January 7th, 2008
1. Simon & Garfunkel, The Graduate (1967)
Mike Nichols didn't invent the idea of using pop songs in movies, but by scoring much of The Graduate to the songs of Simon & Garfunkel, he redefined how pop music would be used from then on. Taking cues from the yearning melancholy of "Sounds Of Silence," "Scarborough Fair," and "Mrs. Robinson," the latter of which was penned especially for the film, Nichols let the music do the talking during long, otherwise wordless sequences, reflecting the inner monologues of characters who didn't always know what they wanted, only that they wanted more than they had.
2. Cat Stevens, Harold And Maude (1971)
At the beginning of Hal Ashby's cult classic, Bud Cort (Harold) descends the creaky steps of an old manse with his brown boots clicking morosely on the wood floor until he reaches an old Victrola and drops the needle on Cat Stevens' "Don't Be Shy." Given that he closely follows that action with one of his numerous staged "suicides," Stevens' hopeful folk initially seems like an odd choice. Then Harold meets the 79-year-old Maude. As the film transitions from sparse dialogue and the bleakness of Harold's house out into the world and Maude's carpe diem tossed-off wisdom, the music begins to weave into the story—Maude actually performs one of the tunes herself at a player piano—and carries it along to its infamous finale. Only two of the tracks were recorded specifically for the film, with "If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out" putting Maude's rosy worldview to music. Yet the previously released "Trouble" also works perfectly, as Harold comes to terms with the impossibility of their romance. Harold And Maude is a small story with only a few characters, and Ashby's choice of a single songwriter to accompany their tale has appropriately been deemed one of the hallmark marriages of music to movie.
3. Aimee Mann, Magnolia (1999)
Three hours of raw nerves and frantic epiphanies, P.T. Anderson's third feature could fairly be described as operatic emo, transforming the nakedly personal into a resounding chorus of human misery. But about two-thirds of the way through, Anderson suddenly slams on the brakes: Relieved from their grief and heartache, his dozen or so major characters quietly sing along, one at a time, to Aimee Mann's "Wise Up," one of a few gorgeous songs that serve as the film's lifeblood. The chief lyric ("It's not going to stop until you wise up") speaks kindly but firmly to people suspended in an endless cycle of guilt and dysfunction, with the younger generation indelibly imprinted by their elders' misdeeds. It's the first break in clouds that will open up later—first in a Biblical "rain of frogs," and then finally in a generous coda, set to Mann's "Save Me," that lets a little sun shine through.
4. Leonard Cohen, McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
Robert Altman selected three tracks from Songs Of Leonard Cohen—"Stranger Song," "Sisters Of Mercy," and "Winter Lady"—to serve as pretty much the entire score for his hazy revisionist Western, and over the years, even some Altman fans have complained that the Cohen songs are too samey and mopey, and that they date the film. Those nay-sayers are wrong, wrong, wrong. The way Cohen's lyrics echo the plot are often too uncanny, from the prophetic introduction of the gunslinger McCabe via the line "He was just some Joseph looking for a manger" to the painful description of the title relationship with the phrase "I'm just a station on your way, I know I'm not your lover." Mainly, Cohen's songs reflect the windswept melancholy of McCabe & Mrs. Miller, and the sense of dreams being built from the ground up, before getting crushed from above.
5. Eddie Vedder, Into The Wild (2007)
Much like Leonard Cohen's songs in McCabe & Mrs. Miller, the paeans to travel and freedom that Eddie Vedder wrote and recorded for Sean Penn's Into The Wild have been criticized for being too on-the-nose and too drippy. But that's precisely what makes them work. The actual life and death of driven young nature-lover Christopher McCandless can be interpreted a number of different ways—and was, in Jon Krakauer's more even-handed non-fiction bestseller—but Penn focuses on McCandless' boyish spirit of rebellion and restlessness, and his movie is a throwback to the sensual look and romantic vibe of early-'70s youthsploitation. In that context, Vedder's earnestness fits precisely, because Penn's Into The Wild puts its heart on its sleeve, and lets it bleed.
6. Alan Price, O Lucky Man! (1973)
It's no insult to say that Lindsay Anderson's epic follow-up to If…. flies off the rails early and often: What begins as an irreverent capitalist satire springboards deliriously into every conceivable aspect of British life, with each vignette more surreal than the last. Perhaps realizing that three hours worth of detours, no matter how brilliant, would likely exhaust even the most adventurous audience, Anderson commissioned Alan Price, formerly of The Animals, to write songs for the film. What's more, the songs are included as concert interludes within the movie, with Price and his bandmates knocking them out in a studio. These sequences help tie the extremely loose-knit narrative strands together, and are some of the film's most dynamic segments.
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