Since the era of "Saturday Night Fever" and "Grease," successes in the sound track genre have been confined to ones composed for musicals, including the Grammy-winning "Chicago" compilation. Regrettably, the public has wrongfully ignored the three best sound tracks in the past 10 years. The one element that each of the three sound tracks has in common is a mutual producer: Academy-Award winner Sofia Coppola. Each of Coppola's films, "The Virgin Suicides," "Lost in Translation" and "Marie Antoinette," boast vibrantly alive sound tracks that accomplish far more than any of their modern counterparts. Each song Coppola and fellow producer Brian Reitzell select does not feel meant for a particular scene or setting; each song feels essential.
If there is any sound track that exemplifies the method of handpicking songs that overtly match the thematic content of the film, it has to be "Garden State." Zach Braff's directorial debut is the epitome of a mediocre movie with a great sound track. Sorry, proud Jersey residents, but "Garden State" is a diluted, run-of-the-mill take on the coming-of-age theme. Sure, "New Slang," by The Shins might be a terrific song, yet its placement only made the film even more nauseatingly sentimental. As Zach Braff's and Natalie Portman's characters wait in a hospital lobby, Portman hands Braff her headphones and says, "You gotta hear this one song - it'll change your life." Ironically, good music did nothing but further trivialize the film.
What makes a sound track truly remarkable is moxie on the director's and producer's parts. Coppola and Reitzell could have chosen safe, classical music to score the 2006 film, "Marie Antoinette," yet instead, they favored 1980s post-punk progressive rock. As with Coppola's prior film sound tracks for "Lost in Translation" and "The Virgin Suicides," she and Reitzell used a diverse range of musical artists and genres, yet with "Marie Antoinette," they broke ground no other sound track has before.
As the opening credits begin, Gang of Four's "Natural's Not in It" blasts with quick shots of Kirsten Dunst clad in ravishing gowns, childishly accepting her new role in the aristocratic world of 18th century France. This naturally might have upset viewers, as a punk song may not seem an appropriate song choice to introduce a queen. In retrospect, though, "Natural's Not in It" was anything but inappropriate. The lyrics convey the same overwhelming sensations a teenaged Antoinette must have experienced as she was handed the crown: "The problem of leisure / What to do for pleasure / Ideal love a new purchase / A market of the senses."
Later on in the film, Coppola shows Antoinette distressed and running through Versailles to "What Ever Happened" by The Strokes, for which some critics chastised Coppola and Reitzell. Again, though, the lyrics evoke the necessary senses of frustration and melancholy: "I want to be forgotten / And I don't want to be reminded." These songs sections channel Antoinette's sense of youthful angst and explore her reluctance to accept her position in French royalty.
The beauty in the "Marie Antoinette" sound track can be found merely in its track listing. While the artists might appear as contrasts to one another, each fits perfectly in relation to the film. Composers Francois Cauperin and Jean-Philippe Rameau may have little in common with The Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees, yet the fact that each of these artists can all be a part of the same sound track makes it successful.
Indeed, French royalty was not listening to New Order's "Ceremony" at one of its lavish soir?es, of which Coppola and Reitzell were clearly aware. The point is that while these modern songs can be easily criticized for residing in a period film it is their presence that makes "Marie Antoinette" such a memorable cinematic and musical experience. Integrating modern songs into a film set in the 18th century, connects with 21st-century viewers. Coppola and Reitzell's bravery made it easy to sympathize with Antoinette, her rushed youth and her loss of innocence, despite her infamous materialistic, juvenile antics.
Until Coppola and Reitzell's sound track-producing contemporaries embrace a bold approach to selecting songs and a reluctance to choose tracks that blatantly reiterate the film's emotional content, trite "Garden State" clones will continue to botch music's role in film.
