War of the Worlds

So I dragged my wife to see Spielberg's War of the Worlds Monday night (sorry B & T! We'll be more than happy to catch it again with you guys at the drive-in!). Holy crap! I know there are a lot of people out there poopooing Spielberg's vision, but I thought that the film, even with its minor flaws, was bloody awesome! I thought that the tension that was built up was incredible. The problem is, most moviegoers aren't perceptive enough to pay attention to all the different aspects of a film (especially one like this). Film is more than visual effects and dialogue. There is music (my personal favorite), sound effects/design (which, despite what some people think, is not the same as music), special effects, editing, costuming and makeup. When all of these things come together at their best they can create the ultimate moviegoing experience (which is about illusion, not reality; although I have mentioned to my wife that perhaps I should have my own theme music. She rolled her eyes.).

But I digress.

I thought that one of the most brilliant elements of the entire film was, in fact, the sound design. It was absolutely amazing. Clever, too. Despite what I said about sound design and music not necessarily being the same thing I have to admit that the alien invaders moved quite musically. The tripods moved to a nice little waltz rhythm in 3/4 time (3 legs, triple time, brilliant!). Also, the ominous clarion call sounded by the tripods to communicate to each other was actually performed by a tuba player in Los Angeles named Jim Self. It's just like his visitors in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Is Spielberg trying to tell us that he believes that music actually is a "universal language"? I would be interested to hear Mr. Spielberg's thoughts.

I don't normally gravitate toward scary movies, though I've already scored my fair share as a composer. I hate blood and guts and gore for the sake of gore (sometimes you do what pays the bills). I love movies like War of the Worlds and Signs because they use subtlety and atmospherics (both aural and visual) in order to ratchet up the tension. People may not like these particular examples, but I think they should be case studies in effectively creating tension and a God's-honest real scare. The people who don't like them are generally the same people I wiped the floor with in my undergraduate film theory class (in which I was the only musician!). In my opinion the greatest scary movies are the ones in which you hardly see "the bad guy" (Jaws, Aliens) and when you finally do it's not until one of the most pivotal points in the movie. I guess that's another reason why Aliens is also one of my favorite movies (Vietnam allegory aside). James Cameron did such a terrific job building tension throughout the first half of the film.

I guess what it really boils down to is that I will take a poor Steven Spielberg film (and M. Night Shyamalan and James Cameron) over most others on a good day.

That said, I'm going to get back to writing my theme music.