Music in Movies

Have you seen Antichrist? It’s a relatively new movie and it’s pretty damn insane. The opening scene is a slow-motion montage of a couple having passionate sex. They go at it for a while and eventually you see their baby waking up in the next room. The baby gets up out of his crib, walks around dazedly, wanders up to his bedroom window, and falls to his death.

I didn’t spoil anything; that’s the movie’s intro. The rest of the movie is about the couple’s grieving process, which gets very bizarre to say the least. I loved the movie, but the point of this post is the opening scene.

The opening montage has no dialogue. The only sound is the aria “Lascia ch’io pianga,” from Handel’s opera Rinaldo. The aria is gorgeous and extremely slow, complimenting the slow-motion camerawork. It’s one of the most striking uses of music in film that I have ever seen. I never got around to seeing Where the Wild Things Are, but fucking whatever: this is the awesome music/movie pairing of 2009. Even if you have zero interest in a Lars Von Trier horror film, that scene is worth watching.

You can check it out here, until the link gets taken down. The video is small, but if you play it, wait a few seconds, and then double-click anywhere on the video screen, it’ll pop up in a new tab at a much larger size. The aria’s lyrics translate to “Leave me to weep over my cruel fate, and that I sigh for freedom.”

Posted on January 27, 2010 12:28