Re: Defend your most controversial film opinion.
Totally with you on Desplat and Powell. I'd throw Giacchino in there as well. I don't know about Powell, but I'd gladly take Desplat and Giacchino over Zimmer any day--depending on the movie, of course.
You know what, ya, if you whittle your music down to where there's practically nothing to it and it's just 2 notes, it's really easy to do thematic things with them because your theme is almost non-existent. That doesn't impress me, and I'll go one further and say that does not automatically make it fit better for his movies.
It doesn't matter if it impresses you. That's just so not the point.
The best way that I've heard modern art (which obviously includes minimalism) described is, "I could do that!" "Yeah, but you didn't."
There's a lot to that little quote, but I think its most important implication is that "difficult" isn't always immediately obvious. You hear a Williams space battle and you hear a lot of notes and you go, "Wow. That sounds hard." Which it is. It's a bitch to write and it's a bitch to play. And for some reason, stuff that is obviously difficult--whether or not it retains any depth beyond that superficial response--impresses us.
[Not that I'm saying Williams' space battles don't have any depth. Every note that man writes is pure gold.]
On the other hand, you hear two notes, and you go, "I could literally shit that out in a minute." Which is actually bullshit. It's easy to say that something is overly-simplistic when the sound of it is ubiquitous. But to create something truly original--which there is no doubt that he absolutely has--is damn near impossible. And only those that have sat down in front of a score-less movie and gone, "…Welp, ok. Let's, uh…let's put music to this thing" will actually understand the true difficulty of coming up with the perfect two notes. Two notes that are perfect not for one character in one film, but are able to inform an entire trilogy of ideas.
If anything, it just takes courage, and the good sense to know when enough is enough. Like I said, he arrived at those two notes after starting with much, much more. I wouldn't be surprised if the two notes slowly revealed themselves--writing music often takes a mind of its own and tells you what the theme should be--and he was smart enough to follow that.
Last edited by Alex (2013-11-05 20:12:47)