( ) & i remember.
Sometimes switching on the tail end of a film is wildly frustrating. Especially one of the good ones, when the crescendo of a film is taking place and you’ve missed all the wonderful bits leading up to it.
Then of course, there are films that don’t ever officially end, something about them keeps with you. There is of course, one movie that, if given the opportunity, I will watch the end of over and over, skipping the rest of the film.*
To put things into perspective, in 2001, Sigur Ros was an unknown quantity in America. They had not yet gotten an American label, they were only on a (relatively) small label in Iceland. Unless you were deep in the file sharing trenches, or on CDBaby, the band name would have appeared as no more than mere gibberish. Moreover, the concept album they had been working on had no song titles, let alone an album title. Further still, the record was neither in english or icelandic nordic, it was essentially nonsense, bits and pieces of language Jonsi had cobbled together in his head, called hopelandic. All in all, you can objectively look at this band and wonder who had the marvelous foresight to know this band would explode, perpetually, for the next 9 years. It could not have been vision, it must have been prescience.
Cameron Crowe, by far one of the more creative people in this world, has always had quite an ear for music in his films. He captures music that engulfs the soul, music you breathe, music that coexists in your life. And Vanilla Sky had a Denmark festival recording of Njósnavélin, (aka the Spy Plane, aka the Nothing Song, aka Song 4), a song yet to be completed by the band in the studio. At the end of the film, where a single life is minimized, made wildly unimportant, yet at the same time given unfathomable worth, plays this song, this one song I’ve listened to hundreds of times. And it is simply one of the most emotionally moving moments in modern film. Life above all, is the most beautiful thing and David had yet to do any discernible amount of living. Somehow this song captures an end, a beginning and a trapped moment, all at once.
I invite you to take your copy of the Parentheses Album, aka The Nothing Album, aka the-two-hot-dogs-facing-each-other album, by Sigur Ros, and listen extremely closely to a band that at that point had not said a single discernible word of any language, yet we knew then and know now exactly what to feel during every song. And if you do not have this record, well then, dear reader, I know not what to do with you.
I like that one of the last lines in the film is “I will find you.” Hope in the face of the black hole of eternity, I find that rather lovely.
As one would assume, my normative suggestions for music include close listening using headphones. Sigur Ros have detail and layers of texture that only a solid pair will provide evidence of.
_backchat.
* That is not to say, however, that I do not love this film’s beginning, middle and all in between intensely, because, it is one of Mr. Crowe’s greatest works. Starting from the beginning is just fine too.
