That’s one of the brilliant things about this film. The dense and expressive score/soundtrack.
I don’t really read that much into it, but I was just listening to Neu!’s “Super” the other day and thinking about how great it was when I stumbled upon the factiod that “Super” and also the version “Super16” became the themes for Master of the Flying Guillotine unbeknownst to Neu! And in turn, Tarantino used it in KILL BILL. Thought that was cool.
Love that theme. Arguably the greatest music ever to introduce a villain. Had no idea it came from a preexisting source. Who or what is Neu!?
Tarantino used this in “Kill Bill” and also used it briefly in “Basterds” to intro Hans Landa.
NEU! was a krautrock band
luv Kraftwerk and Neu!
great observation… the use of theme songs for characters. old school.
kraftwerk… ahh one of the fathers of hip hop and techno.
I had never hard of NEU and am appreciative of the Kraftwerk connection. Thanks again MUBI!
Dig Neu! even more than Kraftwerk. Real joyous.
On my way home on leave I watched Sucker Punch on the plane and wanted to yell at Zack Snyder for his atrocious choice of music in it. This is something like the third time I’ve done this with a Snyder movie (by the way, Sucker Punch marks the last I will be watching of anything Zack Snyder, because for the longest time I kept assuring myself that there was some movie he was trying to make that would be worth it, but Sucker Punch is sort of it and it still sucked), the other times being Watchmen and The Legend of the Guardians. I bring up those other films because they describe exactly WHY his choice in music is just awful in Sucker Punch. Watchmen contains music from Koyaanisqatsi and The Legend of the Guardians contains music from Baraka. I know why Zack Snyder references these movies, it’s because they are visual delights and Zack delights in the visuals of his movies more than anything. It also refers to exactly why Zack Snyder movies don’t make a lick of sense, because he fills his movies with References that are in complete obliviousness as to their original intention or meaning. This is why the politics in his movies are so fucked up, he puts the political points out there so that the movies can have Political Commentary but he doesn’t actually have political commentary to state.
I tell all this because as much as Tarantino is given crap for being a collaguer of References, he still manages in some way to make those references meaningful in what he is doing for himself. You do not need to know the references to see how they fit, such as in the examples above. For those who know the references, it’s another layer of something to react to, mostly positively, and for those who don’t, they can still go along with it with a sense of fun. Snyder fails because he only references things he likes, not why he likes them. Tarantino’s cinephilia is controversial but at least he tries to keep to the spirit of the things he’s referencing.
—PolarisDiB
references… this reminds me of “south park”. a quarter of the things they refer to are meant for the older generation… but you don’t necessarily need to know them to enjoy watching the episodes. because they make it fit in context with the show regardless. great point.
Of late South Park has seemed to struck a formula wherein each episode is designed around a popular plot, focusing on a current hot topic or celebrity. An example would be the Britney Spears episode, which is also a parody of The Wicker Man. I think taken as a whole the formula can get a bit repetitive, but it’s an easy way for the guys to both communicate their points quickly to the audience, as well as keep their episodes coming out so near to the events they are satiring.
One of the first things that used to attract or engage me in movies were references, but that’s not so much the case anymore. I don’t know if my taste for them has changed so much or people’ve gotten a little too savvy about using them, but when I watch things like Rango I sort of wonder what is the point of having a movie entirely about recognizing other movies. In comedy and parody it’s a pretty common thing to riff on references in such a way, "Oh ho ho it’s funny because they’re acting like the monkeys in 2001: A Space Odyssey! " (re: Zoolander ), but in other films the references only feel effective if they are meaningful or true to the spirit of the referent.
And they are risky, at least they are now. In The Fountain Aronofsky remakes the shot in Ikiru where he crosses the street from the hospital and then almost gets hit by a car, at which point the audio comes back on and the audience is surrounded in noise. In Ikiru the shot shows the detachment the character feels after he’s learned of his own impending death, and the shot functions as a sort of micronarrative within the larger self-introversion-towards-realization-of-the-world-around-him. In The Fountain it does not work as much as a micronarrative of the larger whole but the reference itself works in its difference to the original. The Fountain shot happens after Tom loses his wife in the hospital, so it’s already too late for him to achieve what he’s been trying to achieve the entire time. In the shot, he slaps angrily at the car that almost hit him, which does not happen in Ikiru. The “modern-day” narrative part of The Fountain deals with Tom focusing so exclusively on his mission to provide eternal life that he forgets to live. The real life that distracts him from that mission, like the car, only serves to make him angry.
However, all that description aside, whereas the two shots function in each independent movie, and also function if you know of both independent movie, a viewer familiar with Ikiru may end up being distracted away from The Fountain instead of compelled by it because of that reference. In Tarantino he’s so unapologetically pop art about it that the audience can get on board and play the name the reference game as part of the fun of the movie.
When I was in college and taking video production classes, one of the professors’ (plural, they all had it) major pet peeves was that students should be very careful in their choices of music for their pieces. I think that’s kind of what I’m getting at here, for music and references as a whole, and the last two responses have been something I’ve been thinking about lately and so took the opportunity for. I think Tarantino is careful in his choices of references but he also doesn’t have a whole lot to lose, because it’s for the lulz. I think that works very well. I think that like a lot of other things, people respond to what Tarantino does and it provides incentives for other people to try to pull it off, and do so unsuccessfully. Looking into the ways in which Tarantino’s references actually work is an actually useful thing to do to avoid getting trapped into another Rango.
—PolarisDiB
raqz xuneh
one of the key factors that made me enjoy this film was the music, both the selection and the many references that it was making. i do believe that you had to have been of part of a certain age/generation, american pop culture, as well as being into films to get fully what rza and tarantino was getting at. examples are as follows:
whistling theme
bernard hermann
twisted nerve / taxi driver
… i wouldn’t even know if most people of this generation would know about this. and even if they did, would they get it? growing up as part of the end of the cold war, it was somewhat hard to get when i was a child watching it. but the whistling… it was a critical link for setting the mood and personality of elle driver. ingeniously incorporating both films that the theme uses with “driver” and the “mothering” scene with bill on the phone speaking about why they shouldn’t kill the bride. further research into hermann’s films will unearth more scores that injects a deeper personality into the film.
panned flute song
zamfir
… if you grew up in the eighties, zamfir was basically one of the father’s of infomercials! you could not had turned the channel dial and not see him. but interestingly, rza and tarantino never knew his work (weird as it sounds) and he had to ask the asian restaurant owner what was playing over the pa. i was like, “wow… really?”. so basically, i put my own meaning into the film when it wasn’t really there! but it was still ironic that they decided to put such an eighties icon in the film without knowing it… because it perfectly fits the overall retro feel.
green lantern sound
?
green lantern (60’s version)
… this was obviously an ode to bruce lee. the bride is dressed in the iconic yellow with black stripped jumpsuit such as the one worn by mr. lee in, “game of death”. but he was also “kato” in the green hornet, hence the sample.
any other musical “cues” that anyone else picked up, would be greatly appreciated for discussion. but it is great to see that something most of the film industry takes as a “secondary”, or i should say, “LAST” priority was taken into much thought and with serious-nous.