so i lost my keys yesterday. this wouldn't be such a big deal to me if all i cared about was the hollywood video card on my key ring, but without my keys i can't get into my building, let alone my apartment. faced with potential homelessness, i can't even tell you how far video rentals were from my mind.
anyway, i told you this story so i could raise a point about movie soundtracks. in movies, whenever something monumental happens, a really great soundtrack seems to multiply it into something epic. take '500 days of summer,' for example, in that sene where joseph gordon-levitt has just slept with zooey deschanel for the first time. we're all already happy for him, but when hall & oates' 'you make my dreams' starts playing, i'm willing to admit that i go from being happy for him to feeling downright exultant. why? because the song is an absolutely perfect way to amplify the situation.
another perfect example? in sergio leone's 'the good, the bad and the ugly,' ennio morricone transforms a film that would otherwise be mostly about the desert into one of the best films ever made. toward the end, clint eastwood, lee van cleef and eli wallach are standing in the middle of a cemetery in a mexican standoff. the camera starts on a wide shot of the three of them, then switches to close-ups of each man, going around in a circle, getting tighter and tighter until all you can see is their eyes. this scene might be just a time-filler in any other movie, but the score holds your attention and somehow guides your focus to every little eye twitch and finger movement. i'm sure real mexican standoffs are nowhere near this exhilarating.
moments like that in movies are totally great, but i'm here to assure you that it doesn't work like that in real life. i can say with 115% certainty that when i realized i didn't have my keys, the last thing i wanted was music playing in the background, amplifying the situation. maybe it would be a different story if it were something more exciting that had happened to me. i might even change my mind if ever there were an absolutely game-changing scene in a movie where the lead character lost his keys and through a rousing montage set to a stirring soundtrack, he was able to soldier bravely on to eventually... find them.
until a scene like that actually occurs, i will not expect music to in any way ameliorate the crappy situations in my own life, but i will continue to immensely enjoy all those extraordinarily scored scenes out there that can... scenes like that one in 'the sound of music' where julie andrews sings about having confidence in order to summon the courage to face her duties as a governess. by the time the song is over, she has boosted my own confidence level to the point where i feel like i could conquer any challenge, like getting into my apartment.
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