You say you know what he did
Posted 13 Feb, 2006 at 23:48 by matt in /Music | Permanent link
Happiness is rediscovering a great song that you completely forgot.
I quite enjoyed The Royal Tenenbaums when it came out. Yes, it was very self-consciously quirky, but done so well --- and with so much sincerity from the cast --- that it could be forgiven. I've seen the film twice, the last time over three years ago, but I've got a lot of bits of it stuck in my mind. The most intense of these bits (which I remember seriously creeping me out in the theatre) is a sequence where one of the characters attempts suicide; it's spooky to me for a lot of reasons, but the thing that really drove the scene was the music in the background.
Of course, it's often the soundtrack that gives a movie scene its emotional impetus, as The Opposite of Sex observed so cleverly. The song itself, lyrically and musically, fit perfectly with the narrative of the film; moreover, it was the only really contemporary song in a film whose soundtrack was heavily based in older music, and even not knowing the song in advance the difference in production values communicated something to me.
Anyhow, the point of this is: I really, really liked the song at the time. And then the rest of the movie happened, and the song didn't really stick around in my head. Same thing a year later, watching the movie on DVD: great song, and then gone. I've recently discovered it again --- Needle in the Hay, by Elliott Smith --- and have been grooving on it.
It's a song that will always have association of suicide for me: from the character in the movie, and from Smith himself who took his own life in 2003. It's not by any means a happy song to begin with, full of anger and yearning. And yet... it makes me feel better when I hear it. It fills a hole in my mind, and I'm pleased to have rediscovered it.