{"id":1136,"date":"2017-08-28T21:11:57","date_gmt":"2017-08-29T01:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/?p=1136"},"modified":"2017-08-28T21:11:57","modified_gmt":"2017-08-29T01:11:57","slug":"brahms-and-blood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/2017\/08\/brahms-and-blood.html","title":{"rendered":"Brahms and Blood"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A few months ago, I wrote about the music that concludes the film A Quiet Passion<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, and that brought to mind one of the most frustrating endings, musically speaking, that I\u2019ve experienced in a film score.<\/p>\n

It was ten years ago; the film was There Will Be Blood<\/em>.\u00a0 Justly celebrated as one of the most amazing films of the 21st<\/sup> century, it features an award-winning score by Jonny Greenwood.\u00a0 Much of the music was recycled, to positive effect, from his string composition Popcorn Superhet Receiver<\/em>.\u00a0 Music that was composed for the film featured string glissandos and clusters in a way that was at once incongruous and refreshing in a film set in the Old West.<\/p>\n

The conclusion features a horrifically brutal beating \u2013 just as the title promised \u2013 after which we are treated to the final movement of Brahms\u2019 Violin Concerto<\/em>, which is the part I found frustrating, and even a bit ridiculous. The cheery toe-tappiness of the music undermines what we\u2019ve just witnessed.\u00a0 Of course, that\u2019s ironic, and irony can be a very effective device, but this irony is terribly misplaced.\u00a0 Daniel Day-Lewis\u2019s performance is devoid of irony, his character is increasingly driven by impulsive rages and desires over the course of 2+ hours, and the camera dives right in with him, deeply involving the viewer, even making the viewer complicit.\u00a0 To step away from that involvement into a delightful little dance feels like a cheap trick, a joke with a long build-up and a weak punch line.<\/p>\n

The Brahms is used earlier in the film in a way that is also unearned, but it\u2019s the kind of misuse one gets used to in films: a moment of joy and vigor is captured through second-hand means, as opposed to finding a way to capture that joy through the means at hand.<\/p>\n

It would have been easy enough, I suppose, and probably effective, to connect directly from the cluster glisses to the Brahms, if the filmmakers had somehow felt the Brahms was necessary.\u00a0 But instead the Brahms slaps us out of nowhere, distancing us from what we\u2019ve witnessed.\u00a0 Definitely one of the great missed opportunities of recent film scoring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few months ago, I wrote about the music that concludes the film A Quiet Passion, and that brought to mind one of the most frustrating endings, musically speaking, that I\u2019ve experienced in a film score. It was ten years ago; the film was There Will Be Blood.\u00a0 Justly celebrated as one of the most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1137,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1136","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1136"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1138,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136\/revisions\/1138"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}