Many filmmakers have a strong connection with music, but some go much further, and their use of music becomes a big element of their movie atmosphere, and can even become a real actor.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s movies are so musically involved, that a direct combination between sound and image is formed right away. If sounds can be completely visual for some of us, Anderson gives us his personal vision of music, and sometimes it is as if the soundtrack was first and the images were only there to illustrate it.
Boogie nights’ identity owns a lot to Electric Light Orchestra’s ‘Livin’ Thing’ or Rick Springfield’s ‘Jesse’s Girl’, and Barry Egan (Adam Sandlers) in ‘Punch Drunk Love’ is going to own everything to a harmonium he has found in the street. Magnolia has all the qualities of an operatic symphony with its large cast and the omnipresence of Jon Brion’s score in between Aimee Mann’s perfect pop songs, and ‘There will be blood’ is such an instant classic monument with Jonny Greenwood’s dark and original composition for strings. Who else could ask a member of Radiohead to score one of his movies and obtain an immediate positive answer?
Music is at the center of all his films, by following the characters’ feelings and emotions and the words can become secondary when the music is played loud over the dialogue of the characters. If you cannot really hear what Jim (John C. Reilly) said to Claudia (Melora Walters) at the end of ‘Magnolia’ because of the heavy use of music, some of Claudia’s lines are directly borrowed from an Aimee Mann song: ‘Now that I’ve met you, would you object to never seeing me again?’ When you use lyrics to write your script, you are a musical director…
If you want even more musical connections, let’s say that he was Fiona Apple’s boyfriend for years, directed some of her videos (‘Limp’, ‘Paper bag’, ‘Across the unverse’) as well as the videos of many of his close friends who are musicians, Jon Brion, Michael Penn and Aimee Mann. ‘For F. A.’ can be read at the end of ‘Magnolia’, as ‘For Fiona Apple’ who also made the paintings that appears in the same movie.
I wonder what kind of music he will use for his next film, ‘The Master’, which is supposed to be a sort of take down of Scientology with Philip Seymour Hoffman (‘Almost famous’ Lester Bangs, if you need another music plug) as a Hubbard-esque character. Ha! It’s a pretty bold move and I can’t wait for this one!