One of the
most beautiful and most universal thing of the whole art is fairytale. Good
fairytale is convenient to anybody, good fairytale gently carries and smoothly
teaches the very essence of any moral imperative that cannot be force-fed or
integrated artificially, good fairytale is just interesting, beautiful and
merely charming. But what fairytale is good? This is the question, and
unfortunately here we cannot answer to it, but nonetheless we can notice that
all well-known fairytales are heavily burdened with moral load of some kind.
Fairytale teaches – this is its obligate property and possibly the most
significant one, and it teaches children.
Thus we
could make a conclusion, that fairytales host some values which are perpetual –
such values that don’t alterate during the time and are and will be valid now
and forever. So the scenery can differ, background can substitute the other
one, swords and bows become lightsabers and blasters, but values of love,
friendship, trust (underline what you would like more) are everlasting. Well, this conclusion
seems right, but we cannot decline that the world is changing, and modern
children lives not in a shanty near the dark and creepy forest full of hungry
animals, but among wireless connection and synthetic polymers. So questions
like “Why couldn’t this stupid Red Riding Hood call 911?” or “Does Davy
Crockett have an optical sight on his gun?” are illegible no more – they are
logically supported, and thus we need a new type of fairytales, stories of our
world, world that we live in.
Fortunately,
we have such kind of stories, although there are not so many examples of them,
and despite people’s conservatism and headthickness, and “Ink”, independent
movie filmed by Jamin Winans, is the very fairytale – fairytale of XXI century.
We will not discuss the film here, because I already wrote about it (though in
Russian), but I should notice that this film has number two (silver medal) in
my movie top. So the one thing that must be mentioned particularly while
talking about “Ink” is the music used in it.
Director of
a movie usually is a man that has the whole look of it in his head. This look
of course includes not only the picture and video work, but all the sound
engineering. Often director has no talent or time or just don’t want to do
this, and then he hires a sound director and/or composer, but we have totally
different realisation level when director can do this (write music and arrange
it) by himself – the best examples are John Carpenter’s “Halloween” or Don
Coscarelli’s “Phantasm” whose main themes run a chill down the spine. Situation
with “Ink” lays in the same sphere of events – Jamin Winans is also the
composer of it, and he did perfectly know how should his film sound.
As well as
all “Ink” and particularly its picture, its sounds are cold and fragile, run
far and far away in hollow chilly air of the action. Narrative temp is not so
fast even in the moments of the most story acceleration, and music flows
spilling its crystal drops as if it is already nothing to hurry. Leisure,
transparent melodies backgrounded by similarly cool effects and pads weaves the
same story that is being pictured on a screen, and it adds even more emotions
that separate picture contains (for example, it makes scenes of Jacob’s Chain
or John’s walk through the hospital just harrowing and bloodcurdling). Every
time or couple of seconds is tightly conjugated with the action, and music doesn’t leave the
viewer until the end of film.
I cannot
call music to “Ink” outstanding or breakthrough – it does no revolution in any
style and genre, it is not complex or unusual, it is not even academic. Jamin
Winans wrote quite simple themes that could be easily recognized and
distinguished from another, and despite their simplicity and sense that you
already heard this somewhere, they are quite memorable. Instrumentation, simple
as well as music structure – soft, cold and deeply sounding piano (with gentle
touch of reverberation), pizzicato strings, curtains of deep and warm synth
pads, and different percussions with different effects – this is all and enough
that could be needed to make a masterpiece.
As it
should be, there are reprises, variations and modulations of sequences and
motives; themes float up and slowly drown down, alterate and appear again, and most
of them create the sense of something really private that know only you and
something that only you can tell to somebody.
And the main
theme – soft, chilly and nearly disappearing piano sequence dusturbs something
profound, something that lay on the very bottom of the reason and heart, and is
just touching as fuck. Moreover, it is so touching that Joe Carnahan was not
fastidious to borrow it in a form of “The City Surf” song to his new film
“Grey”, and damn me if it didn’t sounded awesome there.
As A Result:
perfect soundtrack for perfect modern fairytale
Listen It?:
of course, but better is to watch it
Watch It?:
fuck yes what are you waiting for, dummy
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