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Mansell |
Requiem for a Dream: (Clint Mansell) Does anybody
wonder why the suicide rate in America is so high these days? Is it
because of the population's collective struggles with addiction? Or is
it, perhaps, in part due to extraordinarily depressing depictions of
addiction and personal collapse like Darren Aronofsky's 2000 film
Requiem for a Dream? If you're a hopeless optimist, then films
like this exist only as a result of the alternatively sick-minded
segment of society, one willing to visualize the destruction of people
in order to make statements about the nature of addiction and other
unsavory topics. Indeed,
Requiem for a Dream is as depressing a
film as any you could imagine, telling of four lives ruined by
everything from heroin to weight-loss pills and delusion. Aronofsky's
unconventional methods of shooting and cutting the film, using extreme
close-ups and rapid cuts to convey the haphazard consciousness of each
character, is almost as disturbing as the content itself, which was
based on a 1978 novel of the same name. As a piece of art,
Requiem
for a Dream excels, but it does so by exploiting a subject matter
that is more likely to repulse the mainstream public than induce the
desired provocation of thought. Because of graphic sex incorporated into
the film, Aronofsky had to fight the dreaded NC-17 rating handed down by
the MPAA, eventually choosing to release it without a rating rather than
sacrifice the integrity of the work. Not unexpectedly,
Requiem for a
Dream was destined to be embraced by only a cult following, and its
$4 million budget led to $7 million in grosses despite some attention
from various awarding bodies for its acting performances. Met with an
equally cult-like reception was Clint Mansell's music for the film.
While much praise has been showered upon the composer for the sparse,
but effective approach he took toward addressing the incredibly somber
tone of
Requiem for a Dream, the limiting of the performing group
to the string group Kronos Quartet and the composer himself on
electronics was as much a financial decision as it was an artistic one.
Mansell, once a vocalist for the British group Pop Will Eat Itself, and
Aronofsky had collaborated previously on
Pi (resulting in a
meandering electronica score) and the composer's score for the
director's forthcoming
The Fountain would yield a fan response
similar to that of
Requiem for a Dream (but exceeding it in terms
of volume).
The music for these films features such a distinct,
neo-classical blend of electronics and chamber music that it gains
attention simply for being different, not to mention that this style
compliments the dream-like environment that Aronofsky so often exploits.
Mansell has a knack for assigning an appropriate "stream of
consciousness" sound to the director's sometimes ambiguous narrative
flow. If the film oppressively strikes you over the head like a blunt
instrument, Mansell's music does precisely the same in a more confined
period of time on album. You have to laugh at all of the rabid fans of
this score who claim that it is a "complex" or "complicated" piece of
work. Such descriptions come from those for whom this kind of music is
mesmerizing but difficult to actually quantify. In fact, the reason it
works for these people is because of exactly the opposite of their
claims. Being different in tone doesn't necessarily mean there was any
complex thought process behind a musical creation. Not only is the depth
of this composition hindered by the five performers, but the constructs
are repetitive and simplistic and the mix is extremely intimate. For the
handling of a topic like addiction, which requires a single-minded focus
on only one thing at a time, this simplicity is vitally important. The
same music phrases are pounded into you by the composer because the film
entails a hopeless spiral of personal defeat that is tethered by a
similar lack of freedom. Mansell applies the quartet as he would basic
loops from his synthesizers, never allowing them any significant
exploration outside of harsh, staccato strikes in patterns that usually
restrain themselves to basic minor third progressions that are
boneheaded in terms of intelligence. His motifs in
Requiem for a
Dream include a rising three-note phrase in "Summer Overture" and
thereafter, a longer, more nebulous ghost phrase heard in cues of that
title (and this is where the only sense of fluid movement almost
exists), and a barely keyboarded, airy dream motif existing in cues
likewise of that title. The primary, three-note motif is overlayed by
the minor-third alternating motif in "Lux Aeterna" to produce the
score's highlight, a piece that, despite its morbidly desolate nature,
has worked its way into several high profile movie trailers since. These
motifs, while usually present in some form or another, are generally
overshadowed by the heavy ambient tone of the string performances and
Mansell's electronics. Some cues dissolve into very basic synthetic
droning with random plucks and strikes at low volumes.
To say that
Requiem for a Dream has anything
more than a "mood-setting score" is giving it too much credit, for it
structurally doesn't strive for much development. There is a rolling
sense of the inevitable that Mansell does manage to incorporate into the
work, however, with the desperation on screen leading to portions of
"The Beginning of the End" and "Meltdown" that are so horrific in their
synthetic manipulation of the quartet that they are completely
unlistenable. The two "Conga" cues are equally obnoxious to a purposeful
end. Ultimately, too much of the score for
Requiem for a Dream is
unanchored by anything other than its depressing tone to be appreciated
by anyone outside of the sphere of people attracted to the film. It's so
morbidly tense and traumatic in some places and numbing of the brain in
others that it cannot receive any kind of blind recommendation. Some
praise was given to Mansell for his application of hip, dance-like
rhythms to the quartet, highlighted by the early "Party" cues.
Unfortunately, this material is so infrequent in
Requiem for a
Dream that it becomes a curiosity on the side. It owes much to Craig
Armstrong's blending of organic sounds with super-cool loops for
settings like this, but Armstrong, as in
Plunkett and Macleane,
has produced this sound with so much more romantic warmth (the symphonic
and choral power helps, of course) that it's difficult to appreciate
similar ideas stripped back to such basics. What many listeners regard
as a "radical" score for
Requiem for a Dream is actually an adept
but very simplistic musical soundscape for a film as depressing as any
in recent history. Some will claim this music to be hypnotic, but those
will consist of fans who can mellow out to this music while turning
their attention to something else. If you're looking for the kind of
intrigue that Elliot Goldenthal conjured with the help of Kronos Quartet
in
Heat, then you will be disappointed. Even more than
The
Fountain,
Requiem for a Dream is a frightfully overrated
work. A schizophrenic album presentation that mixes all of the short
cues together to form several difficult moments of discord in transition
was eventually accompanied by a remix album two years later that pushed
many of Mansell's ideas into the heavy dance and trance genres. For film
score collectors accustomed to structural and performance depth,
Requiem for a Dream will slap you the face with its repetitively
simplistic and generally unpleasant character. That, of course, makes it
functional for the film... but, then again, who watches films like this
for mere entertainment value?
** @Amazon.com: CD or
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The insert includes no extra information about the score or film. The album
concludes with sound effects attributed to the waves and seagulls of Coney Island,
with no musical element whatsoever in the concluding track.