Escape Artist's Top 10 Movie Soundtracks: Part 2

Here are the final five entries of Escape Artist's favourite film soundtracks of all time. Find Part 1 here.

Marie Antoinette - Brian Reitzell (2006)



Sofia Coppola's third film was unfairly and condescendingly dismissed on its release, with critics and Cannes audiences accusing it of misrepresenting history and being little more than a lightweight music video that fetishised the opulence of France's Ancien Regime. The criticism was total bollocks, and a classic example of judging a film based on projected criteria. Marie Antoinette is an aesthetic confection, true, and it's intentionally anachronistic. But it reaches deeper by exploring the confusion and naive flutterings of a teenage girl plunged into a high-pressure royal marriage, destined to become France's eternal Queen Bitch figure. As such, Coppola plays it like a teen drama, mixing the aesthetics of late 18th century French aristocracy with the high-top sneakers and New Romanticism of John Hughes' Shermer high schoolers.

The film's soundtrack is an appropriately time-hopping affair, where the Baroque of Vivaldi, Scarlatti and Couperin meets the pop baroque of Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure and Bow Wow Wow. It's a heady cocktail that mixes cold and smooth, the period harpsichord pieces making an elegant bedfellow to the sheen of those 80s beats. The soundtrack even mixes the two on a single track with a special version of 'Hong Kong Garden' that begins with a lush arrangement of strings before kicking into Siouxsie Sioux's art-punk attack. Add in a sprinkling of lilting contemporary post-rock and you've got the recipe for a confusing but oddly perfect soundtrack to a much-misrepresented film.

A bizarrely abridged version of the Marie Antoinette OST on Spotify, here.

El Cid - Miklos Rozsa (1961)



Of all the great soundtracks on this list, Miklos Roszla's score for El Cid is the one that renders my critical faculties utterly obsolete. Within ten seconds of the score's gorgeous strings taking flight, I am at its mercy. El Cid might have been the most formative movie of my early childhood. For better or for worse, it taught me that doing the right thing always supersedes doing the sensible thing. It taught me that the baddies always win at the beginning, but the goodies always win in the end. It taught me that love can be both perfect and broken, and that good love should probably involve the girl fleeing in despair to a nunnery at some point. It taught me all these things in a language I could understand: knights in shining armour and fluttering pennants and Charlton Heston being awesome. For a young boy of a naturally nervous disposition living at boarding school, its uncompromising sense of old-fashioned honour was somehow a comfort and a manual. For me personally, Roszla's score condensed all of that into a few minutes of soaring orchestration. So a shamelessly personal choice. Check out the above video, which contains the film's opening credits and its most recurrent musical refrain. I hope you like it, but I don't really mind if you don't. It belongs to an anxious little boy who needed it once.

The full El Cid OST on Spotify, here.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - Nick Cave & Warren Ellis (2007)



Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds/Grinderman cohort Warren Ellis are busy men. When not working on their frontline musical projects, they've developed quite a healthy cottage industry composing soundtracks for a number of excellent recent films, not to mention a couple of stage plays and the audio version of Cave's second novel The Death of Bunny Munroe. Ellis and Cave's 2007 soundtrack for Andrew Dominik's stunning western The Assassination of Jesse James... could be their finest collaboration to date. While it feels like their previous work on The Proposition laid the groundwork for Assassination's keening interplay of strings and piano, Cave and Ellis here replace that score's warped brutality with an atmosphere that's altogether more existential. The duo's orchestration has a tentative quality that perfectly mirrors the bewitching, morally complex world that the movie creates.

The full Assassination of Jesse James... OST on Spotify, here.

Days of Heaven - Ennio Morricone (1978)



The full soundtracks for Terrence Malick's first two films, Badlands and Days of Heaven, are sadly pretty tricky to track down nowadays. It's a real shame because both are superb. While Carl Orff's short composition 'Gassenhauer' perfectly encapsulates the childish, deadly fairytale of the Malick's feature debut, Ennio Morricone's compositions for Days of Heaven might be the more substantial of the two.

Morricone brilliantly works around the central theme of Camille Saint-Saens' 'Aquarium' from his suite 'Carnival of the Animals', which plays over the film's enigmatic opening credits. His compositions take enough from Saint-Saens' suite to bring across its otherworldly mystery, while adding a little extra humanity to soundtrack the leisure and labours of the film's men and women working the fields of the Texas Panhandle. Little flashes of playfulness break up all the heavy themes, the zippy acoustic 12-string guitar piece that soundtracks Bill, Abby and Linda's train journey foremost among them. In a long career full of incredible film scores, Morricone's arrangements for Days of Heaven stand as some of his very best.

Shaft - Isaac Hayes (1971)



As an absolute novice when it comes to blaxploitation movies, the most immediate appeal of the genre for me has always been the music. Isaac Hayes' soundtrack to the big daddy of blaxploitation films might be the obvious touchstone, but it's pretty irresistible. For an instant hit of funk-inflected grandeur, the film's main theme is a stone-cold killer, slow-burning through hi-hat drum fills and wah-wah guitars before flowering into that vocal that we've all known, loved and done bad impressions of for years.

Beyond the hit single, the album is filled with instrumentals that show off Hayes' composition skills and the rock-solid musicianship of Stax house band The Bar-Kays, with whom Hayes recorded the rhythm tracks in a single day. The tempo shifts from brash, muscular numbers that hint at Hayes' pioneering early disco style ('Be Yourself') to caramel-smooth jazz-soul ('Early Sunday Morning'). While Curtis Mayfield's Super Fly soundtrack might well be superior when heard in isolation for its socially conscious lyricism and more traditional pop song structure, but as a pure soundtrack, Shaft wins every time. Shut yo' mouth!

The Shaft OST (minus 19-minute epic 'Do Your Thing') on Spotify, here.

Review: The Tree of Life

Trying to write something meaningful about a Terrence Malick film is getting into serious dancing-about-architecture territory. For a director who clearly puts so little stock in words, a written review seems like a woefully inadequate medium for commentary. But as I am unable and unwilling to start performing reviews through interpretive dance, plain old words will have to do.

Throughout his meandering 40-year career in film, during which time he has only directed five full-length films, Malick has been gradually stripping his work of narrative and character development. Although his films have always exhibited a dreamy quality that prioritises visual communication above all, debut Badlands and its follow-up Days of Heaven maintain strong elements of plot, the latter even coming off as positively Shakespearean, in a floaty sort of way. But his 1998 "war" movie The Thin Red Line and 2005's The New World saw Malick's more abstract themes - a vague but insistent yearning for the spirit of the natural world foremost among them - come to the fore.

The Tree of Life feels like the culmination of this steady drift away from storytelling and towards a sort of visual poetry. At once intensely personal and unabashedly grand, the film sets the day-to-day life of a small-town Texan family against the vast, unknowable scope of the universe, its creation, and the nature of everything that exists within it. Simple.

This split between intimate scenes of family life and portrayals of our planet's fiery birth might seem incongruous. Malick moves in mysterious ways, the twining limbs of his tree providing a link between the smallest events and the very largest. His widescreen vision of the universe is certainly arresting in a visual sense. Tectonic plates sizzle and grind against one another; oceans are born and in turn incubate the multicellular organisms that spiral along the sea bed. Stars burn, forests bloom and dinosaurs roam.

We're introduced to this eon-spanning maelstrom before we ever set eyes on a human character. Nevertheless, it's Mr and Mrs O'Brien of Waco, Texas and their three sons that put it all into perspective. Their life together in a quiet 1950s suburb (depicted so specifically that it is likely drawn from Malick's own memories) is at once idyllic and riven by conflict. The father (Brad Pitt) is the square-jawed embodiment of the do-it-for-yourself American ideal of Darwinian strength. A day's work for a day's pay; relying only on the sweat off your brow. He tries to pass his world view on to his sons, who he subjects to a strict regimen of traditional discipline, physical competition and rough affection.

The mother (Jessica Chastain) is the lamb to her husband's lion, a creature of seemingly unending compassion, childlike and empathetic. While Mr O'Brien mutters stern reprimands at the children across the dinner table, Mrs O'Brien is playing with them in the garden and waking them up with ice cubes down the backs of their pyjamas. If they seem symbolic rather than real, that's because they are - this 50s childhood is all channelled through the memory of their eldest son Jack in later life (Sean Penn), still torn by the incompatibility of his father's "way of nature" and his mother's "way of grace".

As such, Jack plays a major part in the film's family scenes, and Malick's direction beautifully fleshes out all those hazily remembered details of childhood through simple, striking moments, from gangs of children playing in the streets in the twilight just before dinner to Jack obsessing over every detail of his father's face and hands as he plays the local church organ. Jack's experience of growing up also provides a microscopic test bed for all the giant ideas floating around, as he flits to and fro between his parents, tries to reconcile the growing anger he's harbouring, and even deals with guilt and confusion after rifling through his neighbour's underwear drawer. These tiny domestic dramas mix Oedipal frustration with visions of unblemished love, with Jack and his brothers trying to find their way through the middle.

The film makes its own views clear through the judicious application of the Book of Job, the thrust of which rests on man challenging God on why the good suffer along with the wicked. The answer, the film seems to say, is to embrace a way of life that transcends the slings and arrows of fate; to see grief and joy as inseparably joined in the titanic, shared experience of life. While Mr O'Brien's vision of self-reliance gradually crumbles into a ruin of disappointment and failure, his wife's way of life proves resilient through surrender, culminating in the yielding of her most precious treasure to the Everything: the life of her own child.

The film's ending has proven its most divisive moment. The final scenes, which show characters walking down a celestial beachfront, have been criticised as an empty piece of aesthetic doodling, tantamount to the meaningless beauty of a perfume ad. While the comparison is understandable at the visual level, the scene really makes sense as a proper conclusion to the messages of a shared experience, of transcending the whims of grief and fear. These scenes are The Tree of Life's pearly gates, only instead of white marble they're made of all the versions of ourselves and all the things we've seen and done, together in one place.

It's a profoundly spiritual vision, but not in any sense that will pander to fundamentalists. Although many of the film's messages are conveyed through Christian allegory, they could resonate with any number of philosophical, religious or scientific viewpoints. In fact, Malick's larger depictions of the world's biological development seem rigorously scientific, at least to this layman.

The film's performances are roundly excellent; Pitt and Chastain are magnetic as the opposing forces at the centre of the universe, and the children are played with the naturalism that's so vital if the audience is to buy into their physical and emotional awakening. Even so, the performances are barely worth commenting on, so ingrained are they in the film's imagery and themes.

The Tree of Life resonated with me in a way that seems specific to Malick's films; there simply isn't space here to fully plumb its depths. But that doesn't mean I would recommend it to anyone. If you're looking for a great Sean Penn/Brad Pitt movie, don't bother. If you're looking for an immersive story, stay away. If you tend to think art films are pretentious and boring, you'd probably be better off loading into a giant slingshot and firing yourself into the heart of the sun. But if you're interested a beautifully conceived collage of life, one that shows but doesn't preach, that shares but doesn't explain, that mourns and celebrates all at once, The Tree of Life might make a lifelong fan out of you.

Interest Score: Butterflies/10

Satisfaction Score: A baby's toes/10

Escape Artist's Top 10 Movie Soundtracks: Part 1

Ever since the first Neanderthal cave-dweller was recorded whistling the tune to '(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay', it's been known that we humans use music to express those emotions for which words just can't cut it. Music is emotional shorthand, able to express in a few bars what many novels fail to capture in 300 pages. I'm not sure if this is true of anyone else, but songs give me a lump in my throat on a manhood-threateningly regular basis. And whenever I think about moments on film that have done the same, it's not the images flickering on-screen that I remember. It's the orchestral swells. The violin flourishes. That lonely piano line.

In that sense, it seems crazy that movie soundtracks are given so little attention. In an attempt to redress the balance that, in centuries to come, will surely come to be described as "arrogant and almost comedically presumptuous", here are ten of Escape Artist's very favourite movie soundtracks and scores, in no specific order.

Yojimbo - Masaru Sato (1961)



A brilliant score that brings out the mischief and menace pervading Kurosawa's wandering ronin classic. Masuro Sato's orchestral arrangements are surprisingly timeless too, mixing traditional Japanese instrumentation with some attention-grabbing atonal stabs here and there. With his samurai epics, Kurosawa was in a constant cinematic dialogue with the American western genre, and the dust-flecked soundtrack is as indicative of that as Toshiro Mifune's Kuwabatake Sanjuro, the man with no name who came before The Man With No Name. The film itself also shares a lot of DNA with Hollywood film noir, and Masuro's trilling woodwinds and heavy-handed drums help it walk that noir line between playfulness and brutality.

The full Yojimbo OST on Spotify: here.

Fantastic Mr. Fox - Alexandre Desplat (2009)



Wes Anderson's risky adaptation of Roald Dahl's much-loved children's novel is, like most of his films, a triumph of impeccable taste and judgement. This has always extended to Anderson's soundtracks, and Fantastic Mr. Fox might just be the best of them. The film is perpetually illuminated in an amber haze of autumnal sunlight, and Alexandre Desplat's score is pure, rose-tinted late summer nostalgia. From the gorgeous banjo/violin arrangement on 'Mr. Fox in the Fields' to 'Great Harrowsford Square''s kiddified Mexican stand-off, Desplat's score will bring flooding back the idyllic rural childhood you never had.

Added to the mix is an assortment of superbly pitched pop and folk, all sun-streaked guitar jangle and campfire-singalong fun. Along with a couple of familiar Beach Boys melodies (what kid wouldn't love those kazoo parts on 'Heroes and Villains?) and the Bobby Fuller Four's toe tapper 'Let Her Dance', this soundtrack introduced me to the simple beauty of folk singer Burl Ives with a brace of tracks from his 1959 children's album Burl Ives Sings Little White Duck and Other Children's Favourites. Incredible. Oh, and don't get me started on 'Canis Lupus'. Sets me to sniffling every time. Paws up, wolves. Paws up.

The full Fantastic Mr. Fox OST on Spotify: here.

Blade Runner - Vangelis (1982)

Possibly the most obvious choice on the list, but it's obvious for good reason. Out of context, Vangelis' smoky, synthesised sax might sound embarassingly 80s, like a robot version of the sad bits from Lethal Weapon. But as an accompaniment to Deckard's melancholy hunt for humanoid cyborgs in a future Los Angeles where darkness and rain is the default setting, it's beyond perfect. Vangelis stretches his synths into all sorts of shapes, from sinister arpeggios ('Blush Response') to sweeping Islamic chants (Damask Rose) to soft-focus romance in full bloom ('Love Theme'). Appropriately enough considering Blade Runner's subject matter, Vangelis achieves the rare feat of wiring humanity into his musical constructs.

Blade Runner's full and extended OST on Spotify, here.

There Will Be Blood - Jonny Greenwood (2007)

The musical equivalent of a knife attack and the bloody silence that follows, Jonny Greenwood's score to Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 tale of cruelty and capitalism during California's early 20th century oil rush is pure Hitchcock. It's deafening silences punctuated by shocking musical violence. It's small moments of humanity washed away by waves of unsettling strings. It's an entire orchestra used as a weaponised bowling pin, poised to bash your brains in. It's little spiders made of coal dust crawling down your throat and laying their sooty eggs in your soul. It's about as fun to listen to as the movie is to watch, and just as enthralling.

There Will Be Blood full OST on Spotify, here.

The Fountain - Clint Mansell (2006)

Much like the film, The Fountain's soundtrack is all about the set-up and the pay-off, years of denial and pent-up frustration culminating in a release that comes all in a rush. Darren Aronofsky's movie - broadly speaking - follows a man living his life to defy death, little realising that peace lies in embracing it. Clint Mansell, with help from the Kronos Quartet and Scottish post-rockers Mogwai, charts this narrative through expert pacing and arrangements with real emotional bite.

The majority of the tracks echo the main character's feeling of being hemmed in, frustrated strings rushing around with echoing drums hot on their heels. The final two pieces are where everything changes. Penultimate track 'Death is the Road to Awe' stacks the confusion and chaos to an almost unbearable degree, then gives us a single second of ecstatic silence before the explosive pay-off of electric guitar, pounding rhythm, howling violins and a choir so unhinged that it might well be possessed. Final track 'Together We Will Live Forever' is a sumptious piano piece, replacing the mad scrum of the rest of the score with a serenity that feels all the more blessed for what has come before. It's about as subtle as a rhinoceros, but Mansell's score is a towering piece of work, and The Fountain would only be half a movie without it.

The full Fountain OST on Spotify, here.

That's it for Part 1 of Escape Artist's best soundtracks. Stay tuned for another five scores that score, featuring cowboys, a guy who no one understands but his woman and Regency-period new wave. Also, please keep in mind that this list will likely be made completely redundant after the recent announcement that the Scissor Sisters will be providing the score for the new Fraggle Rock movie, which will probably be more amazing than this entire list combined. Seriously, I don't even know if I'm being sarcastic.

Videogames: how real is too real?

So E3, the world's biggest videogame conference, has come and gone. Although I've never been to the event, it seems that some perennial traditions never change. The "booth babes" will strut around in skimpy clothing, pretending to be charmed by the sweaty, tight-crotched advances of the gaming masses. Various games journalists, despite having some of the best jobs in the world, will whine about being exhausted as if they're sending grizzled dispatches from war-torn Libya. The three big console manufacturers will put on gigantic press conferences, during which hardcore gamers will attack anything shown that's not specifically made for them (Kinect, Move, Wii Fit etc) with the impotent ferocity of a thousand weaning infants.

One thing that particularly stood out at this year's E3 was the dominance of the big-budget first person shooter. Although differing in many ways, one thing that the likes of Modern Warfare 3, Rage, Far Cry 3 and Battlefield 3 all share is the quest for the holy grail of computer graphics: photorealism.

And for the most part, the quest seems to be going rather well. A glance at some of the footage from Battlefield 3 provides evidence enough that modern developers (and modern PCs most of all) are making serious strides towards creating truly believable environments and character models. It's certainly enough to make you believe that the next generation of consoles could get scarily close to cresting the far side of the uncanny valley.

So it's a baby Space Race to see who'll get there first. But like the Space Race, all the money and effort is being dedicated to getting there, with precious little thought as to what happens when we do. Don't get me wrong, I'm as excited as the next joystick warrior about the luscious visuals that await us in the next few years, but I remain curious about the unintended consequences.

I'm not about to start prattling on about murder simulators or emploring you to just think of the children; like most people, I believe that violent videogames can be enjoyed as part of a healthy media diet. But if games reach a level of visual fidelity that makes them hard to distinguish from reality, I do wonder if that's what we actually want.

I play violent FPS games because they often have compelling and well-developed gameplay, they can be stylish and immersive, and they give me the opportunity to measure my skills against screaming 14 year-olds from South Carolina or wherever. I don't play them because I want an unflinching representation of what it's actually like to kill a human being. I want cartoon violence, movie violence, comic book violence; I don't want something that feels like the real thing. Or do I? I don't know. Maybe videogame violence will never feel that shocking because no matter how real it looks, we know deep down it's just cleverly arranged pixels. But as computer graphics move us ever closer to scarily realistic recreations of some pretty current world conflicts, I expect we'll all be finding out where our limits lie.