Requiem for Phil

"Me playing pastiche American folk music would never suit all the repressed conflict or Phil's dark, angry intelligence." --Jonny Greenwood

The score is indeed a standout. It's what I remembered most from the movie. Some might see it as a weakness, but maybe "too prominent" is the point. Forgoing "pastiche folk music" for westerns, with seemingly soft (as evidenced by track 3's name) and delicate viola and plucking bass, this brooding and moody score has an overpowering presence which is apt for the theme, in that soft doesn't necessarily mean weak.

The music speaks to me personally. Some might call the movie an examination of toxic masculinity, but growing up as homosexual (Wow apparently I can't type G-A-Y on douban now, talking about depressing...) in a typical conservative small town, I harbor much of the repressed anger and defense mechanism Phil exhibits. And I too, have somehow been accused of being toxic, by someone I thought would be more understanding no less (It's a long story). So kudos to Jane Campion for giving voice to nuanced feelings like this.

The opening 25 years has intricate and poignant harmonic textures and sets the tone nicely, reminds one of long years of solitude and misunderstanding, and the sense of feeling trapped and not being able to live your life to the fullest. Didn't Phil go to Yale and studied the classics? Now he ends up acting macho and terrorizing happy people. He must feel jealous about the fact that Peter's so comfortable with himself and accepted by his mother.

The Prelude is perhaps a variation of Bach's ubiquitous Prélude of Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, the one Yo-Yo Ma described as representing the "infinitude of what we have in the natural world". Greenwood's version is also vast in its arpeggiating cadence, appears hopeful in the beginning but slowly turns into a foreboding darkness, is a more sentimental take on I imagine the tragic nature of human condition.

Other highlights: Figured it Out grabs you with its string clusters and feelings of finality. Viola Quartet's delayed coupling strings sounds to me like remembrance and perhaps mourning of one's past and future. The disquieting and shaking violin in They Were Mine reminds me of John Adam's Shaker Loops, a minimalist classic.

Overall the score, in contrast to the typical artificialness of the formulaic cinematic strings, has a heightened emotional complexity to it. For laying open more dark recess of the human mind, I don't think Radiohead's Guitarist is now a befitting title for the composer. The modernist music can also work in current day settings, perhaps a film reflecting on the current zeitgeist. I can picture a slow motion shot in a cityscape full of hollowing skyscrapers, the protagonist's hair blowing in the wind.