enduring an 8.6 earthquake.

Regarding Diamond specifically, I will say that I liked the film, although when we first meet DiCaprio’s and Jennifer Connelly’s characters, it seems their line readings are a bit wooden, their chemistry not immediately established or apparent. I also wish Djimon Hounsou’s Solomon Vandy felt like a little bit less of a flat character, and there was a bit too much of the “noble savage” he so often winds up playing. But the three leads ultimately give touching portrayals, with DiCaprio playing well his signature tough vulnerable guy, Connelly serviceably translating the pathos of a woman who dares to tread where most don’t have the balls to go, and Hounsou fully engaging in his Oscar-nom-earning scene. But this is intense stuff, hard to watch and even harder to admit it actually happens. Kids being drugged and handed machine guns, truckloads of rebels driving into a village and cutting down anything that moves. It’s sickening.

~ by JT on May 7, 2008.