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Scott Timberg on Creative Destruction

Contemporary Classical Music and "Shutter Island"

February 25, 2010 by Scott Timberg

Mostly, Martin Scorserse is associated with rock ‘n’ roll, especially the early Rolling Stones and Phil Spector. But he’s turned out one of the best contemporary-classical soundtracks in history with the music for Shutter Island.

A lot of people, some of them licensed film critics, really didn’t like Scorsese’s new film, which stars Leo Di Caprio investigating a home for the criminally insane swept by wind and rain in Boston Harbor. (Okay, okay, I’ve heard from all of you by this point.)

But the film, whatever else it does or doesn’t do, set longtime Scorsese friend Robbie Robertson free to round up a fairly grim and quite adventurous musical assortment that goes way beyond the usual atmospheric or Bernard Herrmann ripoffs that often accompany psychological thrillers or horror films. Because the film is set in the early ’50s, just before rock music’s emergence, and there is a wartime Europe backstory, a baffling John Cage tribute by Nam June Paik (pictured) makes a lot more sense than “Jumping Jack Flash.”

Here is Mark Swed’s excellent piece on Robertson and the film’s music in today’s LAT. (I like what he says about the movie’s marketing as well.)

I’m especially pleased to know the RR was behind the mix. Scorsese’s The Last Waltz, about the final concert by Robertson’s old group, The Band, was the first serious film about music I ever saw: My dad took me to see it at the Brattle when I was 10, I think. (I was not, coming in to this, happy to be led to a film about waltzing, but went because it was paired with “Singin in the Rain.”)

Also pleasing to see so many West Coast composers — John Adams, Lou Harrison, John Cage — and other favorites like Alfred Schnittke and Brian Eno (who really should have collaborated, by the way.)

One of only a few non-classical pieces is Lonnie Johnson’s rendition of “Tomorrow Night,” which some of you know from Elvis’s Sun Sessions. Again, a triumph of good taste… Who’s cooler than Lonnie Johnson?

Filed Under: classical music, film, john adams, john cage, lonnie johnson, nam june paik, robbie robertson, rolling stones, scorsese, west coast

Comments

  1. Milton says

    February 25, 2010 at 11:58 am

    Thanks for passing this on … I now am tempted to see this. The film has what may be least appealing trailer of any movie that doesn’t star Vin Deisel, but my old friend Comrade Schnittke was perhaps the most cinematic composer of my lifetime.

  2. Scott Timberg says

    February 25, 2010 at 12:00 pm

    the film is better than its trailer… i may weigh in on the sharply divided reviews at some pt soon…

  3. Jonathan says

    March 2, 2010 at 11:01 am

    Thanks for the update on what Robbie Robertson is up to these days. I’m a The Band fan from forever. Saw them live in Montreal.

    Re: Shutter Island, I thought Leonardo DiCaprio saved the movie. But he was so good that everyone else came across as anemic. Nice period sets. I’d give it a B-.

    Changing gears, the new Polanski movie The Ghost Writer is fantastic. I’d say equal to China Town. And all the actors played with equal weight.

    Cheers,

    Jonathan Woods
    http://www.southernnoir.com

Scott Timberg

I'm a longtime culture writer and editor based in Los Angeles; my book "CULTURE CRASH: The Killing of the Creative Class" came out in 2015. My stories have appeared in The New York Times, Salon and Los Angeles magazine, and I was an LA Times staff writer for six years. I'm also an enthusiastic if middling jazz and indie-rock guitarist. (Photo by Sara Scribner) Read More…

Culture Crash, the Book

My book came out in 2015, and won the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award. The New Yorker called it "a quietly radical rethinking of the very nature of art in modern life"

I urge you to buy it at your favorite independent bookstore or order it from Portland's Powell's.

Culture Crash

Here is some information on my book, which Yale University Press published in 2015. (Buy it from Powell's, here.) Some advance praise: With coolness and equanimity, Scott Timberg tells what in less-skilled hands could have been an overwrought horror story: the end of culture as we have known … [Read More...]

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